SG GSC engages with the Indian innovation eco-system in multiple ways. One such channel is our startup accelerator program Catalyst. This program is now two years old and actively works with disruptive startups in India that focus on emerging trends. Our in-house experts together with our startup partners collaborate to better serve our clients through innovative technology.
Societe Generale believes that Open Innovation is one of the key levers that can accelerate its digital transformation. Being a large financial institution, through Catalyst, we have seen how new and emerging technology solutions could be adapted rapidly through fast paced agile experiments (in 10 weeks). Post Catalyst, some of the promising solutions from the startups have also been successfully integrated into our internal systems. For the startups / fintechs, Catalyst gives a great opportunity to test their solutions with real business scenarios, enhance their product/services platform and use it as a platform to catapult from a Catalyst Partner to a new-age technology solution provider for Societe Generale.
The Innovation Hub based in Societe Generale Global Solution Centre (SG GSC) focuses on Emerging Technologies adoption and on the needs of our Investment Banking, International Banking and Retail Customers worldwide.
Fintech accelerators like ours primarily aid startups who can disrupt, simplify and automate complex banking processes and help financial institutions engage better with their target clients.
Fintech accelerators focused on retail needs typically cater to regional customers to increase their Digital Banking habits , protect their banking privacy needs and introduce new identity based Digital Banking Services.
The SG Global Solution Centre Catalyst program publishes the Group’s global business challenges under specific themes on F6S.com and works with its eco-system knowledge partners namely NASSCOM, LetsTalkPayments, Numa, Beehive, F6s.com, Tracxn, F6S and NODD, to connect with disruptive startups, as a part of the Open Innovation strategy of the Societe Generale Group which promotes collaboration and positive disruption in identified areas.
After a screening process, SG GSC partners with the startups to co-create disruptive solutions to meet some of the Bank’s business needs and challenges. The startups become a part of SG Global Solution Centre and work within our premises for a period of 10 weeks. During this time, each startup is assigned to a team which comprises mentors, industry experts and sponsors from SG GSC. Together, the teams work together to create business solutions via prototypes.
SG Global Solution Centre Catalyst 2.0 Partners:
Payment e-Wallet – Startup partner: Transerve/UDIO
2) Virtual Reality/Mixed Reality/Augmented Reality – Startup partner: Scapic
3) Predictive Analytics – Startup partner: GAVS
4) Digital On-boarding/Know Your Client – Startup partners: FRSLabs and Signzy
5) HR Tech – Startup partner: CVVIz
6) Data from Paper as a Service / Data Capture and Digitization – Startup partner: Fyle
7) Smart Email Assistant – Startup partner: Recital.ai
8) Tech for Good – A Greener Planet: Carpooling – Startup partner: Greenpool
The program combines 150+ years of banking experience of the Societe Generale Group, with cutting-edge technology to create and develop scalable solutions for its own clients. Additionally, it provides startups an opportunity to enhance their existing product offerings to new dimensions, scale and geographies.
The previous editions of our Catalyst cohort program has resulted different results that focus on areas such as Machine Learning, NLP, Augmented Reality and Digital On-boarding. Nearly 50% of the solutions co-created with the participating startups have been adopted. We have signed medium-term contracts with these startups to develop their solutions to the required scale for global implementations. We have received interest from several global Societe Generale entities to implement similar solutions for their business problems.
Societe Generale Global Solution Centre has partnered with startups based in India such as Tookitaki , Stride.AI and Arya.AI to analyze, predict and automate operational processes globally using their Cognitive Machine Learning and Deep Learning platforms. The results we have achieved are very impressive when applied at scale and this motivates our businesses to explore these technology platforms further for other distinct usages.
SGGSC’s Innovation Hub is focused on accelerating Deep Technology adoption and Digital Transformation for Societe Generale Businesses worldwide. We have discovered opportunities to introduce new experiences and business models for our customers in our car-leasing and international banking areas. We have also accelerated adoption of Artificial Intelligence technology in our Corporate Investing Banking Back office Operations & Accounting areas.
We use Deep Technology also to simplify and digitize our internal Business processes using our internally rich data stores efficiently. The Financial Services business needs to protect its client data and interact efficiently with Regulators, where we have found good use cases to apply Deep Technology.
More information of the SG Global Solution Centre Catalyst program at http://www.socgensolutions.com/GSCAccelerator2017/
Check-out what the major news publications had to say about Catalyst 2.0:
- https://yourstory.com/2017/09/societe-generale-catalyst-acclerater-programme/
- http://epaperbeta.timesofindia.com/Article.aspx?eid=31807&articlexml=THE-IDEAS-LABS-Solving-real-world-banking-problems-04092017013029
- http://tech.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/startups/fintech-cos-bank-on-accelerators/60080086
- http://www.deccanherald.com/content/631613/societe-generale-plans-invest-indian.html
