Back in the day, banking was indisputable and was a uniform business, where clientele was reliant on what the banks offered; whereas in the present scenario, digitalization has led to a complete modernization in the banking structure. Disrupting the traditional banking system is a digital banker named Sankalp Shangari, the CEO and Founder of LALA World, playing reformative roles in this digital era. Sankalp avidly confronts new competition, regulations, technology, customer expectations, challenges, and opportunities in order to meet the customer’s requirements and expectations.
About the Digital Banker
At an early stage, Sankalp recognized the world of modern banking through his formal education and his professional experiences. During his career, he pursued Master’s Degree in Finance from the CASS Business School which polished his entrepreneurship skill and continued to understand about the international finances. Prior to LALA World, he gained his leadership experience at Macquarie Deutsche Bank and with JP Morgan Chase in London and Singapore. This experience aided him to imbibe the characteristics of recognizing talents and employing them to achieve the best results. Sankalp incorporated this with his passion for Blockchain technology which led to the establishment of LALA World that seeks to use technology to make a social difference. As the CEO of LALA World, his role is to seek out new ways in which technology can be utilized for alleviating poverty and also to develop new models for social business that can help the society at a large scale.
The Power of Compassion and Empathy
During his initial days, each of his family members had resided in different countries and had witnessed the problems faced by dis-advantaged and unbanked people in those countries. Sankalp’s mother was especially empathetic towards these problems faced by migrant workers, which compassed him to move her thoughts and ideas towards a world of possibilities where all these could be solved. He pushed himself to work towards realizing her dream which eventually became his own dream.
In the year 2013, Sankalp got acquainted with Blockchain Technology as a tool and developed a new set of ideas which became his life-changing moment. Finally, he comprehended the roadmap of bringing his mission to life which was non-existent before.
A Decentralized Financial Ecosystem
Currently LALA World products can be used by anyone who wants to attain financial freedom, since its prime focus has always been the unbanked. The company realizes that the biggest challenge faced by these unbanked people is that of an absence of credible transaction history against which they can avail loans.
So, all of the company’s banking solutions are based on the creation of a unique identifier called LALA ID. This can be used by anybody in the world just by providing the mobile number and email id to avail basic services in the LALA APP. Further, by adding more information and uploading documents in the app, the LALA ID can be built to act as a global identification document. This can also be utilized by its partner service providers to avail different services. Apart from this, another feature that sets the company in a unique space from other banking solutions is the LALA Score. Thus, by building on LALA Score, any unbanked can avail loans via its lending arm LALA Lends. LALA Score rates each individual based on various parameters, and based on this ratings/score, they can avail loans.
Achieving the Dream
During the initial phase of establishing the company, Sankalp had to face specific issues related to finding the right people for his team who share the same vision and who would work with him passionately. Secondly, finding someone for the role of an exemplary leader and manager who kept his people together, recognized their talent and provided an exemplary growth path to their careers.
Building a team of hard-working personnel and sharing an equal level of motivation to achieve the goal was the biggest hurdle that he overcame in his journey. Today, the ‘LALA family’ members are standing strong besides him and clocking in several hours of their waking life to realize the shared dream of alleviating poverty.
Due to the collective efforts of LALA family for over two years, he has managed to expand the company at an exponential rate. He also takes pride in launching the first ICO (Initial Coin Offering) that has delivered its working products within 6 months.
Bequeathing the Keys of Success
Nowadays, exhibition of a specific set of characteristics is expected from all bankers. There are some skills that could be developed with resilience and practice. Recognizing this Sankalp suggests the emerging bankers to especially polish their comprehension of technology. In addition, he mentions, “If a banker is acquainted with new technologies and can incorporate those to enhance security, decrease costs and streamline banking processes, then that person can go a long way.”
Envisioning the Future
The ultimate goal of the company is to support the inclusion of the 2.5 billion unbanked people. This is a humongous task for the organisation and hence Sankalp has divided the journey into sub-goals. They intend to achieve a customer base of one million by 2019, provide loans of around USD Ten million by the end of financial year 2019 and they are working towards achieving the 100 million mark in customer engagement by the end of 2021.
Source: The 10 Most Influential Voices in Banking
