DiGiSPICE Technologies Limited, a leader in rural fintech, digital telco and enterprise platforms, announced its results for the quarter and year ended 31st March 2021.
DiGiSPICE Technologies Ltd. operates in the rural fintech space through its subsidiary, Spice Money. Spice Money is supported by a network of over 500,000 Adhikaris or banking correspondent agents (Kirana stores/ Entrepreneurs spread across small towns and villages in more than 700+ districts) who use the Spice Money App to serve a base of over 100 million consumers. Spice Money’s focus is on innovating a range of customer centric products and scaling its reach to support its mission of digitally and financially empowering 10 million rural entrepreneurs.
Through its Digital Telecom Services business, DiGiSPICE offers products and services to telecom operators to deliver audio, video and other multimedia content over the internet.
With its Digital Enterprise Services business, DiGiSPICE offers a Communications Platform-As-A-Service (CPaaS) delivery model to large enterprises, MSMEs and start-ups. This new business unit christened, Korero Platforms will enable omni-channel, contextual conversations between future-ready businesses and their stakeholders.
Key Highlights from FY21:
Spice Money:
· Spice Money showcased stellar growth in FY21. The GTV for FY21 increased by over 127% and was at 82,000 cr on March 31, 2021 as opposed to 36,000 cr on March 31, 2020.
· The Spice Money Adhikari (merchant) network as on March 31, 2021 stood at 5,76,000, which grew close to 139% over the last financial year.
· Spice Money launched a first-of-its-kind Zero Investment initiative in collaboration with brand ambassador Sonu Sood during Q4FY21, enabling rural entrepreneurs to join the Spice Money network as Adhikaris completely free of cost, thus, removing all cost-related barriers for its Adhikaris. The initiative aims to digitally and financially empower 1 crore rural entrepreneurs across the country as well as further strengthen the company’s digital payments ecosystem in semi-urban and rural areas.
· In a bid to eliminate the COVID pandemic, booking of vaccination slots for people in rural and semi-urban areas was enabled through Spice Money Adhikaris, making the process more convenient for the customers. This showcases the versatility and potential of the platform to encompass offerings beyond banking and financial services.
Digital Enterprise Services:
· Revenues for DiGiSPICE’s Enterprise Services business grew by 35% Y-on-Y.
· The Enterprise Business was christened as Korero Platforms for its Communications Platform-As-A-Service offerings (CPaaS).
· The business is being built on an omni-channel platform for contextual conversations leveraging AI technology for enterprises of the future.
Developed and integrated 6 new communication channels along with SMS channel into the platform – Voice, email, WhatsApp, In-app notifications, Web push and App push notifications.
Built an AI engine for contextual conversations, providing recommendations and improving the overall conversion rates of marketing campaigns.
· The business successfully signed up three of the top five enterprises in the Fortune 500 2020 list.
Digital Telecom Services:
· Exploring new markets and capitalizing on existing relationships with multiple operators across Middle-East, South-East Asia & Africa to launch a plethora of new age digital services (online games, video, music etc.)
· Looking at the geographical market need, DiGiSPICE has made a shift from its legacy products (IVR & SMS) and moved on to digital properties like apps and WAP portals, to cater to the current smartphone and internet revolution.
· The business signed multi-year contracts with leading operators in Africa & South East Asia to power Digital Music Platforms, Video-on-Demand and Online Gaming.
· A pan-India launch of the P2P Platform was done for M2M SIMs for a leading operator in India.
Commenting on the performance for the year under review, Dilip Modi, Chairman said “FY21 has been a challenging but a rewarding year for DiGiSPICE Technologies. We have made great strides across all our business units and subsidiaries.
We are delighted with the progress we have made towards financially empowering rural India through our rural fintech business, Spice Money. We believe there is a great need to build and strengthen the last mile connect to the underserved communities in Tier 3 and Tier 4 locations. Our 500,000+ Adhikaris are significant partners in our endeavors and going forward our effort will be on innovating and introducing a number of new products, both financial and digital.
The recent launch of Korero Platforms as a CPaaS offering, will ensure we are able to capitalize on DiGiSPICE’s global footprint, to build a strong customer base amongst large enterprises, MSMEs and start-ups in India and abroad.
The prospects are enormous. In Spice Money we will continue to innovate to make Bharat financially independent and enjoy the benefits of flexibility and access to a range of services. Our emphasis in Digital Telecom and Enterprise will be to strengthen the core while expanding and diversifying our offerings. We are excited about the opportunities that FY22 holds for us.”