ICICI bets big on independent ePlatforms

BENGALURU: ICICI Bank plans to build its own digital transaction platforms through a three-pronged strategy spread across digital partnership that involves startups, ICICI Innovation Centre and ICICI Labs.

While the bank has earmarked a corpus of Rs 100 crore for ICICI Innovation Centre and invested in two startups Arteria, Fingpay; it has hired Rohan Angrish from Capital Float to run ICICI Labs and develop independent solutions.

ICICI Bank has stepped up its focus on collaborating with fintech startups that could solve different problems in particular areas and at the same time started giving them freedom to co-create solutions, said Madhivanan B, chief technology and digital officer, ICICI Bank.


Nearly 82.3% of the savings account transactions for ICICI Bank happened through digital channels as of March this year, up from 74.3% during the year-ago period. Madhivanan said the bank expects to 90% of these transactions to be digital over next two years. Currently, more than 50% of the queries through website and mobile are handled by chatbot iPal.

He added that to achieve faster digital transformation Angrish has been given a mandate to build completely new propositions even if they contradict ICICI Bank’s traditional business models.