About CITIL:

Citicorp Information Technology Industries Limited (CITIL) came up as a spin-off of the

Citibank’s COSL (Citibank Overseas Software Limited) to serve their growing base of external
clients of the Microbanker. The product was one of its kind solution serving banks a cost
effective manner. This could be one of the reasons that COSL got external clients for this
product as it was very efficiently able to handle internal operations of Citibank across globe.
Role of Rajesh Hukku and Team in decisions:
Rajsh Hukku, after being offered the position of CEO of CITIL, took it as a challenge and
opportunity to shape something not very similar to what the industry was doing at that time.
This drive to stand out fuelled Hukku’s ambitions to take forward Microbanker product and
build on its success to make CITIL a specialised product company. The choice of playing in
product domain stems from the fact that the unconventional nature of a platform based
approach kept Hukku on top of his innate drive. Further, the prior expertise of Citi group on
Microbanker also could become useful for CIITL to fastrack its growth trajectory in product
and platform space. Whereas services space would have offered a lot in terms of revenue and
cash flows, it would not have supported the vision of Hukku and CITIL team to differentiate
themselves as majors such as TCS, Infosys etc. were already playing heavily in that domain.
Also, Hukku believed in going global and to do so the company lacked credibility, brand and a
desirable product. So, to address these concerns also, Hukku focused on the development of
a product which addresses the major pain points of its customers. Further, as Hukku
mentioned in one of his interviews (1) , they started off by keeping their customer needs in
mind and wanted to be a company which understands its customers completely instead of
just being another tech company.

To make financial
insitutions excel in
their business

Customer
Domain Expertise
Centricity

Focus on being a
Focus on solving specialized
Understand
customers' company than
customer business
business problems horizontal services
company

Goal Hierarchy of iFlex

 Y2K opportunity and
resistance to let it go

Two major
departures from
conventional
product
FLEXCUBE
development
Crafting future becoming the top
approach during
plans and getting Multiple debates selling banking
To become an FLEXCUBE
employees with on product solution globally
unconventionally development
risk taking and architecture, in 2002
customer centric
company giving entrepreneurial technology to be
end to end spirit onboard used, database
banking solution etc.

Dream Leap Fight Climb Arrive

Venture Scape of Hukku/iFlex

iFlex clearly understood that to take forward its vision of continuously serving the customers
closely by understanding their business needs, it needs to innovate with changing times. The
iFlex leadership also understood that along with staying at the forefront of technology
upgradation, it also needs to expand its reach which at that point in time was limited.
The offer to merge with Oracle brought the kind of reach iFlex was hoping for its products
and platform to get. Though the partnership took away full control from Hukku and team, it
offered greater flexibility in terms of iFlex’s customer expansion and product streamlining. By
2015 FLEXCUBE had more than 1000 customers across 130 countries showing that the merger
with Oracle did bring the kind of scale iFLex was expecting pre-merger. From mere leadership
angle, Hukku might have stayed better off without the merger but he was visionary enough
to understand the resource gaps in CITIL and how Oracle can fill those gaps and lauch iFlex’s
core product FLEXCUBE on the path of becoming global leader in financial services software
space for times to come.

References:

1. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/i-flex-solutions-rajesh-hukku-no-one-dreamed-that-400000-
would-become-almost-600-million-in-13-years/