In this segment, we dive into the vision for the future of cooperative banking and how digital solutions can transform the sector. Vishal shares the goal of digitizing the cooperative ecosystem. The focus is on bringing more cooperatives online and expanding access to digital tools that can drive financial inclusion across India. He also provides valuable advice for early-stage founders: Trust your instincts, but also thoroughly research and understand your customer’s pain points before diving into product development. Building a product based on real customer insights is key to success, with a blend of data, instinct, and customer discovery forming the foundation of any great venture.

In this segment, we talk about the challenges smaller cooperative banks face and how SaaS solutions are helping them enhance customer engagement and increase profitability. We explore how cooperative banks, even in urban areas, serve small businesses and farmers, and how technology adoption is growing despite initial trust concerns. The government’s push for digitization and support for cooperative banks is accelerating the shift towards digital solutions, creating new opportunities for growth.

In the second segment of the podcast, Vishal discusses his surprise at how many cooperative banks in India still rely on outdated systems and physical branches. He saw a huge opportunity to digitize these banks and bring rural and tier-two communities into the formal economy. He highlights the slow digital adoption in cooperative banks, which still use outdated core systems, making it hard to compete with fintechs like PhonePe, Google Pay, and Paytm. He also points to the lack of digitized land records as a major bottleneck for loan disbursements in rural areas. Despite these challenges, Vishal believes digitizing cooperative banks can significantly improve financial inclusion and reduce loan processing times from months to minutes.