A guest post by Romi Mahajan
CMO Quantarium

In the financial world, a few themes have emerged of late that are worthy of note.  These themes connect strongly to both the risk and the opportunities available in the world of Finance and Fintech.  They should be of interest not only to CFOs and other people whose roles relate directly to Finance but also to anyone looking at the health and well-being of industry in general.

The emerging themes are:

1. Decentralized Finance (Defi)
2. Platformization
3. Data Management
4. Risk and Regulation

We say “emerging” not because all of these ideas are new but because the rate of change in these spaces is high-enough to warrant comment.

A sentence or two on each.

1. Defi:  With the advent of Block chain and Crypto on the one hand and increasingly enabled consumers on the other, Decentralized Finance has emerged not only as a huge market but also as the subject of a culture war between incumbent/infrastructure-like finance stalwarts and a new breed of Cloud-enabled startups.
2. Platformization:  In the world of technology, cycles are common.  We are now in the phase in which connected and interoperable applications built on flexible platforms are the order of the day.  Point solutions are being abandoned in favor of platforms and funding patterns are shifting in that direction as well.
3. Data Management:  With data growing exponentially and AI/ML emerging as mainstays in business, a new truism exists:  Those organizations that frame data as an asset and who make the requisite investments in data infrastructure emerge as winners in a competitive marketplace.
4. Risk and Regulation:  Stories abound of financial mismanagement, large-scale and structurally inherent risk, and massive failure not only because of fraud but also because “asleep at the wheel” is almost a natural state without the infrastructure to deal with data, differential and complex asset classes, and the slew of regulations that govern the world of finance.

Far-sighted organizations will understand these themes not as discrete and disconnected but as part of a holistic view of Finance and its futures.  Customers and investors alike need to think of these four factors as they acid-test vendors and any organizations that purport to offer “solutions” for the various needs and opportunities in FinServ in general.

Those whose charge is to make the right technology purchase decisions in Financial Services, need to understand these trends not simply as “flavors of the month” but, instead, as tectonic shifts in how businesses need to run in a modern economy.  Similarly, investors need to take into account elements of a firm’s technology and business model that provide for medium and long-term growth, not just “flash in the pan” results.

These two audiences need to converge on the four themes.  The Financial Services and Fintech markets are attracting billions of dollars in venture capital and account for hundreds of billions of dollars of tech-spend.

Which companies will become the resonant Finance brands of the future?  To answer that ask yourself how they connect with and engage with these four themes.

Marketing Darwinism chatted with Pepper’s CEO Pulak Sinha on progress since last time we spoke.

Marketing Darwinism:  Pulak, how has progress been since connecting six months ago?

Pulak:  I appreciate the question around progress since in fact that is the key determinant of a company’s success.  We’ve made enormous progress on a variety of fronts, most significantly around customers, product, and team.  We’ve expanded and deepened our customer connection; over $5B runs on the Pepper platform today- doubling in 6 months.  Produce-wise we’ve introduced a variety of new modules and connectors and have launched a low-code orchestrator for our customers.  And we’ve expanded our team, with two solid executives joining over the last quarter.  Miles to go still of course but real velocity in the right direction.

Marketing Darwinism: Remind us again about your “raison d’etre” and your core target market

Pulak:  We built Pepper from the ground up to offer simplicity, ease, success, and ROI to Asset Management and Portfolio Management teams.  That Asset Manager with a new fund or one that is seeking optimization of data to improve outcomes in a current fund, the portfolio manager who wants to harness data- across investment and asset classes- to drive customer value, the data-drenched Asset Manager who is looking to at once increase returns while simultaneously complying with the varied regulatory frameworks in the industries and geographies that government his/her investments—these are the people for whom we’ve built Pepper.  We believe we are the leading data platform for ROI optimization in the space.

Marketing Darwinism: As an entrepreneur, how did you land on this space and why does it continue to animate you?

Pulak:  Great question.  The numbers are striking.  Asset Managers have been given $120 trillion to manage on behalf of clients.  Such staggering numbers can overwhelm.  Of this, over $15 trillion is invested in alternatives.  Making sense of all these investments, optimizing current portfolios, and analyzing the benefits of new investments in a data-driven fashion – these are all areas we support.  I got into the space because when I was deep in the industry, I needed a “Pepper.”  Such stories to me are the essence of the journey we are on.  We’ve been successful so far but are humbled by the possibilities ahead.

Marketing Darwinism: Recent articles have emphasized the connections between great Chief Information Officers, Asset Managers, and Chief Investment Officers.  Can you comment on that?

Pulak:  Every time one of the articles comes out, it is great for us.  We’ve built an enterprise-class platform that would align all of these roles- a SaaS platform with low time to value, cloud-native and extensible apps, integrations, and ease of use—we believe that we are a crucial piece in the alignment of Asset Management ROI and technology.

Marketing Darwinism: What is your customer success strategy?

Pulak:  This relates back to our mission. Helping customers harness the power of data is never a one-off, point-in-time “task” but is instead a process.  While our platform is very easy to deploy, we make sure to connect with our customers regularly to ensure that they are prospering and getting what they need.  There’s nothing better than seeing them succeed but also getting their feedback and rolling it into the product.

Marketing Darwinism:  Pulak, tell us about Pepper.

Pulak:  Thanks Paul.  Pepper was conceived as an end-to-end platform for Asset Managers who seek simplicity in a deeply complex world.  Asset Management is indeed complex; think of the questions Asset Managers have to answer:  What investments should I make?  How should I optimally manage the investments I have made/my portfolio?  What are the regulatory and data frameworks that govern the different asset classes in the portfolio?  How should I get real-time intelligence on my investments?  How should I report to my investors?  How do I differentiate from other Asset Managers?  These questions lend themselves to a platform- approach to this space.  So we built Pepper.

Marketing Darwinism:  Tell us more about Pepper’s origins.

Pulak:  I’ve spent my whole career in and around this space.  What appears to be a perfectly working machine from the outside has the usual issues when viewed from the inside.  We are talking about the management of trillions of dollars across a plethora of asset classes and a complex and dynamic international system of rules, regulations, compliance, and risk tolerance.  When I realized there are ways to simplify this, to help Asset Managers focus on client-return and not the perspiration and minutiae they have to spend much of their time on, Pepper was born.

Marketing Darwinism:  So is Pepper just an idea like so many startups or are you in market?

Pulak:  Great question.  There are so many claims made in the “Fintech” space that are theoretical and not tried and tested.  So I appreciate the question.  We are very much in market.  We are a revenue generating company with a blue-chip client base.  But I will say that my background is deep product design so I over-indexed on building a resilient comprehensive platform.  So we are now launching a massive marketing push to expand our customer footprint.

Marketing Darwinism:  Marketing is “music to my ears.”  Tell us more about your plans.

Pulak:  We are in a sector that requires very strategic marketing and not scatter-shooting.  First of all, given the impact of this sector- with the trillions of dollars at play- we should not exaggerate or embellish.  We plan to use a very clear, authentic messaging strategy in the voice of a peer.  After all, the idea is to be clear that we built this on the backs of our own experience and from within the cauldron not from the outside.  We will certainly leverage the tools of modern marketing- LinkedIn and others to get our message out but ultimately we know the true potential of Pepper will be realized when organizations trial it and see its power.

Marketing Darwinism:  Pulak, you have mentioned “Fintech” a few times.  What do you think the future of the space is?

Pulak:  I think the future of Fintech is very healthy but as entrepreneurs we have to help make it healthy by building truly useful products and truly helping customers adopt them in their own contexts.  No technologies are silver-bullets without context and culture surrounding them.  We have to think about those aspects of our industry and then devise and hone products that are in keeping with those principles.  I’m very bullish but also very clear that we have to work hard for that bullishness to be warranted.