Saraswat Bank starts IT company

Priya Padmanabhan

BANGALORE: In what could emerge as a trend in the Indian financial services space, Asia’s largest cooperative bank, the Saraswat Bank, has started an IT services firm called Saraswat Infotech.

Speaking to CyberMedia News, Yusuf Lanewala, IT consultant, Saraswat Bank, said that the IT services company would offer IT services to the banking sector based on the Application Service Provider (ASP) model.

“To start with, we have around 25 employees and will grow the team to 150 next year,” said Lanewala.

Saraswat Infotech has tied up with banking product vendors for solutions in core banking, back office operations, documentation, card management and BASEL II and also offer consulting services.

The company’s first customer is the Saraswat Cooperative Bank and it hopes to target banks in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Gujarat, which have a large concentration of co-operative banks.

“The pay-per-use model is ideal for these banks since they lag behind in technology adoption and also suffer from lack of manpower and money to make huge IT investments,” he said.

The internal IT team at Saraswat Bank is shifting into the new company. Lanewala feels that compared to other IT service vendors, the company has an advantage since it has both the technology and business knowledge of the banking industry.

Saraswat’s foray into IT services could mark a beginning of a new wave where domain-rich enterprises offering IT services to companies. Last year, Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and State Bank of India (SBI) announced the formation of a joint venture to provide technology solutions and domain consulting for the banking and financial services sector.

The JV was called C-Edge Technologies and started with an authorized capital of Rs 40 crore.

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