The IndiaFirst Life Story: Spearheading Digital Transformation with Searce

Digital technology is amongst the most powerful transformative tool in the modern world. While corporates across the globe are focused on adopting new digital tools, India has emerged as a leader in implementing innovative digital technologies. 

The nation has paved the way for growth and enabled its business leaders to fundamentally change the business narrative to embrace the digital age. To achieve success in a futuristic business world, it is important to think ahead, innovate and experiment with new technologies. 

Ashwin Moduga, Head of Research at Mosaic Digital sat down with Rahul Shah, Senior Vice President and Business Head for JAPAC at Searce, a prominent technology consulting firm; and Sankaranarayanan Raghavan, Chief Technology and Data Officer at IndiaFirst Life, one of India’s youngest life insurance companies recognised for its top-notch online services, to discuss their success formula and the key to their growth with digital technologies. The insightful talk delves deep into the correct implementation of technology, developing the right business outlook and adhering to a customer-centric approach. 

Shaping a suitable digital model 

Technology bridges the gap between the business and the customer and holds the power to shape customer experience. Digital offers better accessibility, allowing customers to use business services without any hassles. IndiaFirst Life Insurance Company had figured out early that bringing a digital element to its processes would allow it to stand out in the business landscape. 

Sankaranarayanan Raghavan emphasises being ahead of the curve as the game changer for IndiaFirst Life, stating, “Being a digital native differentiates us from others as we were the first company to go completely paperless in terms of customer onboarding around 2014-2015.” 

The insurance company allowed customers to access applications offline to capture essential information and sync it once a network was available. Such a futuristic digital model is useful in identifying customer issues and offering advanced solutions. 

Embracing digital transformation with Searce 

Technological collaboration such as the one between IndiaFirst Life and Searce has resulted in improved operations, scalability, flexibility and customer satisfaction. The former’s decision to move the workload to cloud computing optimised the company’s overall operation but also brought hurdles as managing such a complex infrastructure was not easy. 

Being a regulated industry, IndiaFirst Life‘s main challenge was security but the organization achieved success in this domain easily. Sankaranarayanan zeroed in on the relevance of the business continuity plan which is important for smooth operation and regulation along with Network Disaster Recovery (NDR), Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for the same. This along with the business cadence to objectively purview quarterly business review has helped in building better business outcomes for the organization. 

Reinventing technology for better solutions 

With accessibility to unlimited tools in Digital India, you have to look for the right technology that meets your business needs. Also, in the current digital ecosystem find ways to reinvent processes and the tools to deliver the best customer experience. 

Searce, being a technology powerhouse has used its prowess to take insurance operations to the next level. Bringing in Cloud FinOps has created an advanced and proficient framework that is cost-efficient and accelerates business growth. Tremendous emphasis is being put on security to create a safe environment along with offering high automation to help the company become a high-velocity engineering organisation. 

According to Ashwin, “Searce has three essential pillars, while the focal point is technology, the company is equally focused on offering business outcomes and is client and people-centric.” Searce showcases these values in the implementation of digital technologies at IndiaFirst Life in alignment with the business values of the insurance company. The digital design principles are continuously revisited and re-shaped to fit better and newer business outcomes. 

Next in the Digital Era: IndiaFirst Life’s vision 

The collaboration between the two leading names is the pillar on which digital India stands. Sankaranarayanan strongly believes that data is the new world currency and large language model (LLM) along with voice are the best way to obtain data. By focusing on these new technologies, we can witness futuristic innovation in the coming times.