Janalakshmi in pact with Accenture to scale up operations

Partnership to help the MFI scale up operations; 100 employees to be transferred to Accenture

Accenture and Janalakshmi Financial Services (JFS), a Bangalore-based microfinance organisation, have signed a five-year agreement in which Accenture will provide business process outsourcing and IT services to help scale up JFS’ operations designed to deliver microloans to India’s poor.

Under the agreement, Accenture will manage JFS’ customer and account master data and provide processing, reconciliation and reporting services as part of their customer onboarding and processing operations. It will also manage JFS’ application platform including its core banking system, customer relationship management software and employee portal and website.

“The opportunity for serving the unbanked population in India is large and our recent equity raise positions us well to take advantage of this opportunity,” said Ramesh Ramanathan, Chairman, Janalakshmi Financial Services. Janalakshmi had recently announced that it had closed its Series D primary equity raise of Rs 325 crore. “With Accenture delivering core IT and business processes, we will be more agile, more scalable, and far better positioned to serve our clients across India,” he said.

Accenture will also provide application maintenance services to support third-party technologies and work with JFS to help identify new technology opportunities. Accenture will also provide infra outsourcing services--including end-user device management and network and server management.