Bankai group unveils strategic plans for 2017
Big Interview

Bankai group unveils strategic plans for 2017

Bankim Brahmbhatt, group president & CEO, discusses the success of Bankai Group and the implication for the future

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Q. Can you give us a brief about your organisation & its recent activities?

Bankai Group is a globally recognized forerunner in Information & Communications Technology (ICT) and services sector, with interests in wholesale & retail Voice and Telecom Technology from the last 28 years. The Group has been instrumental in offering ultimate carrier solutions worldwide with exceptional competence in IP interconnects for high quality international voice termination. We carry international voice & SMS traffic worldwide and streamline the businesses of mobile operators and retail voice operators through our sound industry knowledge & competitive pricing. 

Driven by state-of-the-art innovation and keen business acumen, Bankai Group offers direct interconnects in more than 230 destinations across the globe with 2,200+ carriers and 105+ Tier 1 operators network. Headquartered in New York, USA, Bankai Group has established a local presence across 5 continents, allowing the company to scale the lengths and breadths of both existing & emerging markets. 

Our robust experience of more than two decades and high-quality voice termination capability has helped us gain many awards & accolades from renowned organizations like Deloitte, APAC Insider, Queens Award Program, European Digital Mindset Awards and more. 

Q. What have been Bankai’s highlights and developments over the past year?

I founded the Bankai Group in 1989, starting with a manufacturing unit of telephones in India when there was the transformation of rotary dial telephone to push button telephone, we indulged into manufacturing of exchanges till 1998. In 1998, we diversified to develop telecom technologies for carriers and developed a billing software under the brand name of Panamax. We then diversified into carrier business while continuing our technology business with carriers in the United States. We started carrier business in 2001 and are now connected with carriers and operators across the world while running 16 billion minutes through our 2 subsidiaries - BridgeVoice Inc. & Broadband Telecom. Broadband Telecom is doing swap deal and reciprocal deal with operators and carriers while BridgeVoice is an online carrier portal, automating entire carrier business through our strength of technology and voice relationships. We have a talent pool of more than 400 professionals and $325 million revenue in voice business. 

Our prime focus was to make our technology agile. Rather than just selling and pushing our technology in the market, we used them initially for our own business. Today, our technologies are market-proven and we have 100+ customers who are not just satisfied but also happy with our technologies. We are also coming up with several projects where we will act as a service provider, backed by our own technologies. 

Q. What are the major trends in the wholesale market and how is Bankai planning to capitalise on those?

The current industry trend demands for products that are commercially sustainable, interoperable, generate new revenue streams with existing infrastructure and offer hassle free ecosystem integration. 

Our products and services remain in line with these industry trends through product innovation and commercially viable business models supporting long gestation periods. They are scaled to offer effective fraud management, revenue assurance and help in saving huge Capex and Opex by improving operational efficiency. 

We offer an automated carrier platform, BridgeVoice for online trading and settlement of voice and SMS carrier services. We secure our vendors with quick-pay services and settlement option, which facilitates MNOs, MVNOs, Tier 1 carriers, enterprise customers and service providers with efficient network management, maximized network redundancy, and quality based routing mechanism with competitive pricing. The platform’s switching innovation, and integrated business and policy management features provide wholesale VoIP service providers and carriers with an opportunity to increase customer satisfaction with optimization of investment and operational cost.

The Group is also expanding its footprints to better serve the clients all across the world. In purview of this expansion, we recently opened a new corporate office in Lima, Peru. The office will help Bankai team serve our South American clients in a better way and it will also help clients reach us hassle free.

Q. What are your strategic priorities in 2017 and what announcements can we expect from Bankai in the region this year?

As a carrier business pioneer and after having an extensive experience in wholesale voice business, we understand the pain areas of operators, carriers and retailers. The key pain point today is that there are multiple carriers through which a call travels, this deteriorates the quality of the services and distributes the margin among various operators. BridgeVoice portal overcomes this pain by reducing the distance between operators and subscribers.

Emancipating the limitations of traditional trading, BridgeVoice - the smart convergence of online funding, bidding and earning offers an automated platform for online trading and settlement of wholesale interconnect Voice, SMS and Unified Communications & Collaboration services. This one-stop platform allows carriers to access a range of alternative network providers and carriers to meet the capacity demand with quality assurance. It enables wholesale VoIP service providers and carriers to do business with global operators from anywhere in the world. The platform helps them CONNECT, BID, and offer high-end VoIP termination services to their customers. 

BridgeVoice portal basically has three service sectors - Voice, SMS and Unified Communications as a Service. We have started with carrier voice and SMS services on our portal. And, in phase 2 we will come up with Unified Communications as a Service where we will do B2B and B2C business using all our strength of technology in the cloud. We will provide Unified Communications in multiple countries by partnering with other local operators or service providers. This will allow us to create retail traffic, leveraging the operators by having access to the traffic. UCaaS will be a boon for service providers with no investment of Capex as we are going to provide end-to-end Unified Communications Services through our own network and in-house developed technology. 

We are also coming up with the white label offering of our automated carrier portal, BridgeVoice, enabling businesses to trade voice services on a hosted network. It offers all necessary operational systems and customer portals for sales acquisition, provisioning, and query management with 24/7/365 support. BridgeVoice white label offering provides tailored solutions with interfaces of user’s environment. 

In phase 3, we are planning to integrate our BridgeVoice portal with the banks to provide hassle free funding and settlement between carriers and service providers. This will help strengthen our technology and experience in carrier business for accessing subscribers directly and in launching our retail services. 

Q. What do you hope to achieve out of your attendance at the Capacity events this year?

Capacity events are one among the biggest networking events in the telecom industry. They offer a host of potential business, customer engagement and interacting opportunities. We are hopeful to achieve some great prospects of associating with carriers, Tier 1 and Tier 2 operators. We are sure that our team will come bag full of business opportunities from Capacity events.   

For more information, please visit www.bankaigroup.com





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