Serai, a subsidiary of HSBC Group, vows to be a catalyst for textile and RMG industry of Bangladesh bringing it under digital era riding on trailblazing innovative products. Serai also offered Bangladeshi businesses to help expand trade globally. “Textile and RMG segment is the single largest manufacturing industry in the world, employing millions of people. Serai believes there’s huge potential for this industry to benefit from digitisation. The sector is going through intense changes and there’s been a drive for transparency, which makes it the ideal starting point for Serai’s platform and we hope that Serai can be a catalyst for the industry to evolve into the digital era,” Vivek Ramachandran, Chief Executive Officer of Serai told the Financial Express in an e-mail interview on Wednesday. A team from Serai, led by Vivek Ramachandran is now visiting Bangladesh. “We are in Bangladesh to introduce the Serai platform to the local textile and garments industry through local market engagements this week and we’ll continue to run more activity in 2020. We have also opened up a waitlist signup for companies who are interested to learn more about the platform.” Based in Hong Kong, Serai has the strength of a global bank and the agility of a start-up. They create new solutions to shape the future of international trade. Replying to a question on the problems faced by the company and its subsequent solution, he said Serai’s mission is to simplify trade, to create a truly interconnected global network of businesses around the world. “Serai helps companies to build networks they know and trust, paving the way for transparent and sustainable supply chains. The whole concept here is a network of interested parties who gain value from interacting with each other.” “The B2C world has radically changed thanks to technology. The B2B world unfortunately has been comparatively less impacted and remains too complex. For example, how companies find parties to interact and trade with hasn’t changed since the 1960s. Serai is going to change that,” the CEO asserted. Serai allows companies to showcase their capabilities, find new connections, and build new / strengthen existing relationships. “The Serai platform is currently by invitation only. Over time, there will be other proprietary and third party solutions on the platform ranging from insurance, accounting, freight forwarding or procurement, logistics and more to serve the needs of Serai customers,” he disclosed. On its relationship and synergy with HSBC, he informed Serai started with a few of the corporate members within HSBC realising that how companies do business with each other remains unnecessarily complex. Financing is just one aspect of this complexity. “We wanted to explore solutions that look beyond banking to help businesses release their untapped potential. A team was put together to start ideating solutions with a focus on solving pain points faced by businesses, large and small – and that’s when we came up with the concept of Serai.” Serai was established as a separate entity in December 2018 and is a registered company in Hong Kong, wholly-owned by HSBC. Serai now has the resources and backing of HSBC, but more importantly, it has the agility and flexibility of a start-up, and we have an incredible opportunity to kind of really change how companies build relationships and transact. “Serai’s focus is beyond banking – we’re looking to help businesses successfully navigate the waters of international trade. So we are actively developing non-banking applications and products that serve the needs of this segment.” Talking about Serai’s outlook of next 10 years, he said just like every professional today is likely to have a LinkedIn profile, I would expect every company in the world to have a Serai profile. “If you’re trying to build a relationship with anyone across the world you haven’t dealt with, you would go to Serai to understand who they are, to learn about them, and to make a connection. Serai aims to become that platform which provides a canvas for companies all over the world, independent of size, independent of sector, independent of geography, to build connections, to build relationships, and start trusting each other. When this happens, then we have really succeeded.” “Our vision is that Serai will be the platform of choice for businesses when they are looking for trusted and credible partners to do business with. Ultimately, we want to deliver innovative trade solutions that further the good of domestic and cross border trade.” Success for Serai would be bringing people onto the platform, getting the people on that platform trading with each other and connecting with each other. Success would be platform members – the buyers and suppliers – feeling that Serai is delivering enhanced value to them, and they get something out of it that they’ve not been able to get before. Repying to another question on its business model and source of funding, he said basic access to the Serai platform will be free of charge, at the core of that, businesses can join Serai, set up a company profile to showcase themselves on our global platform, and be able to search and connect with other businesses to build relationships. “We see the commercialisation of our business coming from providing premium products and services on the platform that deliver value to our customers. Our top priority right now is to grow users on the platform, to help businesses connect and we believe monetization will come once we prove we can help our customers and bring value to them.”
