I Want To Be A Small Contributor In The Growth Of India: Robin Raina

EbixCash, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ebix Inc., recently signed an agreement with MoneyGram International to become its exclusive partner in Inda.

Through this partnership, MoneyGram will now be able to reach additional consumers through Ebix's 320,000 distribution outlets spread across 768 districts, 4,000 cities, and more than 75,000 villages.

In an exclusive interview with BW Buisnessworld Robin Raina, Ebix Inc. Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer and Alex Holmes, MoneyGram Chairman and Chief Executive Officer spoke about the cope of this partnership and how it will pave way for India to remain the top remittance market in the world.

Speaking about the partnership Robin Raina said, “This partnership is about bringing new money into India and another way of supporting the government’s move to grow the economy. MoneyGram has a strong presence in 200 countries today and bringing in money from those 200 countries into India and having 320,000 touch points that EBIX Cash has in India is what this relationship is all about.”

“This relationship then also translates into trickle-down economics of creating jobs at the lowest denominator”, he added.

Sharing his thoughts about the deal with Ebix, Alex Holmes, MoneyGram Chairman and Chief Executive said, “We are the leaders in cross border remittances and our network is as good as the partners we have. I think we were underrepresented in India. India offers a huge opportunity to do something new and it’s a complex market and the last mile makes a difference in today's world. Working with Ebix is a perfect tie-up for us.”

It must be mentioned that for the remittance industry India is the single largest market and remittances coming into India exceeded $80 billion last year. A lot of that is coming from markets like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar and the US and Europe.

“India had a great year in 2019 and its an opportunity for us to double or triple the size of our business. Our aspiration is to push an incremental $3 billion into the Indian market through this tie-up”, stated Holmes.

Despite the growing competition in the remittance space, the Ebix-MoneyGram partnership is poised to be a winning combination. “We have been creating innovative products and if you look at remittances, the market has been continuously growing in India, it used to be $59 billion and last year it reached $ 80 billion. I believe it’s about how do you give the consumer the best possible experience not only in terms of speed but efficiency, and most importantly in terms of value, which is most important”, explained Raina.

When asked about the spree of acquisitions so far and what Ebix plans to do in 2020 as far as more acquisitions are concerned, Robin Raina said, “I will say, we are just getting started. This is not the endpoint where we needed to be. We took a little break simply because we not only needed to integrate but also bring efficiency. We don't just buy companies, we integrate them and then create an organic path of growth. Once you have done that then you go to the next step. Now you are going to see a lot of acquisition in the Middle East. America, Canada, London, India.”

“I want to create India’s largest financial MNC. If you look at the software industry, we have great players like Infosys, Wipro and Tata but they have been doing consulting work. They haven’t created intellectual property and become the next Microsft or the next Oracle. EbixCash wants to be an intellectual property that is centralised in India and then we want to go global. I’m big believer in “Make in India’ and I want to play my small role in the growth of India”, he further added.