The Ethos of Financial Services

With over 18 years of experience in leading MNCs, Meenakshi Rajpal Mehta, Vice President, Head Financial Services, India & South Asia, OYO. She is a results driven business professional having managerial and leadership experience across Financial Services in NBFCs, Retail and e-commerce sectors. In an interview with Corporate Citizen, Meenakshi shares her learnings from her corporate career and much more...

Corporate Citizen: Tell us about your career journey.

Meenakshi Rajpal Mehta: I was born and raised in Gurugram. My schooling happened in a convent school in Gurugram. I graduated from Delhi University in English Honours. Post which, I did my MBA from ENPC in Paris. I completed my MBA in 2001 and after that I was placed in General Electric (GE). It was certain to me that I will be working in my country. And fortunately, there was an opportunity at GE, Gurugram and GE, Hyderabad, I chose GE, Gurugram. In 2001 I joined GE as a Management Trainee and was there till 2008. I think GE as a university, I consider myself passing out from GE in 2008.

During those two years at GE, I underwent a fascinating learning experience. For GE Money, I was the first one to launch Platinum Credit Cards. In 2008, I joined Walmart to start their financial services; I was with Walmart from 2008 till 2014. I think I was the youngest one to start their financial services because my boss was in the USA and I was handling India alone, not only for Walmart as Walmart entered India through Bharati, (Walmart and Bharati were a joint venture) I was handling all the three entities from India. Post Walmart, in 2014, I was picked up by Kunal Bahl, for the booming e-commerce company called Snapdeal; I had to start their financial services. I was with them for two years. In 2016, Bharati called me back, I had to start their financial services for Airtel Brightstar, Brightstar is a softbank company. Brightstar is the largest different distributor of iPhones in the world. There was a joint venture between Airtel and Brightstar. I was handling India and the Asia-Pacific Region (APAC) and after that there was a stint at Clix Captial. And currently, I am with OYO. I have been fortunate to be heading the financial services department and setting up financial services for different booming industries.

CC: What kind of challenges do you come across and how do you deal with them?

Since OYO is a startup company and we are living in the world surrounded by startups, there are challenges every now and then. The good thing and the bad thing is that OYO is in 18 countries outside India. Each country and each city will have its own set of challenges. But that is the enjoyable aspect of it, being in the startup makes your grey cells challenged every minute. The only challenge I think is the challenge of catching up with the work. Every three weeks a new country was opening for us.

CC: Tell us about your role as VP-Head of Financial Services (FS) at OYO.

Our financial services is headquartered in India. Everything that happens in the world is planned from here. Financial services as a department, I would say, is very nice to have in an organisation. Who will think of including a financial services department in a hospitality company? It is something that is not usually found. That is something Ritesh Agarwal, CEO, OYO and the management had thought of and they designed FS for partners who get associated with OYO. The hotel partners who get associated with us, rent out their properties to us, lease out their properties, and we helped them get loan because they are the people who are not that creditworthy. Or else these people would not know how to apply for a loan people from metropolitan cities know how to apply for loans and use these facilities. I think FS is not limited to that. Today in the financial services sector, we are one of the biggest contributors to the bottom line as well as to the top line. We are a profit-driven division within OYO. What we do is help the partners get the loan, we help debt funding not only for OYO but for our partners also.

We recently launched an insurance for our customers who are staying with us. From insurance financing to debt funding, to launching B2C products, we have launched B2C insurance too. I and my team handle the insurance aspect across the world for OYO, OYO property owners, and OYO properties; apart from these there are other insurances meant for the company which we handle too. Everything is managed by us for the financial services. We are in the process of launching consumer-driven products which are fintech based. We do a lot of other things-any kind of working capital is managed by financial services, for example, asset leasing, invoice discounting, a lot of technical fintech products. This is what my team does.

"Being in the startup makes your grey cells challenged every minute. The only challenge I think is the challenge of catching up with the work. Every three weeks a new country was opening for us"

CC: What is the attractive aspect of OYO rooms?

You can get a room as low as Rs.650 and as high has Rs.6500 and everything is quality driven. We started with a budget but not everyone will fit into that budget; not everyone will opt for Rs.650 option. So we have a spectrum of Rs.650 room which is called as ARR (Average Room Rate) to as high as Rs.6500. Soon you will be hearing that we are now entering into five-star hotels also. We have already acquired one hotel in the north.

CC: What do you think is the future of the hospitality sector?

I think what was missing in the hospitality sector, which Ritesh saw as a challenge and oppor tunity was that there are those five-star properties which are catered to the upper-middle class. There is an opportunity for the lower-middle class. It is this population that travels every year. They might not go to Switzerland or Malaysia or Hong Kong every year, but they will definitely go to places like Mathura, Vrindavan, Haridwar. When they go there, is dharmshala sufficient for them to go and stay with their family? Can we give something standardised? If not an AC, but a nice cooler, a comfortable double-bed and provide them convenience. That was a challenge and an opportunity five years back. Now, what is the opportunity let’s say ten years hence? How do we ensure that what we are creating, we ensure that it is scalable, agile, and it will sustain for that long? This market is an opportunity because there are so many mouths and so much of untapped potential. The way the economy is growing across the countries, the way per capita income of every individual is increasing, the hospitality industry is sure to grow. Fortunately, the economy is growing. People love to travel, unlike the earlier generation, which was married to their own country. Today’s youth loves to travel, they love to take a break of one month, pack their bags and go. This opportunity will keep increasing.

The only company that can sustain is the one that is scalable, agile, ready to move with the times, and is tech-driven. Technology has to be there to help you reduce your operation experiences and reduce the cost of capital. We don’t call OYO as a hospitality company, we call ourselves a tech-driven hospitality company.

"Walmart made me very visible in the industry. People noticed that this young lady is creating new FS products in an organised industry"

Meenakshi Rajpal Mehta

CC: How is Internet of Things (IoT) being applied in OYO for its customers?

We have already started using IoT from our total strength of around 10,000 employees, in India itself, we have around 1100 tech and product people. We are using all sorts of technology that is coming in, whether it is AI, IoT or Machine Learning because, in a tech driven hospitality company, data is everything. Data is my CRA (Customer Relationship Analysis), data is my valuation. And if my technology can help me to utilise this data in a proactive manner then it will be used for the benefit for our customers, and that’s where we are using the technology which is coming in. You name it and we would be the first one to grab the opportunity and the first one to absolve the technology in our ecosystem.

CC: Tell us a bit more on the adaptation of technology in OYO.

From our booking status, to reducing the turnaround time of booking, to reducing the turnaround time of cancellation, checking out time, checking in time, and the mode of payments, we are providing facilities to our customers in such a fashion that it is not just plastics like a credit card, a debit card, net banking, we also have buy now pay later. You book your products right now, but you don’t have to use the credit of your credit cards. You can have a 15-day credit limit, not coming from your plastics or from your net banking, but it is there in the cloud, it is sponsored to you by some digi-lender, and we use the technology to give interest-free submission period of 15 days.

CC: What are the challenges faced by the hospitality sector?

There are many challenges. I think there is standardisation which is happening at our end. The standardisation at the government policy is supposed to happen. Each state and each city is having different kinds of policies which is making things a little tougher at times to open new hotels and new divisions and new categories within hotels like what happened with GST. Fortunately, GST is a good thing, it is good to have one tax across the country. Hospitality was not very structured in India but every state has a different policy, which becomes very tricky because the guidelines are not very black and white, it is grey. As a bigger company, you do not want to run in the scheme of things which are grey. You want to play safe on it, you want to make sure that the things are black and white before you roll it out.

"The only company that can sustain is the one that is scalable, agile, ready to move with the times, and is tech-driven"

CC: Tell us about the role you played at Walmart.

Walmart is very close to my heart, in every company that I have worked with, one good thing that happened was I was very young when I had joined to take care of that role. I had just six years of work experience after I left General Electric, post which, I switched to Walmart heading their financial services, which is a greenfield department. There was nothing done in that company in FS before I joined. It was a completely new division and my boss was in Arkansas, USA. There is a small city in Arkansas, called Bentonville where Sam Walton started Walmart. I was running the show completely on my own. I could have done that with maybe 10-11 years of experience but I was able to do it with only six years of experience. When this responsibility was given to me I thought it would be a really good break because till then I was only handling the consumer financial side of GE, which is credit cards. I was given the responsibility to head start financial services for Bharati Retail, Bharati Walmart, and Walmart India and across all the products which you can think of.

During my stint at Walmart, I ended up launching a co-branded credit card which is a B2B card, I also launched a B2C co-branded credit card. I launched insurances, I launched remittances, and the good thing is that I left the company in 2014 and all those products are still going on as is. I am fortunately known for a lot of things in the industry, and financial services in India is a very small industry. There are very niche subject market experts in financial services and I think I was fortunate enough to spend my seventeen and a half years of being a hardcore financial services person. And that too working in a city like Gurugram while financial services are still headquartered in Mumbai. I was blessed to be given a job in Gurugram. I think Walmart made me very visible in the industry. People noticed that this young lady is creating new FS products in an organised industry. What was Walmart in India? It was an organised grocery store. Who would have thought that a financial product will fit into groceries?

CC: OYO had launched complimentary insurance for its customers, tell us more about it, how did it come about?

The thought was this, there were 40 lakh bookings month-on-month in India only. When the customers used to come, we realised that over time things like lost baggage and some unfortunate incidents used to happen. In a couple of cases, the person died in the property because of some reason. We had to take the body out, get the ambulance and get things done. Whatever happens, the stay has to be comfortable for the customer staying with us. We were the first one to offer insurance in the hospitality sector. From your check-in to your check-out, including any kind of cancellation of your booking, because of you or because of OYO, any kind of curtailment, we will cover you for that. We believe that we totally care for our customers when they stay with us.

CC: How will Artificial Intelligence help the hospitality sector?

It is no more a fancy word to have it or a word to have it in your presentations and make it sound very cool that I know AI, IoT, and Machine Learning among others. In today’s world, it is a requirement for sure. As I said earlier, there is enough data floating around, but important is how does one manage that data constructively without disrupting into your customer’s or partner’s life every now and then. I would not like if someone sends me text messages and WhatsApp messages just because I ordered from Swiggy or Zomato. I don’t want them to intrude in my life because they have my data. How do you use it smartly without intruding into your prospective person’s life? AI is a very nice tool to achieve that, it is a necessity and no more a disrupter, so use it sensibly and smartly.

CC: What advice would you like to give to the youngsters who would want to enter the financial services sector?

One has to be passionate about the stream one chooses and should not pick up the stream just because there are enough jobs being created out there or it is the easy thing. Financial services was started in India with PSU banks, then came in private sector banks, then in NBFCs and fintechs, after which came the mobile wallet companies. This are all under the spectrum of financial services. The ethos is still there, which is lending money, how do you recover that money and in which form you should lend it? It is a very nice thing because ultimately you are helping someone get money which helps him or her grow business and do a lot of things which they would want to do. Students should be passionate it is okay if you are passionate and not a subject matter expert. I have seen people move into HR from Marketing. They might not be HR educated, they might have learnt on the job. They were educated for marketing but they were passionate about people and wanted to bring in the change in the lives of employees, which is the reason they shifted to HR.