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Technology is recent times has become a great enabler in terms of how it allows businesses to grow in different aspects – and not just in terms of short term goals but long term as well. Traditional practices and means are quickly changing, thanks to technological advancements in fields like Artificial Intelligence, which has definitely allowed businesses to better equip themselves to their customer’s needs.
Strictly speaking in terms of the banking sector, we’ve seen how traditional means of banking – which primarily worked on paper has now become partially or completely paperless. Automation in the banking sector has not only reduced the working time of things but also allowed for a more satisfying experience to the consumer. The process is both fast and efficient, which prior to the merging of technology with banking, wasn’t possible.
The YesBank datathon is one such step towards bridging the gap between technology and banking sector. The judicious use of technology in this sector will only help grow the industry and make it more user-friendly in the coming years.
The Datathon happened on the 23rd of December, with participation from over 6,000+ data scientists and engineers, some of whom were from other countries. The intention behind this Datathon was to bring in 20 key solutions to YesBank’s working as a bank and implement the same within a specified time frame of say another 1-2 months.
The magnitude of the event was massive, which speaks for the potential of such events in the future in India. Technology is truly emerging as a pioneer of changing the ways of traditional workings, across all the major sectors of businesses. YesBank, being the 4th largest bank in India, understands how real life situations can be better handled via the usage of technology – and hence this Datathon.
There was immense anticipation amongst the participants for the event as well. More than 6,000 people which made for around 1,600+ teams became a part of this event. The team’s were given real life challenges, that were part of YesBank’s day to day operations. This ranged from the data’s (AI and ML), alongisde big data analytics.
Among the 1600+ teams, the best 200 teams were shortlisted for the final round. These teams were given 60 days to create a working prototype with reference to YesBank’s day to day working operations, the same would be implemented by the bank in coming months.
Top 5 Teams : –
Out of the 200 shortlisted, there were numerous terrific ideas that came to the floor. To highlight a few key ones, are as follows :-
Oracle (+2 students from IIM Bangalore) –
A master product which creates a 360 degree view of every retail customer and provides both product and service recommendation to the customers, as per their need.
TCS (Chennai) –
They had 2 products. The first product enables the customer to be equipped with advice on best investments to his savings, with transactions patterns as a base. The 2nd product was aimed at helping Merchant Relationships – both with online and offline retailers.
 Vodafone Idea Limited –
AI based application for retail managers to help them in acquiring knowledge on measure of share wallet of the bank to every retail customer.
Students from VIT, Vellore –
An ML algorithm based relationship manager tool which will enable the bank to find usage on streaming sites. It will create relationship tree, based on every customer transaction.
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka –
They developed a model wherein using Shap Value, the bank would be able to create a customer – product and service propensity report.
The top 200 teams in the competition included not only students but also working professional, as the ideas above highlight. Top technology universities in India like IIT, ISI Kolkata and over 150+ professionals from companies like CISCO, Infosys, TCS, Accenture,Walmart Labs, Amazon development center IBM, Siemens were part of the datathon.
In the final round, 90% of the finalists were professionals, working in the field of data sciences. As this suggests, these are professionals not from the finance background and yet, their interest in financial technological upgrades highlights the bright future of the banking industry.
