Tata Neu plans big for financial services: Chief Executive Pratik Pal

According to Tata Digital Chief Executive Pratik Pal, Tata Neu has some big plans in the financial services space because that is always the biggest money-making segment.

"So, you will see us doing insurance and investments ... (We have) very big plans," Pal said.

As per the website of Tata Digital, Tata Neu – the super app of the Tata Group currently enables users to earn rewards on all credit card spending, as well as get instant access to funds like personal loans and credit lines.

"It also allows them to protect their assets and grow their wealth with custom insurance plans created specifically for them. Users can also send money to friends, family members or any of their contacts directly to their bank accounts, using Tata Pay UPI," according to the website.

Pal added that Tata Neu was looking to hit the sweet spot which would be a combination of three growth drivers: monetisation, frequency and scale.

Talking about frequency drivers, Pal said there was a need to add more categories to the platform. Electronics and fashion are among categories that help build scale.

Pal was a speaker at Rebuild 2022, an event organised by computer vision and artificial intelligence company Mad Street Den (MSD).

Tata Digital includes Tata Group’s digital businesses, including the super app.

"Today we have things that a customer needs, product commerce and daily things like food, grocery, electronics, fashion and all of that," he said. "We will significantly add newer things like, maybe travel or mobility, or content and entertainment to give a different perspective."

He also said that the Indian market has a huge opportunity and the potential for digital transformation is also immense.

"Payments have matured, the infrastructure is there, 4G is there and 5G is coming, there is an aspirational middle class, digital commerce is going to jump 10x from $75 billion to $750 billion,” Pal said. “So, there is a massive opportunity in the Indian economy for digital transformation. The timing could not have been more ripe for Tata Neu to tap that."

He said the Tata Group had 150 million consumers across all its brands, along with 4,800 physical touch points across the country.

On building the app, Pal said one of the biggest challenges was on how to deal with the sensitive issue of data. He said this came with its own sets of challenges, especially when it involved integrating data from a plethora of companies involved in varied sectors that have different laws governing them. For instance, the information secured by Tata Sky might involve a different set of permissions from an allied group business.

"There are privacy issues, confidentiality issues and data governance issues," he said. "Different companies have different consent that they have taken from consumers. There were a lot of complications, but the consensus was to harmonise the data. That took us almost 1.5 years to unravel the complexities."