Babu Sivadasan is the Co-founder & CEO of JIFFY.ai, a full-stack platform that enables banks, financial services companies, and Fortune 500 organizations to solve their pressing operational and efficiency challenges. He has more than 20 years of experience working in engineering, including six years as Group President at Envestnet. Previously, Babu was the Co-founder of Stamps.com, which provided all the functions of the Post Office on a computer.
Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:
Babu Sivadasan explains how JIFFY.ai helps people
The services JIFFY offers
Babu talks about JIFFY’s customer experience metrics
AI-driven software development and its applications
Recommendations for choosing an AI-driven product
Babu’s leadership advice on how to deliver a great customer experience
In this episode…
In today's fast-paced business world, staying competitive demands swift adaptation to better technologies. However, not everyone has the technical know-how to execute innovative concepts. That's where an AI-powered assistant comes in.
The power of automation is undeniable, and AI is at the forefront of the revolution. Whether you are looking to improve customer experience or streamline operations, Babu Sivadasan recommends harnessing AI's advanced capabilities. With it, you can simplify complex processes, save time, boost productivity, and achieve more than you ever thought possible.
In this episode of The Customer Wins, Richard Walker sits down with Babu Sivadasan, Co-founder & CEO of JIFFY.ai, to discuss how financial services companies can thrive by leveraging AI. Babu explains how JIFFY helps people, its connection with other FinTech products, AI-driven software development, and recommendations for choosing an AI-driven product.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Episode Transcript:
Intro 0:02
Welcome to The Customer Wins podcast where business leaders discuss their secrets and techniques for helping their customers succeed and in turn grow their business.
Richard Walker 0:16
Hi, I'm Rich Walker, the host of The Customer Wins where I talk to business leaders about how they help their customers win how their focus on customer experience leads to growth. Today is a special episode in my series on AI Artificial Intelligence. And today's guest is Babu Sivadasan, I'm saying it wrong, CEO and founder of JIFFY AI. Some of our past guests in this series include Mamal Amin CEO GovernGPT and Gabe Rissman of YourStake. Today's episode is brought to you by Quik! the leader in enterprise forums processing. When your business relies upon processing forms, don't waste your team's valuable time reviewing the forms. Instead, get Quik! using our AI-driven Form Xtract API. simply submit your completed forms and get back clean, context-rich data that's 99.9% accurate. Visit quikforms.com to get started. Now before I introduce today's guest I want to give a really big thank you to Howard Lee of Buckingham Strategic Wealth for introducing me to our guest. Buckingham is one of the leading RIA firms and I'm proud to have them as a customer. Go check out their website at buckinghamstrategicwealth.com. All right, Babu Sivadasan is the co-founder and CEO at JIFFY AI, which is a no-code digital transformation AI platform. Babu is a passionate entrepreneur who likes helping others with over 20 years’ experience that investment in roles from engineering all the way to Group President Babu has had a tremendous impact on wealth management and retirement industries. Prior to co-founding Envestnet, Babu was a co-founder of stamps.com. I think we all know who they are. Babu, welcome to The Customer Wins.
Babu Sivadasan 1:57
Thank you, Rich, it's great to be here.
Richard Walker 1:59
Now, if you haven't heard this podcast before, I talk with business leaders about what they're doing to help their customers win, how they build and deliver great customer experience. And the challenge is to grow in their own company. Let's understand your business a little bit better. How does your company help people?
Babu Sivadasan 2:14
So we are a no-code AI platform, we refer to ourselves as digital transmission AI. And we enable the creation of delightful client experiences. And tie that with automated middle and back office so that you can deliver meaningful experiences and immediate gratification to your clients. If you're an enterprise, if you're a wealth management firm, or if you're a financial bank, or insurance company like this will be focused primarily on financial services as a segment.
Richard Walker 2:51
Yeah, no, that's a great market. And it's something you have a lot of experience with. And I think we all need help in that industry, right? Oh, absolutely. I think we have some customers in common event that are using your platform. So when we say no-code, is that really true? Can you do an entire application with zero programming?
Babu Sivadasan 3:09
Absolutely, absolutely. And we do things where you take all of your forms and our rates, and we can convert them into digitally engaging applications in a Jiffy. Right. So those are the kinds of things AI is capable of doing? And yeah, so we could do some of those things, you know, without any need for writing code.
Richard Walker 3:34
Yeah. Now, a lot of people are looking for comprehensive systems, like new account, opening, et cetera, do you give them a platform that performs a lot of those processes or workflows already? Or do they just simply use your product to build those as they want?
Babu Sivadasan 3:49
Yeah, we probably do both, so we provide off-the-shelf capability for the superior digital onboarding of clients, and then servicing them as well, like, these are the two main things that we provide. But every organization has their own view into how they should be doing these things, so and we also enable them to create super personalized using AI experiences, that brings delight to your clients and makes it a good experience for them. Right. And so, our industry now, if you look at all the FinTech that are out there right now that are doing extremely well, two things that they do really well, right and one, they understand user experience really well compared to legacy institutions, right, because institutions were formed in a very different age where people walked into places and signed up for things right now and Let's move down quite a bit. But a lot of processes are still built around those. And if we look at Bank, no, they would say online banking is a separate product. And, to me online banking is the product is the online back end, that's the world that we live in. And so there is a very different world that is emerging that is taking over the world right now. And we enable traditional organizations to have a fighting chance to compete in that world, to create and deliver delightful client experiences in a jiffy. Right and provide automated middle and back office that allows you to keep the costs of doing that very, very low as well, and so you take human out of, you know, middle and back office, that's what you see in FinTech, you know, they have delightful, full client experience, and then automated middle and back office, there are no people sitting in the middle and back office, fulfilling your orders or things like that, it's all automated fully, and we enable creation of such capabilities, so whether it is onboarding or servicing off your clients, so we enable that,
Richard Walker 6:23
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Because those are jobs, nobody really, really wants to do, or should they have to do when you can no systems do it for you. So does that mean that your system can communicate with lots of other FinTech products that people are already using?
Babu Sivadasan 6:37
Absolutely. So we connect with many applications we connect with, first of all, at the bottom layer, like everybody has made investments in core systems, right. And they are great systems for what they do, which is making sure books and records are kept, and making sure regulatory needs are met, so those systems have their payroll type, but they are terrible at delivering consumer experience, they're terrible at being nimble, right, and being able to build on top of that. And so that's where we come in, we provide a middleware right on top, which is connected with all the core systems, whether it is multiple banking course, and a well course are insurance core systems and also be unified them and enable the delivery of so fi like experience for traditional financial services organization. So we provide a unifying onboarding experience today, what happens is, you could be a financial institution that is, every financial institutions goal is to sell you, or serve you with seven different types of accounts, whether it is lending, checking, savings, money market investments retirement and health savings accounts, right. So, these are all some different core systems, and, and traditionally, what used to happen, if I'm a consumer, and you're a financial institution, offering me all these capabilities, I'll get seven different experiences for onboarding, like, because it's very product-centric. Yeah, it feels like let's say, I'm talking to seven different companies, right? And so as a consumer, and that experience has to change, and that's what modern firms, do. They provide a seamless, delightful client experience in terms of onboarding. And then similarly, how many times have you been frustrated when you when you make a request for something, you want to make a change, and then you have to first tell them which type of a caravan to get routed to the bad department and things like that. I expect my institution to know me, right? Not ask me, okay, if your first one for this, press two for this, you know, I give up. I don't even listen to the whole thing. Right. So that, being able to provide a uniform service experience without and that knows me as a consumer, and being able to provide all the capabilities, all the services that I need in a uniform manner. That's what the consumers expect. And that's what we enabled, so we sit on top of these core systems, so you can ask for a request. And so I'll give you a simple example. For example, right now, so let's say, I just moved and I got to update my address. Very simple thing, right. But people move all the time right now, and I just need to say it's a painful process today. You first of all, you may have four accounts, you may call and request a change. But now, I'm not have remembered all four accounts there right now. Right? So it needs to intelligently tell me that, okay, I'm making a request, is that applicable for all these accounts? Or is that by the way, you have these four accounts, and that experience is what matters. And I'm being able to quickly get that done electronically, right, which is online, we provide that. Or it could be, you walk into the brands, and they need to have the same experience as it is unbelievable that a majority of the financial institution in the country, and if you're looking at banks, or credit unions, their brand software is so different than their online software. So what typically what happens is the you experience something online, and they wouldn't be able to see the same thing. So it's so siloed, and then you have data being shipped back and forth. No, we eliminate all of that we really, truly transform, when they're on jiffy, they are really on it, do they do things in a Jiffy.
Richard Walker 11:16
I think it's, I think it's fascinating, because we're all consumers, right? You're a consumer app, a consumer, we might run tech companies focused on the back office, but we're still consumers. And we're used to having so much energy going into our iPhone apps or Google Play Store apps, and the things that as consumers, we love to interact with, but we don't see that in the middle and back office as much. So that's really great that you guys are focused there. And also to bring that forward, because I think a lot of FinTech, especially if they're serving back office struggle with the better UI, the better user experience, etc. What are some of the metrics that you guys focus on to ensure that you're delivering a great experience or helping your customers deliver a great experience? Are there any keys or milestones that you're looking at?
Babu Sivadasan 12:00
Yeah, typically, when we looked at the cost per account process, so using an account, and that's one of the servicing side, and you want to see a downward trend now, or you're able to handle more with the number of people that you have right. So, traditionally, it's been a linearly scaling, you know, as you add more accounting and more people right now, so that, and then the second, from an onboarding perspective, what we look for is how quickly you are able to convert a client now a lot of organizations, they spend so much money on digital marketing and things like that. But then, when somebody is actually ready to come in, like, you provide them with a terrible experience now that they walked out immediately.
Richard Walker 12:51
Yeah, my joke, and true story is I spent weeks with a life insurance agent deciding to move and do business with them. He hands me a 78-page form to fill out and says, Get back to me when you're done handwriting it? No, I never finished it never went back to. Let me let me ask a different question. Oh, go ahead.
Babu Sivadasan 13:10
No, the other thing, so we believe in, not just everything is need to be online, right? So, I would argue that No, sitting in front of me, if you're an advisor sitting in front of your client, having a natural conversation and having a deck of bombs to sign is a great experience, right? And the problem is that no, getting that converted is a laborious process, right? So what we do is in our AI technology can scan all that and you do this, even with partners like you and we are able to extract all the information from there and then make that as effective and as the least expensive as somebody filling it online. So we enable that hybrid environment as well. So that you take the cost out of the equation, not the convenience.
Richard Walker 14:10
Yeah, right. Well, so you started asking the question I was going to ask, which is, what is the AI doing inside of your system? And why is I needed to do this? So the forum's I get how else are you applying AI to your solution?
Babu Sivadasan 14:24
When we assemble capability right now, so we start with simple instructions, just like you go and chat GPD you know, you can ask them to write code and we in our world and you ask as to deliver functionality and we deliver printing functionality. So that's the key defects.
Richard Walker 14:44
Yeah. Okay. So it is you are doing generative type of AI where you can ask questions and find knowledge etc. Yeah, that's really awesome.
Babu Sivadasan 14:55
Yeah, and four years ago, when I was beginning to preach this, it was a tough sale, like, you know, so but it's great to be on the right side, finally, the whole world is catching up.
Richard Walker 15:13
Yeah. I mean, I think the world found out about this and December of last year started to find out about GPT stuff at that time. I mean, frankly, I did, that's when I started using it, but it's been going on for a while.
Babu Sivadasan 15:26
Actually you are right now. So I remember three years ago, I did a demo of our technology. And somebody told me, it's a gimmick, it cannot be done. Right. And so, it may sound too good to be true, right? But it is possible. And you may not cover everything on day one, right. And so, so we've been methodically working on it, so I see a world where every piece of financial services software, for example, will be rewritten, or rebuilt using no code diagnose, so there isn't a because these systems have been built as monoliths, you know, for forever, like they ran past their utility or life, and modern rebuild, of the entire stack is needed. And that's where we were very excited about the possibility of powering E-Myth not just backend, middleware, the top will front end, but the whole stack, get rewired. And then I'll tell you, my previous organization, I used to spend around 30, anywhere between 30 to $40,000, for just doing an impact analysis on if I made a change from this field, to this field, right, just not doing it, just doing that, right, so, and I know, I will take the blame for that poorly designed software, where if you ever feel that change, and that is costing you that much to identify the impact, but no menu run large platforms and enterprise-grade platforms, there's a lot there right now, and simple things like this note could take forever to do. And those are the things that shouldn't, you should do it in a jiffy, you just make a change, and you are done, right. And so that is that order, the systems will tell you the impact, right? In our platform, when you make a field change, and it will tell you, this is what the downstream impact is without having to look at the code and look at millions of lines of code trying to look for impact, because that just what typically happens, right? So yeah, and that's the exciting part was I have a frame of reference, I guess what I used to do, versus what I do now.
Richard Walker 18:12
Yeah, I mean, we've made the decision in our company, everything going forward is going to be have infused with AI, driven by Ai, ai built, whatever. And a year ago, I told my entire team, every person on this team has to find a way to use AI to make your job easier, better, faster, more effective, higher quality, etc. And we're doing that, frankly, and you're giving people an opportunity to do that for themselves with your platform, which is awesome. I'm curious about one of the things I mean, you're a technologist background? Are you an AI scientist? Or have you hired those people into your firm? Or are we at a stage where you can put pieces together in your unique way and just build it?
Babu Sivadasan 18:53
Yeah. So I am not a scientist. But I'm a technologist. So meaning I don't have a science, PhD, right. But these days, you don't need a PhD for anything. Right? You just, a lot of our foundational capability. I still remember building AI models, no back and, you know, in 92, like nowhere, we were trying to build models and put them on the spacecraft, like, or before for Indian Space Agency, like the software. We were trying to detect fall circuit faults using AI right now all using those days in a you refer to them as neural networks, so we I remember how painful that was that we used to look up scientific journals. And now there'll be two lines of algorithms. They're like, this is how you do it. So I still remember as writing code for black A backpropagation and things like that never be, you have no idea how it was all going to work, right? So and compared to that today you write software like a you deal with data, right. And then everything every other piece of infrastructure is available to you right now. So that's a great part of today, right. And so you should be able to do a lot without needing to know every bit of the underlying algorithm and how it works and things like that.
Richard Walker 20:32
Yeah, I don't know that most people, if they haven't been in development, software development, they don't really understand that we build layers in programming, third generation, fourth generation, AI is a whole another layer. And some of the things that have been automated in the past that people don't know about have existed, writing SQL queries for your database to pull out data that can be written for you. And I think with the advent of AI, we're just seeing so much opportunity for things to come forth through no-code platforms, or low-code platforms, or just if you're building your own software, you've got assistance, etc. I'm curious, from your perspective, what do you think people should know about AI in order to be successful in choosing an AI-driven product?
Babu Sivadasan 21:15
Yeah, so I think chat GPT, and open AI is open, you know, everybody's imagination right now, because there's so much you know, that people are exposed to these days. Right. And so, but when you see something out there trying to figure it out, and how that applies to our world, because there is there is His promises, you know, and what goes on? And what is available, but no, there is still a gap between how that applies to your work, how that applies to our vertical? Right, and how that applies to? So being able to do that translation right now, between what is possible? And how that applies to our world, that is the most important thing, being able to relate to how that can be applied in your industry. So and if you look at it from that perspective, you'll find so many opportunities, and the power of you have the data right, if you're in a particular vertical, you've been dealing with data for so many years, you just you have it, you don't realize, right, and so being able to apply that and utilize that, for applying that groundbreaking technology to your world, that is the opportunity.
Richard Walker 22:40
So you're saying something that makes me think that anytime you choose software, you don't have to care how it works you have to care about can do for you, and how it can be built into your environment framework, tech stack, what have you, you're kind of saying the same thing about AI, you don't have to know which AI model or how it works or etc, you have to understand what is your problem? And how can it be solved? Right?
Babu Sivadasan 23:02
Yeah, yeah. You don't mean there are because there are plenty of models available for you to abandon? One model will always be better than the other model. Right. But you know, being aware of the problem, right, and then you have off-the-shelf choices and a lot of money available for you to solve that problem.
Richard Walker 23:22
Yeah, no, it's incredible. And that's also why I told my team, go find a tool, find something and see what it can do for you find JIFFY. Okay, so let me ask you a different question, then how accessible is jiffy? I mean, is this an enterprise scale? You've got to go all in on it? Or can somebody just start up and use it as a single user?
Babu Sivadasan 23:43
Yeah, so today, we've been focused more on being the foundational technology. So for example, and invest that using this kind of capability. So that's where we are focused on because when you really took a transformation, you have to take it all the way that is our belief. So we even focus more on enterprises trying to build meaningful capability. And but we could be allowed people to start small by ignore. So, but it's not a per user, like hey, go experiment. No, that's not what we are doing today. Right? And because nobody, we provide so much capability around the clamping, integration, etc. Right. All that there is value there right now. There's tremendous amount of value there. And we believe in it, we can only serve clients really well. When you go all in.
Richard Walker 24:44
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that is part of the challenge. From a business standpoint, you tend to make more money with bigger customers. And you have more leeway with bigger customers because they expect certain things to have soft edges or gray area or whatever. Do you see yourself bringing your product downstream in the market and being more I don't know, end user-centric?
Babu Sivadasan 25:07
So we do see ourselves now bringing it, I mean, we are in our mid in playing in mid-market today and mid and large organizations, but we do when it comes to partners, and when we build together right, we do see going down the market is what I'm saying, because we're building today's startup is tomorrow's unicorn or tomorrow's multibillion-dollar company, and companies are growing so, so very quickly, right. And so, but we have been careful, we can also crash and burn if you chase every company that has been formed and things like that most of the bill, even in our head, make hurting ourselves a little bit, making sure that maybe we pick our battles as well.
Richard Walker 25:58
Yeah, yeah. No, that's great. I learned the hard way that you earn every customer one by one, regardless of science, right, you got to earn it one by one and solve their problems. I'm going to ask you, hopefully a fun question. What is something that you know about AI that you don't think most people know?
Babu Sivadasan 26:15
Oh, man, like, today, I would say that most people know about AI that I don't know. But the possibility and the potential of how it could, I can imagine, three years or five years out what the world would be that I think maybe most people don't realize, the true transformation potential?
Richard Walker 26:43
Yeah. Are you in Silicon Valley? or San Francisco?
Babu Sivadasan 26:46
Yes. I'm in Palo Alto.
Richard Walker 26:49
Palo Alto. Okay, so you're in the heart of it? How much is AI, living and breathing out there versus other places you've been to?
Babu Sivadasan 26:57
Oh, so, that isn't a sentence that I hear without AI, so these days. So it's the foundational fabric of the work here, right? So much going on in I had to do a lot of startup forums and a lot of entrepreneurs and all that you meet. And that's all you hear, right? And this time, AI is for real? I was so fascinated by AI. Now, the moment I started working on it back in back in the early 90s with deep networks or neural networks, I thought that was gonna take over the world, like, no, but then the internet came along, and E-commerce came along, and now it just diverted in everything in that direction. But, but the truly transformative potential right now. So let's see, if you look at the internet, and e-commerce and things like that, it doesn't fundamentally change. So instead of physically doing something, you just aren't, instead of ordering by telephone, like you just provided a better front end to do it now, but fundamentally, you haven't changed anything, you still have the warehouses, and then you still have your salary tailor, you're still doing things that existed before. Whereas, you could never imagine a mathematical model, right now his series of numbers, representing that knowledge, and that that is transmitted, right? You can't even figure out, all this information is in a bunch of numbers.
Richard Walker 28:45
Yeah, well, I admire companies like yours, because I think what you're doing is you're helping bring AI to life, because it is about the middleware, it is about the fundamental bricks and layers that we have to add to get to a point where people experience it. And most people are experiencing AI without knowing it, because it's part of a service part of a product, etc. And it's going to continue that way for quite some time before we get to robots that do the manufacturing work, if that happens. You've been a leader for a long time. And I want to just ask you a question on leadership. How would you inspire other business leaders to improve and create a great customer experience? What is something you think they should focus in on in order to deliver a great customer experience?
Babu Sivadasan 29:31
So, this is something, I always find it fascinating, right? Everybody deserves, this is back and talk about our own organization like how, what I challenge our own people, right? We all experience great products, great services. Don't our clients deserve even better. Right and also, would you be happy with the mediocre experiences, and when it comes to us, we have a higher standard, but then are you delivering even better standard to your clients to our own clients. But that is something I constantly push our teams right now our fellow entrepreneurs always ask that question, we have two ways of doing things. Number one, we can do it really well. Right. Other one is we can do it crappy. Now, why would you go there right now? So and you still have to do it, you know, you still put in the effort now, why would you do it the best way possible right now. So, yeah, that's what I push people.
Richard Walker 30:42
So take the mindset of building it the right way, the first time building it the great way the first time. Yeah, even if it costs more and takes longer.
Babu Sivadasan 30:50
It is a fallacy that will actually cost more and takes it takes longer. It doesn't actually.
Richard Walker 30:58
I agree. Because people don't realize if you do it the bad way you build it three times, not one day.
Babu Sivadasan 31:02
Yes. And we all go through that, in spite of your best intentions and efforts. Sometimes you still go through those.
Richard Walker 31:13
Yeah, Babu, I'm really enjoying talking to you. But we're gonna have to wrap this up here. And before I do that, I have asked my last question, how do you want people to find and connect with you? What's the best way?
Babu Sivadasan 31:23
Well, easy. babu@jiffy.ai email and I'm on LinkedIn that no other platforms as well. But yeah, and www.giffy.ai our website.
Richard Walker 31:38
Perfect. All right. So here's my last question, who has had the biggest impact on your leadership style or how you approach your role today?
Babu Sivadasan 31:46
So, we lost a luminary back in 2019, my partner for Nova investment as a company, like a combination of companies, two companies that came together, the early stages was my company, that I co-founded with a couple of others. And Jack Bergman, you know, so we have done, we were struggling companies that came together, out of necessity, right, we're like not to survive, right? And then we chased an industry from that point onwards, so, unfortunately, we lost him to a terrible accident right here in the Bay Area. But I've learned so much from Jack, Jack Bergman, he was he was a visionary. And I learned a lot, we were so good friends, he never, when we must know, he was a bigger part of the equation, but never made me feel that bad. Always treated me fairly and learned a lot from, we have done 17 transactions together a lot of things that you've done, and we built that phenomenal campus in my hometown of Trivandrum India. Everything you do, you can put your heart into it. Right. We decided we spent so much time on picking the right tiles and right, when you hear for the walls and things like that, and also I've been very, very impressed with and observed and learned a lot from him, and a lot of things that I play every day that I have learned and it is sad in that that he's not with us, he's gone too soon right now that especially financial services and wealth management industry lost a luminary. So and it's been a privilege to be serving right with them. And we took a teeny company or tiny idea into a public company and became a foundational player in the ecosystem.
Richard Walker 34:13
Yeah, no, it's incredible, incredible the name that you guys built. And I love asking this question because I love hearing the stories of how people have impacted each other. Because at the end of the day, I think that's what it's about how we help each other, how we impact each other. And I want to give a big thank you to Babu Sivadasan CEO Jiffy AI for being on this episode of The Customer Wins go check out their website at Jiffy.ai. And don't forget to check out Quik at quikforms.com or we make processing forums easier. I hope you enjoyed this discussion will click the like button share this with someone and subscribe to our channels for future episodes of The Customers Win. Thanks for joining me today, Babu.
Babu Sivadasan 34:55
Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you for having me. Definitely It will we can our immune systems.
Outro 35:06
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