Trivandrum based SunTec Business Solutions, a billing and pricing provider for banks and telecom clients, on Wednesday inaugurated its R&D centre in Chennai. It will migrate to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model for its new product versions from the traditional on-premise, licence fee model. Clients will have options to choose between the two, said it's CEO K Nandakumar.

The facility at Ramanujam IT park can accommodate around 250 people, who would be working on products, he told BusinessLine. The initial investment is around $1 million but in the next couple of years it would be around $15 million as the team expands here, he said. The company employs over 600 people, he added.

With the rise in digital banking, customers are now looking for banks that can offer hyper-personalisation of their services and ensure a seamless banking experience for them. There is a need for a robust and cost-effective technology infrastructure to analyse spending and savings patterns to develop focused, personalised solutions for each customer. More than 130 clients in 45 countries rely on SunTec to provide personalised products, offers, pricing, loyalty programs, and billing for over 400 million end-customers, he said.

The company works for global banks from Australia to North America enabling their digital transformation. For banks, it does nearly 150 million processes a day. For example, if an individual types his PIN in an ATM, it goes to SunTec’s platform in the background for approval. This is one process, and there are multiple processes till the person is able to withdraw the money or decline, he said. In the media and telecom sector, the processes could be in billions per day, he added.

SunTec aims at being part of every step of the banks’ journey with their customers, increasing the lifetime value of the customer relationships and helping retain customer loyalty through their cloud-native, cloud-agnostic products, he said.