Lokesh Gupta is the Co-Founder of RM Applications Sdn. Bhd. (RMA), a MSC status boutique software company based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is passionate about Remittance, Payments and Data Management. Being part of boutique software organization, Lokesh is honored to wear many hats based on the situation and his role, demands involvement in wide scale with greater responsibilities. He takes end to end ownership by getting involved in all aspects of the organization and sees the ideas transform from the conceptualization stage, to become a full-blown product and keep it evolving to match Industry needs and to be part of RMA’s expansion.

1. Lokesh Gupta is the Co-Founder of RM Applications Sdn. Bhd. (RMA), a MSC
status boutique software company based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He is
passionate about Remittance, Payments and Data Management. Being part of
boutique software organization, Lokesh is honored to wear many hats based on the situation
and his role, demands involvement in wide scale with greater responsibilities. He takes end
to end ownership by getting involved in all aspects of the organization and sees the ideas
transform from the conceptualization stage, to become a full-blown product and keep it
evolving to match Industry needs and to be part of RMA’s expansion.
Significant Professional Journey
Lokesh has accumulated an experience of more than 18 years in the sector of Financial
Technology in Conventional and Islamic Banking Domain as a Techno Functional. He
has achieved specialization in Data Management, Remittance, Payments and
Solutioning for bespoke solutions. Lokesh started his journey by being part of VISA
certification team for Citibank by implementing Card Management System. Since then, he
has been implementing projects for various regional banks in South East Asia ranging
from Banking Merging System Integration, Bulk Payments, Core Banking, Cash
Management, Payment Gateway, Stock Trading, Core Remittance, Digital Remittance,
Data Marts development for Regulatory, Basel Compliance and Operational Reporting
etc.
At RMA, Lokesh established a collaborative environment together with his employees,
where he practices flat organization structure, also known as RMATEs, and develop his
team, creating customer-centric innovative solutions.
Lokesh supervise the solutions which are developed inside RMA including OmniRemit
(Core Remittance Suite with Anti Money Laundering i.e. AMLA Compliance and
Treasury Functions), Vehicle Inspection Management System (VIMS), Digital
Remittance (Online & Mobile Touchpoints), OmniPay (Digital Payments), and now the
company is working on prototype for integrating with blockchain. Similarly, another
solution is OmniData, a bespoke DataMart development platform to provide centralized
meaningful data for Asset Liability Management (ALM), Basel 3 (Liquidity Reporting),
Fund Transfer Pricing (FTP) Reporting etc. OmniData is now in the process of evolving
from pure data transformation to reporting platform and making inroads to adapting to Big
Data technology.
Lokesh has also co-authored books and published articles in Islamic Banking and Finance. In
addition, he is also an active speaker. His recent publication, ‘Islamic Finance: A Practical
Perspective’, is published by Palgrave.
About the Company
RMA started its journey as a delivery-oriented system
integration company and later went on to be a provider of
end-to-end bespoke business driven technology solutions
for Conventional and Islamic Financial Institutions. The
company successfully delivers leading edge technology
solutions in areas such as Digital Remittance & Payments,
ALM & Liquidity Reporting Data Mart, Data Management
(ETL) Consulting & Development, Bespoke Data Mart,
Localization and integration of Partners’ Solutions.
Ideology that Motivates
Lokesh is a firm believer of being a ‘Doer’, as he always
remains ready to jump in, explore options, work hard and
like to get involved in finding solutions. He has been a
driver for bespoke solution. According to him, the workable
strategy for it is to analyze “As Is”, which could gain
insight into the manual or partly automated process and
then sketch out “To Be”, how one think it ought to work.
The demand of industry is for ‘Doers’ rather than
‘Thinkers’. It is important to distinguish from the masses by
adapting to fast and dynamic workflows, industry practices
and technology, which is evolving at a faster pace. For him,
being passionate is the key, as one should love what they
do. He recommends to believe in self, to stay confident, to
be a strong leader, always see problem as an opportunity to
learn and always be ready to do something new or
differently. He established a thumb rule of his own that
teaches to ‘Unlearn’ what an individual has learned in the
past and ‘Relearn’ what client wants and design the solution
accordingly.
He acknowledges that Business is all about ‘relationships’
and ‘trust’ which got to be earned and we can’t just demand
it. His core strategy is to collaborate with client and have
their continuous feedback to design and deliver solution
that meets there expectation and industry demand. Beyond
tailored solution delivery, he take customer support very
seriously, which is very important to address the pain
points, which may arises due to operation and business as
usual activities.
Obstacles to Tackle with
Lokesh along with other Cofounders has started RMA with
a clean slate and tried to establish something different.
Thus, he faced hurdles in making trust among his clients,
maintain the growth ratio, meeting the customer’s
expectation, keep them happy, and keep the company being
agile as a team.
The primary challenge faced by RMA in beginning was the
lack of trust from its customers. Being a small company,
clients were not confident due to limited client base and
track record, and prefer to work with large companies to
minimize the risk. RMA overcome it by working with other
financial solution providers as subcontractor to establish its
capabilities and building track record.
Marketing and brand building has never been RMA’s
strength as the company is delivery driven organization. It
was not an easy journey, but the sincerity, passion and its
commitment become a driver for its clients to gain an
opportunity.
RMA is business funded, and hence, initially there were
possible gaps in cash flow due to lag in invoicing and
payment. Lokesh learn a lot from this experience to monitor
cash flows closely and to have cash flow management
practices in place to address these gaps.
Foresight towards the Future
Lokesh aims to make RMA a company, which provides
advanced, innovative and value-added bespoke solution in
the remittance/payments and data management landscape
leveraging on Big Data technology. He wants to be the
company a well-known provider of digital technology
driven solutions to move away from cash based payments
to digital payments using advance hybrid technology with
QR Based, Blockchain and using Digital Assets as a method
of processing remittance and payments. His ambition is to
be expansive in terms of the broader product offerings and
broader regional expansion.
Leader’s Advise
According to Lokesh, his journey with RMA has taught him
that, staring a venture requires firm dedication,
commitment, hard work, sacrifices and open to accept
criticism. There comes time when the success and growth
seems unexpected and also the situations of tight cash
flows, which worsen the situation further. Thus, he advices
budding entrepreneurs to consider problems came across as
an opportunity and one should work on it instead of giving
up. However, he advice to embrace the failures, believe in
self and the team, and have faith that one can pull through
the rough tides with which every problem can become an
adventure.
September 2018| |September 2018
01 02
Lokesh
Gupta:A Financial Tech Expert
Every Problem
brings Opportunity.
‘‘ ‘‘
Lokesh Gupta
Co-Founder
RM Applications Sdn. Bhd.