We worked with the government to roll out electronic signatures in India based on Aadhaar. This eventually became a popular program that enabled large scale paperless interfacing among people across the length and breadth of the country. eMudhra has supported more than 35million eSign transactions till date stated Kaushik Srinivasan, SVP Strategy – Products &Research, eMudhra. We explored more about their company and what is onto their deck for 2019 and beyond. Edited Nub.
TimesTech: How would you like to introduce eMudhra for our readers?
Kaushik: We would like to introduce eMudhra as a ‘Digital Enabler’ that provides a range of solutions to support, augment and secure digital transformation initiatives across a range of vertices.
TimesTech: Which key markets or say sectors are your potential customers and how has digital signature certificates change businesses and how is the company planning to diversify its offering?
Kaushik: The key sectors include eGovernance, Banking, Financial Service, Insurance and Manufacturing. These sectors are large users of paper and by using digital signatures, enterprises in these sectors are able to go fully paperless and achieve automation. A big push in eGovernance is also a result of Government’s Digital India push which is driving more and more paperless transformation across government departments.
- Which key markets or say sectors are your potential customers?
Our solutions are not constrained to any particular industry or market. They can work equally well across industries or markets. For instance consider the example of emSigner, our proprietary paperless office solution. It can be used seamlessly across industries such as finance, healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, education, IT, insurance, etc. to drive a variety of use case starting from customer onboarding, patient onboarding, contract management, vendor management, supplier management, eDiploma, eInvoicing, policy issuance and so on. Same is the case with emAS, our innovative authentication suite that supports 10 modes of authentication, and emStream, our AI driven Big Data Analytics solution. Hence we can safely say that companies across verticals and markets are our potential customer. - How has Digital Signature Certificates changed businesses?
Digital Signature Certificates have been one of the core pillars of driving of digital transformation across businesses. They have seamlessly substituted the cumbersome ‘print-sign-scan’ process, which was proving to be a roadblock not only with regards to achieving the ‘Digital Vision’ of the company but also providing better experience to today’s tech savvy customers. - How is the company planning to diversify its offering?
We are planning to diversify the usage of our paperless office suite by integrating them with leading ERP and CRM systems. To this end we have successfully completed integration of emSigner with Salesforce and Tally, while the integration with SAP and SAGE is in advanced stages of completion.
TimesTech: Security has been the key throughout the digital transformation buzzword, how do you account against these malice activities while ensuring a good and secure service for customers?
Kaushik: At eMudhra, security is at the forefront of what we do. We are a niche company that is focused on leveraging the benefits of sophisticated cryptographic algorithms to enhance security across our offerings. From hosting, all the way through to user actions, we ensure that security is built into the process. Where required, we even complement our offerings with Multi Factor Authentication to ensure complete privacy and security.
TimesTech: Are the vigorous changing technologies a challenge for your company or you see it as a scope of growth in this competitive market? What keeps you distinctive?
Kaushik: We see them as opportunities of growth and strive to continuously augment our offerings to meet the changing trends and demands. To answer your second question, one of the salient features that keep us distinctive is our focus on excellence and innovation. This has helped us reach such a point where we can see the results of our efforts and hard work from the recognition that we are receiving for our digitization initiatives across the world.
TimesTech: What are your key strategies to grow in the indigenous and bullish market?
Kaushik: India is a large market with plenty of opportunity and digital transformation is at the heart of every enterprise’s agenda. Therefore our strategy is a combination of developing range and reach through innovation and geographic spread and building domain specific use cases for paperless transformation
TimesTech: How is the digital identity and transaction management company evolving with faster internet and emerging technologies IoT, Blockchain, Cloud, AI etc.
Kaushik: All of these emerging trends in technology are intrinsically linked with cybersecurity where digital signatures play a vital role. Be in securing device identities or securing transactions on a Blockchain, digital signatures are required. Therefore with the advent of technology and need for secure digital transformation, eMudhra is also constantly innovating to bring solutions to the market in line with technological trends
TimesTech: Your company is 11 years old now. What have been your top 3 contributions to the industry?
Kaushik: I. We worked with the government to roll out electronic signatures in India based on Aadhaar. This eventually became a popular program that enabled large scale paperless interfacing among people across the length and breadth of the country. eMudhra has supported more than 35 million eSign transactions till date
II. We supported the government in the implementation of paper free filing system for GST, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), etc. Today, our solution helps more than 10 million users to digitally file their GST returns
III. 2,00,000+ SMEs in India today use eMudhra’s solutions for electronically signing documents and supporting their digital transactions
TimesTech: Tell one unique solution or service that our niche readers should know about?
Kaushik: I would like to shed light on the eSign 3.0 services that we have launched recently. The USP of this service lies in its ability to bring greater ease-of-use to all the customers. While users in the past were mandated with the need to carry out e-KYC every time they wanted to generate and use electronic signatures, the new eSign services allow the customers to create an e-KYC account, which is valid for 2 years, by e-verifying the credentials once. From that time onwards, the users are allowed to login onto the e-KYC account using OTP & PIN, and generate eSign 2.0 compliant electronic signatures to sign any number of documents. Such a signing process thus removes the requirement of complicated hardware (USB Token) or client software needed to fulfill digital signing requirements. Moreover, the open APIs available with this service helps online service providers such as banks, insurance providers and e-commerce companies to quickly integrate eMudhra’s eSign 2.0 facilities into their existing systems, thereby making the feature of non-repudiation more robust in their services.
TimesTech: eMudhra has major plans of expanding in other Foreign markets, how challenging or different will be these markets from the Indian market?
Kaushik: We have been present in India over 10 years and enjoy considerable brand equity. While we have the IP, the challenge would be to develop a brand in other markets. This will take time and that is the reason why we try and build a partner network through whom we can reach out to end clients
TimesTech: How strong is your R&D strength in the country, currently?
Kaushik: Currently we have a strong team of 200+ highly experienced resources working on various R&D initiatives in Bangalore.
TimesTech: How is eMudhra planning to align with Smart Cities and Digital India initiatives?
Kaushik: eMudhra is closely associated with several smart city projects where cyber security is an important element. eMudhra is also a key partner to Digital India having worked on a number of Mission Mode projects to enable paperless transformation
TimesTech: Any Major announcement that you want our reader to know?
Kaushik: eMudhra has recently launched in Europe and intends to work with partners to create digital journeys for their customers by using our paperless office solution and qualified electronic signatures
TimesTech: What trends do you foresee to impact your sector and how is the company in-parallel moving these trends?
Kaushik: As a company in a regulated space, a lot of what we do is driven by regulator adoption globally. eMudhra works closely with regulators to create awareness and advise on how to put in place the right policies for large scale adoption of digital signatures
