Spocto helps up to 4 lakh farmers in India repay loans digitally

Spocto helps up to 4 lakh farmers in India repay loans digitally
ET Bureau
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Synopsis

Spocto uses its machine learning and AI-led platform - SMARTCollect - to educate the farmers in their preferred language for paying their dues in time

Spocto, a Mumbai-based data analytics firm, is helping nearly 4 lakh farmers in India to repay their loans every month digitally and reduce the delay in recovery for banks.

The startup, which counts India’s top five private banks and the largest bank as clients, uses machine learning and analyses data from banks, third parties in order to help banks recover their loans digitally compared with the conventional practices.

Spocto uses its machine learning and AI-led platform - SMARTCollect - to educate the farmers in their preferred language for paying their dues in time.

“We introduced Kisan Pay for the agricultural segment thereby helping farmers pay their debts in time. A farmer typically repays (loan) twice a year based on the crop cycle. Before Kisan Pay, a farmer would travel 20-25 km to pay EMI on the due date and prepare for it two days in advance. We started telling the farmer that it is possible to make payment using UPI as they have Jan Dhan accounts. They are all Aadhaar enabled. We started guiding them through the entire process,” said Sumeet Srivastava, chief executive officer and co-founder, Spocto.

He pointed out that farmers tend to forget their EMI due dates or delay due to some odd reasons, and their knowledge about online or digital payment is solving that problem.

“Currently we are helping between 3-4 lakh farmers every month make an automatic UPI payment,” said Srivastava.

Spocto has created a vernacular chatbot and trained it to understand nearly 26 different languages and dialects.

Srivastava, who has been a technology leader across Monsanto and GE, aims to make Spocto a prominent risk analytics solution provider globally. “You need collections done, you don’t need collectors,” he said, stating how technology can significantly reduce the cost of loan recovery for banks and harassment for the borrowers.

The startup is also working on a Propensity to Pay score, which will complement the credit score. It has piloted the project in 135 countries so far, said Srivastava.

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