Modular, cloud-native, and digital-first, Udeet Bhagat, Senior Vice President – Arttha Banking & APMEA, PureSoftware

By Robin Amlot

PureSoftware celebrated twice over at the IBSi Digital Banking Awards 2025. In this interview, Udeet Bhagat of PureSoftware reveals the secrets of the company’s successes.

Udeet Bhagat, Senior Vice President – Arttha Banking & APMEA for PureSoftware, talks to IBS Intelligence about the company’s solutions and the importance of ensuring the company’s solutions are scalable, agile, and inclusive. He begins our conversation by explaining how PureSoftware is empowering banks and FinTechs worldwide in the areas of digital client onboarding and loan origination. “At PureSoftware, we’re helping banks and FinTechs worldwide accelerate their digital transformation journeys through Arttha, our flagship cloud-native, modular platform built for the future of banking. Arttha empowers institutions to streamline digital client onboarding and loan origination with configurable workflows, mobile-first interfaces, and seamless integrations that ensure speed, compliance, and scale.

“Through Arttha, financial institutions can offer end-to-end digital onboarding with features like intelligent document processing, eKYC, and biometric authentication – significantly reducing onboarding time and operational overhead. For loan origination, our platform enables a fully digital lifecycle from application intake to credit evaluation, approval, disbursement, and servicing.

“Looking ahead, we are actively working to embed AI capabilities into Arttha’s onboarding and lending modules – including AI-led credit scoring, document operations automation, and risk profiling. These enhancements will further empower banks to make faster, smarter, and more inclusive lending decisions, especially in underbanked markets.

“With over 3 billion annual transactions for 150 million+ users and 10 million+ merchants across 20+ markets, Arttha is already delivering impact at scale – and is future-ready to embrace the next wave of intelligent banking transformation.”

PureSoftware won dual awards at the IBSi Digital Banking Awards – what was behind your success?

“Winning dual honours at the IBSi Digital Banking Awards 2025 is a proud moment for us and a testament to the real-world impact of our platform, Arttha, in driving digital banking transformation globally. Behind this success is a clear and consistent vision – to empower financial institutions with modular, cloud-native, and digital-first solutions that are scalable, agile, and inclusive.

“Our award-winning implementations showcased Arttha’s ability to deliver fully digital onboarding and loan origination journeys that are not only efficient but also tailored to local market needs. What set us apart was our deep understanding of regional dynamics – especially in Africa and Southeast Asia, where we’ve helped banks and FinTechs launch in very short timeframes, reach underserved populations, and launch innovative financial products with ease.

“Another key factor is our collaborative approach. We don’t just deliver the platform – we work closely with our clients to shape strategy, ensure compliance, and co-create solutions that drive measurable business outcomes. This, combined with our expanding global footprint across India, the Middle East, and the Americas, positions PureSoftware and Arttha as trusted partners in the future of digital finance.

“Ultimately, these awards reflect the success of our clients – and our commitment to building a smarter, more connected financial ecosystem.”

With Arttha powering digital onboarding and lending across diverse geographies, how does PureSoftware balance the play between hyper-local compliance requirements and the scalability of AI-driven models in real-time onboarding?

“That’s a critical question – and it speaks to how we’ve architected Arttha from day one: not just as a product, but as a composable digital banking platform designed for global scale with local nuance.

“We’ve built the platform to be AI-ready, with future enhancements planned around intelligent onboarding, automated credit scoring, and fraud detection. A major focus in this roadmap is ensuring that as we integrate AI, it can scale across diverse regulatory environments.

“We recognise that what’s permissible in India may differ from Kenya, and what works in the UAE may require changes in Indonesia. To address this, Arttha already supports region-specific policy engines and configurable compliance workflows that allow banks to localise onboarding and lending journeys based on jurisdictional requirements – such as KYC/AML thresholds, consent management, and document standards – without modifying the platform’s core.

“As we prepare to roll out AI capabilities, we’re designing a governance framework that will decouple AI decisioning from compliance logic. This will ensure that AI models can deliver consistent benefits – like real-time KYC or risk scoring – while being governed by local controls on data residency, biometrics, and regulatory oversight.

“Ultimately, our vision is to make scalable, AI-enabled onboarding and lending a reality for every market – whether it’s India, the Philippines, or Ghana – by embedding flexibility, compliance, and performance into the platform’s core. With Arttha, banks won’t have to choose between innovation and regulation – they’ll get both.”

As Arttha expands deeper into emerging markets, how are you evolving your AI architecture to integrate unconventional data sources – like telco data, psychometrics, or mobile money trails – for real-time loan origination in low-data environments?

“As we deepen our presence across emerging markets, we recognise that traditional credit histories alone no longer define creditworthiness. That’s why we’re evolving Arttha’s architecture to support the future integration of AI models that can responsibly leverage alternative, consent-based data – such as mobile money activity, telco usage, and digital transaction patterns.

“Arttha is already equipped to ingest and contextualise these unconventional data sources, laying the groundwork for inclusive credit assessments. Our approach is to enhance – not replace –
traditional underwriting, enabling lenders to build more holistic, explainable risk profiles, even in data-scarce environments.

“Looking ahead, our focus is on making real-time, intelligent lending a reality – tailored to the unique financial behaviours and ecosystems of every market we serve.”

In a future which is rapidly evolving, how do you ensure that your products stay competitive?

“Staying competitive in a rapidly evolving landscape requires more than innovation – it demands anticipation. At PureSoftware, we design Arttha to be inherently agile: cloud-native, modular, and API-first, which means we can respond quickly to regulatory shifts, customer needs, and technological advancements.

“But more importantly, we stay close to the ground – partnering with financial institutions across geographies, listening to end-users, and continuously refining our roadmap based on real-world impact. Our focus on AI, embedded finance, and data-driven personalisation ensures we’re not just reacting to trends – we’re helping shape them.

“To future-proof our competitiveness, we invest heavily in R&D, interoperability, and compliance frameworks, so that every new capability we introduce is both forward-looking and market-ready.

“In short, our approach is simple: build products that evolve as fast as our customers’ expectations—and sometimes faster.”

“At PureSoftware, our mission with Arttha has always been clear– to empower financial institutions with a platform that’s globally scalable yet deeply local. As we continue to expand across emerging markets, we’re laying the foundation for AI-driven innovation that’s inclusive, responsible, and tailored to regional realities. Whether it’s digital onboarding, lending, payments or core banking, we’re helping banks and fintechs deliver smarter, faster, and fully compliant customer journeys – today and into the future.”