Co-founder Himanshu Gupta on iorta’s formation, learnings, and way forward

iorta Technology Solutions helps leading corporates in the BFSI sector digitize their sales and other core processes to make them more efficient.

The company has recently completed five years in business. On this occasion, we ask Himanshu Gupta, iorta’s co-founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO), a few questions. He gives his perspective on the journey, the vision behind starting iorta, key learnings so far, and the way forward.

Q. What drove you to start iorta?

Easwara (Chief Executive Officer of Iorta) and I were responsible for sales management strategy and digital processes for one of the leading life insurers. As we learned more and more about the traditional way of doing business, we unraveled the pain points of a sales manager in the field.

For example, an insurance agent spends nearly 3.5 hours daily on procedural activities. These include being on commitment calls with their sales managers or preparing an application bundle for login at the branch. These activities do not make insurance agents sell more in the market. However, these activities waste time they could have put into preparing for an upcoming sales call or planning a society activation to generate leads.  

We treated these inefficiencies as use cases to build an end-to-end digital process to manage sales operations, thus elevating the entire organization on one truly linked platform

The program’s success led us to believe in its applicability across industries, spanning from insurance and banking to every other financial service. So, we started iorta Technology Solutions in September 2017 to help financial brands leverage this practice, which we now call ‘Salesdrive’, through consultation, technology implementation, and adoption support.  

For the first few years, we felt that Salesdrive was ahead of its time. But as we kept iterating our way through those numerous board meetings, we knew we were headed in the right direction.

Through digitization and automation, salespersons can focus more on nurturing leads, improving customer relationships, and thus improve revenue rather than spending their working hours on repetitive, procedural tasks. And this has now become an identified need among the country’s top brands.

Q. What are some of your key learnings over the last five years in business?

Having worked with the top names in the industry, we have a much better understanding of what needs to be emphasized and what needs to be avoided. Firstly, every company has its own way of working. And positioning a one-size-fits-all approach will not find acceptance. The product needs to be flexible and adaptive. The method needs to be nimble.

Secondly, the core of a technology platform needs to be designed for scale and modularity. Configurable and plug-and-play components would allow the product to go-to-market faster and gain better adoption. This is how a well-structured consultative method of building a digital solution lasts long, just like a well-tailored suit. We need to understand the organizational fabric and the measures of success for stakeholders at every level so that the end solution works well for everyone involved.

However, sometimes this means we go back to the drawing board more than once during a project. But, it allows us to adopt a fail-fast approach. And we have never been fearful of going beyond our scope of work to make the solution more applicable and gain the necessary experience in exchange.

Q. What do the coming years look like for iorta?

We are trying to become fungible enough to deliver a seamless process for a new client in a really short period. We are identifying what works best in every area and level of our company. Then, we are developing metrics to measure these and continually ensure high standards across the board.

Over the coming years, we plan to take these best practices and all the learnings we have aggregated to other industries and areas. We are looking at the lending space (loan process), mutual funds (application process), and banking products, such as credit card sales.

Lastly, we are growing our global footprint. We have started providing our solutions to companies in the Southeast Asia Pacific, such as the Philippines and Malaysia. We have dedicated teams in these locations working to communicate our offerings to prospective clients.