Teamwork makes the dream work. Resorting to an old cliche here, but it cannot be truer! Navi has been making the right kind of ripples in the digital lending apps space, and the credit goes to all the teams at Navi.
I lead the Origination Team responsible for the complete customer journey from onboarding, profile creation to loan generation, EMI repayment and closing. This is a huge responsibility, and I tackle it with an entrepreneurial mindset ensuring that the internal Navi values reflect in every interaction a customer has with the Navi app.
The Navi Values: High Integrity and High Ownership
People management is a huge part of my responsibility, along with ensuring that we deliver promised outcomes. We are a small team of 10 self-motivated and solution-oriented engineers focused on one goal — to build a scalable, flexible, fast, and reliable product.
The culture at Navi is one of high ownership. Each of us has a lot of freedom to choose our tasks, upskill, learn new technologies, experiment, and innovate, which gives us immense pleasure and pride in what we do.
When a product is designed with high integrity and high ownership, it shows. Navi’s speed and agility are an outcome of these values.
Batting on the Front Foot: The Proactive Approach
As the product scales, there will be newer challenges. Having closely observed Sachin’s work in the past, I know that scalability and reliability of a platform are non-negotiable. We addressed these from day one, anticipated challenges, and found solutions. This is just one example of the proactive culture at Navi. We are always on the front foot and ready with solutions even before the problem arises!
My regular chats with the product and customer support teams help us understand customer expectations, complaints about the app, popular features, etc. We use all this feedback to improve our product.
What Does The Customer Want? Always a Good Starting Point
Let me quote Steve Jobs here, “ You’ve got to start with the customer experience and work your way back toward the technology, not the other way round.”
Our outlook towards technology is customer-centric. How can we make it better for the customer? That question is a starting point for our teams.
Machine learning for underwriting, third-party integrations with banks for faster resolution of mandates for EMI repayments, or our promise of a loan within minutes with minimal documentation, all these are a result of a customer-centric approach.
The Right Place at the Right Time
Technological innovation is what excites me the most, and working at Navi with my ex-colleagues from Flipkart as well as the amazing new talent is exhilarating. We’re determined to bring Sachin and Ankit’s vision of Navi becoming a trendsetter in the BFSI space to life.
I can sense that Navi is on the cusp of radical growth and we’re confident that our product is capable of handling even a 10x growth. If there’s any new talent wanting to join Navi, well the time is now! We’re completely remote now due to Covid, but the culture of innovation, teamwork, integrity, and ownership still thrive.
Conclusion
I’ll leave you with what Sheryl Sandberg, CEO at Facebook says is the best advice she got from Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, ‘If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, get on, don’t ask what seat.’
Navi is the rocket ship about to bring a dynamic change in the BFSI sector in India. Get on!
