According to an EY report, the domestic fintech sector is on track to reach $1 trillion in AUM and $200 billion in revenue by 2030. With the expeditious growth of the financial industry in India, financial crimes are increasing rapidly. In an evolving financial landscape, new criminal methodologies and regulatory obligations change firms’ compliance obligations regularly. In order to detect and prevent such threats, banks must work to understand their customers' financial activities by implementing a suitable transaction monitoring solution as part of their wider framework. This is where NOTIVA comes in. NOTIVA has established a solid foundation within the Fintech ecosystem by developing solutions and products aimed at new and complex requirements of digital transactions. It is a boutique IT product company under the flagship Globsyn Group, which has a strong background spanning over 25 years. Romit Dasgupta, Managing Director & CEO, and Ambarish Singh, Head of Business Development at NOTIVA engage in an exclusive interaction with CIO Insider, wherein they elucidate more about the company and its unique proposition.

Could you briefly describe NOTIVA's role as a fintech brand in the banking industry?
Romit Dasgupta Globsyn Group was established in 1997 by my father, Bikram Dasgupta. The genesis of technology was there in Globsyn and we've always been a tech company at heart. I and my brother, Rahul Dasgupta, are second-generation entrepreneurs who came into the business space roughly two decades ago.My personal background is in technology, and eventually, that culminated in us seeking to shape the technology vertical for the group. We capitalized on the FinTech market opportunity in 2006–2007, which ultimately led to the development of NOTIVA. A FinTech product firm, NOTIVA focuses heavily on compliance and transaction monitoring. Today, we are present in more than fifteen banks where our products are processing 80,000+ transactions daily.

Give us a brief account of the product portfolio of NOTIVA.
Ambarish Singh Our own product range

encompasses a middleware solution NOTIVA Prime that monitors cross-border SWIFT transactions a NOSTRO reconciliation platform NOTIVA Recon, a Financial Risk Management solution NOTIVA Central that detects and prevents frauds in the multichannel domestic space, as well as a Data-Warehousing solution NOTIVA Sanctum for performing quick investigations on historical transactions. We are also a distributor of Total Messaging a product of Finastra, one of the largest Global Fintech companies.

We have developed a middleware solution for cross-border transactions,‘NOTIVA Prime’ that resides in the bank's premises and processes both structured & unstructured data coming from the bank's internal system and targeted to hit the bank's SWIFT interface. Once the information is verified in the NOTIVA Prime against the SWIFT standards and other security criteria and ready to go, it transforms the transaction to the SWIFT interface, which is then processed over the SWIFT network. In case any discrepancy is found during the verification process NOTIVA Prime sends alerts to the Bank officials. Anything to do with the transaction monitoring and managing a SWIFT message, or a local currency transaction, NOTIVA Prime does it sitting on the bank's premises.

How have you built your team and what drives them to ensure client satisfaction the most?
Romit Dasgupta I believe that the best way to create and build a team is to have a vision, communicate that vision internally with the personnel and thereby establish the proper culture in the process which bind the team togetherand institutionalize the vision. Everyone has good and bad business days, of course, but the goal and purpose keep us all working together. As a result, younger folks come and work with us who may not have otherwise had the opportunity to deal directly with clients during the early years of their careers. In NOTIVA they’re working directly with the client organization, resulting huge exposure, and an opportunity to learn. This has allowed them to advance and grow much more quickly in their career path with our company.

What is the future roadmap envisioned for NOTIVA? Where is it headed for the next five years?
Romit Dasgupta The era of specialization is here, and those who aspire to become specialists are the ones who succeed, especially in small to medium-sized businesses where being a generalist is not an option. We started as a boutique firm specializing in cross border remittances, transaction monitoring, and other services and products. With that specialization accomplished and having built credibility by doing so, each of these products has a wider horizon. Now the future growth will come from each of the verticals that we specialized in and enhance them to capture more transactions and disciplines within the bank. Use our existing ties to the journey and thereby grow our business. We are also looking to spread our footprints in the international markets where we can take our original flagship products.