EP1033: A Voice for Inclusive Banking

Introducing Pramit Bhargava and Louie Voice Acquisition I'm Pooja Sharma of IBS Intelligence and you're listening to the IBS iviews podcast. With me is Pramit Bhargava, founder of Louie Voice at Clayfin. Digital banking solution provider Clayfin had acquired voice technology platform Louie Voice as part of its strategy to enhance AI driven customer experiences and expand accessibility across banking channel. The acquisition strengthens Clayfin's cognitive banking platform by adding advanced voice AI capabilities that enable users to perform banking transaction and interact with digital services using natural voice command. Welcome to the podcast, Pramit. Speaker 2 Yeah. Thanks, Pooja. Great to be here. Pramit Bhargava's Vision Impairment and Louie Voice Inspiration From A Louis Voice was inspired by your personal experience with vision impairment. And how did the journey shape your mission to build a voice First platform for financial services? Speaker 2 A quick background, I used to have a perfect vision. I'm a computer engineer from ITBHU, then went to and Bangalore. Then I was working with Hindustan Unilever. I worked with various multinationals across sectors. So why didn't Unilever? And this only was 25 years back there was a medicine that was given for joint pains and the medicine did it starts. So Pooja, my joint pains disappeared. But then suddenly one finally it was discovered that my vision has fallen quite a bit, right. And doctors related it to the same drug. And so the doctor, you know, I was given specs, it gave me partial connection. Life continue and about 1213 years back there was another drop of vision and this time completely out of the blue. And certainly I saw text going up and down and and then after a while I realized my specs were simply not working. I had to throw away the glasses and and then I realized everything got much more WAVY, foggy. And then I realized I cannot read anything at all. Now imagine somebody who has done only corporate jobs in his life. And suddenly, and I was at senior level at that level, you know, suddenly that thought of, you know, how will I do especially PowerPoint that emails he has to check. And all of this filled me with so much fear and you know, and I lost confidence. It took me almost 4, five years. I was at home. I didn't, I wanted to do things. But you know, unless they say there was no confidence left, you know, it was almost like that and slowly I came out of it. That is a basic tool called a screen reader. So I just discovered it completely by accident and that gave me enough, you know, confidence to come back. I was doing consulting and that's how this what for Lubigo is came was that I used to go from one office to another using Uber. So Uber was at the centers of this at the centre of this thought. So you know, I with my screen reader, I could book Uber, but every time what will happen the magic for a normal person, Uber is meant to be a very relaxed, right. You're going from point A to point B for me sitting inside Uber. I certainly think, oh boy, will this guy drop me at the right destination? Is my payment method Paytm or cash? And certainly, you know, that whole, you know, the worries will start popping up. And from that time on, I used to think that, look, why can't I give voice commands and book my, you know, that was the simple problem that I wanted to solve and this thing was coming that there should be a position like that. So that's how this thought was actually planted in that. Speaker 1 Makes sense. Why Voice is the Future of Financial Services Why do you believe voice is a next major interface for banking and how is Louis Voice driving that transaction? Speaker 2 So like I said, I still take the Uber example because sometimes it's much easier to understand. So imagine this whole just put, try and put yourself in my streams, right? And if, if, for example, I could have just given a command saying book Uber go for home and it, it could have opened up the screens or chose Uber go for me and then confirmed back that, OK, this is the fair you're going from point A to point B, etcetera, etcetera. There's your destination. This is how you're paying. I mean, imagine how simple life will become for anybody. It's not just right. So the same thought has actually gone into banking and finance and it's you know, so we though we have a set diagnostic solution, we decided to focus on the financial sector because this is where we felt that given the low literacy level, financial literacy level in the country, given the kind of challenges that are there. And if you have to move toward Vixen Bharat, I think financial being, you know, everybody being a part of that financial midstream is very important. So that's why we are focusing on backing. And the thought is very similar doing voice is built with a similar thought that, you know, whatever intent you have in your mind. So let's say I'm somebody a farmer, I'm illiterate, may or may not have been disabled, you know, but because it applies for so many people, I could be somebody elderly, I could be somebody, but a lot of these financial apps are only in English. So I could be somebody who know Gujarati very well, Marathi very well, but I could converse into the language. So if you see, you know, this where voice interfaces make it simple is that I just speak my intake and it's up to Louis Voice to actually get the work done, whether it's within banking, whether it's within mutual funds, you know, it just becomes as simple as that. Turning Financial Accessibility into a Growth Opportunity How can financial institution turn accessibility from compliance requirement into business growth opportunity? Speaker 2 Actually, you know, The funny thing is there was no compliance requirement, right? So, but, and if you look at it, you think you're right because the first instance people hear my story, they think, oh, it's for accessibility for you know, which are visually and so on. But like I said, if you, if you know more and more, I'll give you another example. So we are also through RBI talking about talking with the banks for CBDC apps, right? These are the digital rupee apps for and where you know use case is the direct benefit transfer right now. Now if you look at a use case like that, like I said, direct benefits are going to people who are typically less literate, less financially literate, language barriers could be elderly also. All in all, anybody who finds using a financial app difficult, right. So it just makes it so simple. So I would say that there is a strong business case. In fact, really speaking all our businesses, all the customers that we have, there is a very strong business reason why they will like to do it. I'll take that another example of Nippon, for example, Nippon Mutual Fund, I think again they have the fact that we can go, their app is only in English, but we can provide voice interfaces in multiple Indian languages, right. That could be another very strong reason because you could really increase your customer base, you know, and not necessarily limited to a small 70% of users only to understand in India, understand and can read the English language, right. So you're really widening. Balancing AI Automation, Security, and Human Interaction in Banking How can banks strike the right balance between AI driven automation, security and human touch and conversational banking? Obviously, we have to touch on AI and how it is changing the landscape of conversational banking also today. Speaker 2 So Mujah, I can tell you our experience because we are an 8 year old startup, right? So we started in an era because we are single might be focusing on voice interfaces for apps and websites. So we started in an event of course there was no AI to an era where you know of course there was a transition that was happening last I would say three years or so true or now where we are almost like an AI first company right now. What I can tell you with great confidence given our experiences that AI for us has brought, you know, if I were to ask it just purely in terms of efficacy, in terms of even being able to do you know, what we are supposed to do with voice interface much, much better at a completely different level. That's the kind of impact AI has had. Because if you really look at it, I can break up this whole voice interface thing into two parts. 1 is a user gives us certain command and understanding the intent of the user, right? That's Part 1. Part 2 is getting that work done, getting that transaction done within the app in the website. So if you look at it, this entire area of intent determination and like I said, see earlier, earlier if you see the solutions used to be that you will force a user into say specific keywords. So it was around keyword matching. But today, what AI enables the user can pretty much say anything. So I'll give you an example. So even now, for example, in a banking app, if a user, because you can't train a users, you can't train a user to say account balance, right then they may not now users making likely to say it. You know the user when you advance it will immediately say account balance. And if I say you know, it will take you to transaction history. So that's the level of impact that AI has brought into our business. Speaker 1 The level of accuracy that means the person need not be trained. It also comes from financial inclusion point of view. When people from tier 3 to tier 5 people in villages who do not know to communicate even form a sentence can. This can enhance the whole experience and. Speaker 2 Even otherwise, I think just look at it that I can say whatever I have in mind and this Louis voice will and you know, it could be so great for any of us, like for example, banks there, you know, the technical what is fund transfer? Now? How many of even you and I use fund transfer? I mean, they will just to me, right or send it to MVS, right. So that's the level of I would say freedom from the from for the user and the fact that the non voices voice interfaces can grow because of you end user can rely on it. Next-Gen Conversational Banking: Dialects and Agentic AI Which recent advances in Voice AI Pramit will have the greatest impact on the next generation of conversation banking according to you? Speaker 2 So like I said, I gave an example of how intent determination is making a dramatic difference and across languages. So I think it needs to become better at understanding different languages. And where there's a gap right now is understanding Indian dialects. So even though Hindi may be spoken in so many dialects, that's one area. The second area where we would be, we are trying to move towards where where the LLM sort of becomes the brain and heart of this voice interface solution where it is not only figuring out the intent, it's also dynamically determining based on its understanding of the underlying app and the website where it is dynamically determining what next should be done right on the screen, etcetera, etcetera. So right now there is a separate SDK that we use for that. So I think it will all move in a direction where eventually it's the AI, I will call it more of an agentic behaviour where it has been trained in such a way that it can take independent decisions. It can, you know, in work in a very dynamic area. It's something, you know, unpredictable areas. So that's the kind of movement that I see, apart from, of course, like I said, languages and edits. Speaker 1 So there is advancement and the age and TKI will definitely take a larger role in this. The Addictive Nature of Voice Interfaces and Future Trends If you have to summarize this, what are the few few trends that you see in this space? Speaker 2 See, it's all chicken and egg, right? Because see, the fact is that unless there is a solution, right, you will not have people use it. And like I said, a key requirement of an end user is I give my command, I, I expect the Voice Assistant to understand what I'm saying and get my work done, right? That's a simple now so far, I mean, it's very surprising, even to the best of our knowledge as of today, we do not have a direct competitor, right? So, so for example, now in fact we are right now working with one of the top banks in the country and when it goes live, it will be words first at scale, mass execution, you know with the voice interface actually driving banking transactions. So what I would say in that sense, because nobody is doing it, we are still at an early stage. There's a lot of concept selling that we have to do. I am also in a way like a machinery going around preaching the benefits of voice interfaces and so on, right. But my sense is the moment this big one comes out in the market and more, you know, one or two of these actual integrations have happened and apps are out there where people can try it out. The good thing with voice is it's very, very addictive. User uses it once it's almost like tasting the blood if it gets the work done right, it is very very addictive then why will I struggle on the screen? Why will I sort of figure out here feature. I will just give a voice command and quickly get my work true, true, right. So that's the way I will look at it. It will probably happen in it's already happening, right? But two years from now, Pooja, we may be having a very dramatically different. Speaker 1 Thank you so much Pramit for your time. Pramit Bhargava, founder of Louie Voice at Clayfin.