CEO Insights India

Over the past decade, technology has changed the way businesses run, bringing dramatic and disruptive change in the entire value chain. Software is eating each and every sector and bringing unparalleled value creation for stake holders. To keep creating value on sustainable basis, organizations require constant innovation and strategic execution at Product level. And, this is where Chief Product Officer(CPO), an important character of the C-suite pack comes into picture. Peeking from the same C-suite gamut is Raman Taneja, Chief Product Officer, ARTH a MSME fintech.

Coming from a commerce background with post-graduation in technology, Raman is an ardent business leader armoured with rich professional experience in technology and product management domain. He has worked across banking, nbfc and fintech sector in both startups and large scale enterprises. He has held many leadership roles such as CTO, Head-Digital Banking, and many others. In Dvara Solutions, as a Chief Technology Officer and part of founding team, he had developed universal platform for offering lending, insurance, payments and banking products.

In ICICI Bank, he was part of core team setting up the next big frontier of last mile banking and technology vertical for micro banking groups. Prior to joining ARTH, he was with Jio Payments Bank as Head Digital Banking, where he was responsible for Banking and third-party products for both Digital & Assisted customer

segment, strategy, financial inclusion, geography distribution, followed by the assisted technology channels. He was a part of the founding team in the bank and owned P&L. In ARTH, his mandate is to create new business opportunities, ecosystem and scale business leveraging tech led products for MSMEs.

He is a great believer in emerging technologies’ potential to shape business outcomes in any industry. In today’s world, definition of product and tech is getting blurred, hence he says, “For product to be effective, one must understand technology to deliver exponential outcomes”. Building products that can be used by millions and have an impact in their lives is what motivates Raman each day and helps him lead further. Below are the excerpts of an exclusive interaction of Raman with CEO Insights.

Define ARTH as an organization and its current position in the market?
ARTH is a MSME Fintech powering micro-entrepreneurs across India by giving them access to financial services. Our uniqueness lies in the easy and affordable delivery of our services which is made accessible to all nano entrepreneurs without any complex documentation. Our products range includes ARTH Vridhi to meet working capital needs of micro entrepreneurs, ARTH Sanjeevani, Swasth, Suraksha designed to meet insurance needs of customers.

What has been the mantra that constantly helps you arrive at positive outcomes?
Understanding of the evolving business trends, new technology, and meeting new people from diversified backgrounds, coupled with my business acumen and technology experience helps to deliver desired out comes. I have

also been lucky to get an opportunity to work with the great minds in fintech industry as it has helped me to have holistic perspective to view things and bring transformative change in the business.

Being the Chief Product Officer, how do you plan to apply your exceptional understand in of this domain?
Working in diverse sectors like telco, merchant, e-commerce ecosystem helped me gained insights to think about new business opportunities. Ultimately finance has to follow business. I believe in sharing my experiences and find time to interact with startups during weekends. This is the best way to mutually learn and apply in this new tech world.

Based on your strong professional experience, what advice would you give to the upcoming leaders in the same industry?
Be the person to spot future business and technology trends and take risks to execute. Also, empathize with people around you to build long term relationships and businesses. Software is the only language that world understands better, and I believe in the future, emerging technologies like web 3.0, smart contracts, digital currency, digital ownership and community based platforms have great potential to change the way human kind interacts.

Raman Taneja, Chief Product Officer, ARTH
As an experienced professional, Raman has a rewarding career where he had the opportunity to work across various domains in the financial services sector. At ARTH, he is working on creating holistic product suite for micro businesses in India.

•Favorite cuisine:Punjabi & South Indian
•Favorite book:Elon Musk