Auriga and Vidyasoft have signed an important partnership that sees them as protagonists of innovation in the banking world. Auriga became corporate member of the Fintech District in the first half of 2020 while Vidyasoft is a fintech already belonging to the community. We interviewed Antonella Comes (Chief Marketing Officer – Auriga) and Adriana Caione (CEO – Vidyasoft) to find out how the synergy between these two companies, both from Puglia, was born and, above all, what their joint objectives are.
How was your synergy born?
Comes (Auriga): The synergy with Vidyasoft is the result of the open innovation strategy undertaken by Auriga about a year and a half ago when we also inaugurated our IC406 startup incubator. It was during the incubator’s scouting activity that the relationship with Vidyasoft was born: an Italian fintech, a spin-off of the University of Salento, highly specialized in artificial intelligence, chatbot and IoT applied to payment systems and the financial world. The incredible matching with Auriga, which has been working for more than thirty years in the development of innovative technologies for the omnicanale bank, immediately emerged.From that point the decision was taken to invest in Vidyasoft by acquiring 7.9% of the capital: the step was easy.
Caione (Vidyasoft): The synergy with Auriga was born from an initial and casual meeting at a hiTech fair held in China in November 2018 during which we were neighbors of their stand. This meeting was followed by an invitation to the fintech innovation aperitif at Auriga’s IC406 incubator in Bari where it was possible to introduce Vidyasoft, its voice and IoT products and get to know the Auriga reality. We were very interested in this company because of it belonging to the fintech and banking sector, its position of national leadership in the software for the omni-channel bank and its openness to new challenges and technologies also for the already achieved markets.
What are the objectives you set yourself with this operation?
Comes (Auriga): This operation aims to create value for both realities: it is therefore a win-win operation. In other words, we are counting on creating developmental and growth opportunities for Vidyasoft by bringing it to the national and international markets; markets in which Auriga is a recognized player. We want to bring the solutions and products developed by the fintech team after having properly integrated them with Auriga’s omnichannel platform. Auriga has always promoted the culture of systemic innovation experimentation, so much so that every year we invest about 25% of our turnover in R&D to become an integral part of our DNA. Today this is no longer enough to ensure growth and sustainability, which is why we still want to contaminate ourselves and forge collaborations and partnerships in the future on the Vidyasoft model. That’s also why,at the beginning of the year, we joined as a corporate member of Fintech District, the reference point of fintech in Italy, which has among its primary objectives to develop open innovation projects.
Caione (Vidyasoft): We signed with Auriga a three-year commercial partnership agreement. During this period the intention is to consolidate the development of the product and then put it into production and on the market. It is a voice and IoT product that will be customized for the specific verticals of Auriga and its customers. In addition to this, we also signed an option agreement last September 3rd. This signature sanctioned Auriga’s entry into the company. For Vidyasoft, the partnership with Auriga represents a huge advantage in terms of reducing the business cycle and facilitating the sales process as Auriga has decades of experience and established customers. We therefore believe in this strong growth from a commercial, professional and market point of view. With this agreement, Vidyasoft aims to gain access to Auriga’s customer base, particularly its international one, since Auriga operates with the most important service providers and banking groups, not only in Italy but also in Europe, in markets such as England, France, Belgium, Spain and Eastern Europe and international markets such as Singapore, with which we have already had the opportunity to be in contact thanks to Auriga.
What are the next steps? What will this operation concretely consist of?
Comes (Auriga): The next steps are very operative: that is, collaboration will develop along two lines, one technical and the other commercial, but both are very close. On the technical level it will be necessary to proceed to a deeper and deeper integration between the respective solutions foreseeing those technological upgrades that will allow us to have a winning commercial proposition. From here we reach the commercial objective that is to present and appreciate the IoT solutions developed jointly with the national and international banking world. If we want to go into more detail, the short-term objective will be the inclusion in the Auriga product portfolio of Vidyasoft’s chatbot solution to provide more advanced and high-performance customer care to users of digital banking and self-service banking services. This for us is only the first step because the final goal is much more ambitious and is to develop together enabling technologies for the bank of the future, which will be an increasingly omnichannel and experiential and customer centric bank.