Janalakshmi Financial Services , a microfinance institution, has signed a five-year agreement with Accenture to scale-up operations and expand services to the urban poor.
“The partnership with Accenture is to get business outsourcing solutions and IT services to facilitate our expansion,” said Ramesh Ramanathan, Chairman, Janalakshmi.
“Since we had already built an in-house front-end solution for the micro loans service we offer to the urban under-served, we needed solutions on industrial infrastructure scale to rapidly expand our presence in the country; so, we selected Accenture after receiving bids from others,” said Ramanathan.
Under the agreement, Accenture will manage the microfinance body’s customer and account master data, provide processing, reconciliation and reporting services .
It will also manage Janalakshmi’s core banking system, customer relationship management software, employee portal and Web site. “This partnership is outcome-based and not social service. A strong commercial basis is built into this five-year agreement,” said Piyush Narain Singh, Managing Director-Financial Services, Accenture India. “Accenture will also provide application maintenance services to support third-party technologies and work proactively with JFS to help identify new technology opportunities,” he added.
V. S. Radhakrishnan, MD and CEO, Janalakshmi, said the microfinance institution’s business had touched Rs 1,500 crore till June this year, up from Rs 1,000 crore last year.
anil.u@thehindu.co.in