Spocto, which claims to be the world’s first ‘collect-tech’ venture specialising in the loan repayment segment, is gearing up for an aggressive expansion in the GCC and wider MENA regions amid talks of looming global recession raising major concerns among banks and financial institutions.
Apprehensions about a slowdown in the tech sector and allegations about questionable corporate governance practices against some of the companies, including Indian conglomerate Adani Group are other factors raising concerns in the banking and financial sector in India and the region.
The venture, which has its regional headquarter in Dubai, is eyeing a $100 million revenue target from the Middle East region in the next few years, and is set to expand operations to Saudi Arabia and Egypt in the first phase of its expansion in the region.
“Our products are already getting strong traction in the UAE and we will be focusing on the ‘Rest of MENA’ region from now on to expand our operations in a big way,” Sumeet Srivastava, co-founder and CEO of Spocto, told Arabian Business.
“We already have several leading banks in the UAE as our clients and are currently in an advanced stage of negotiations with several other leading banks, NBFCs (non-banking financial institutions), insurance and telecom firms in the UAE and the larger GCC region for onboarding them,” Srivastava said.
Srivastava said his company – now part of the fast-growing Indian unicorn Yubi – has also launched an Arabic voice chatbot service as part of its expansion plans in the Middle East.
The financial markets in GCC and India, where banks have billions of dollars in loan exposure to the corporate, SME and consumer segments, are required to put in increased risk mitigation measures in place in view of talks of looming economic uncertainties globally.
Spocto, a debt collection platform powered by AI and ML
“If the entire processing and lending operations are going digital, banks and financial institutions cannot anymore depend on the traditional methods – read using collection agents – for the loan recovery process. This is where we have come up with the world’s first AI and ML (machine learning) based ‘collect-tech’ platform which follow a highly advanced customer risk-assessment model based on real time analysis of huge data and a well defined customer-friendly recovery implementation process,” Srivastava said.
He said the company has about 13 ‘collect-tech’ products for various use cases and most of these products have already been launched in the UAE market also.
“We will be launching more products in the UAE, besides taking our products to other GCC markets in a short period,” Srivastava said.
In the UAE, telecom majors such Etisalat, du and a host of insurance and NBFC firms are among the companies, besides banks with which Spocto is currently in discussions for onboarding them for its ‘collect-tech’ services.
“We already have six banking institutions and another three will be on-boarded soon [in the UAE],” Srivastava said.
As for the company’s new market entry plans, Srivastava said the company is currently in discussions with the Saudi Central Bank – SAMA – and hopes to set up a base in Riyadh soon.
“Egypt is another market which is on our radar for an immediate entry,” he revealed.
Srivastava said the company is also planning a major expansion in its UAE team – by as much as 40 percent – in the next few months to manage the growth plans in the region.
“Our products and technology help us to manage most of the operations in the region from our Dubai centre,” he said.
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