HDFC
Smart Saathi: a bank counter in a village kiosk.
- Discipline
- Product Design
- Work
- Information architecture · UI
- Client
- HDFC Bank
- Users
- Business correspondents, tier 2 and 3 India
In tier 2 and tier 3 towns the nearest HDFC branch can be hours away. The bank reaches those customers through business correspondents: local shopkeepers who run a small HDFC-affiliated kiosk and sell its products to their neighbours.
Smart Saathi is the web app they work in. A correspondent opens an account or takes a loan application for the person at the counter, and the bank sees the record as soon as it is captured. I designed the agent home screen: what is on it, in what order, and what each thing is called.
Who it is for
The brief
Design for the correspondent's confidence, because the customer's outcome depends on it.
Before Smart Saathi, a tractor loan meant paper forms, couriered documents and branch staff re-typing every detail by hand. The app puts that work on one screen.
One tractor loan, before and after
Follow a single application from the farmer's first visit to the point where the bank has a file it can act on. The yellow-edged steps are where the time went.
Before
about 4 days to a bank-ready file- 1Farmer brings documents to the kiosk
- 2Correspondent fills a paper form
- 3Documents couriered to branch2 to 3 days
- 4Branch staff re-key details
- 5Calls back for missing documents
- 6File ready for verification
With Smart Saathi
about 5 hours to a bank-ready file- 1Farmer brings documents to the kiosk
- 2Correspondent taps Tractor Loan
- 3Details and documents captured on screen
- 4Bank sees the record live
- 5Bank verifies; gaps flagged early
- 6Sanction decision
Six decisions and what each changed
Pick a decision, or click a part of the screen. This is the agent home screen from the shipped design: 55 services in 7 categories, then offers, tutorials and a testimonial.
Icon-first tiles, five to a row
What I did
All 55 services are the same 90px tile: a drawn icon over a two-line label, five across, in a fixed order. There are no tables and no nested menus.
Why
Correspondents range from confident smartphone users to people who are still getting used to one. A picture is recognised faster than a label is read, and a fixed grid lets an agent learn where Tractor Loan sits and tap it without reading.
What changes for the agent
Agents stop scanning down a list. They go by picture and position, and because the position never changes, the second week is faster than the first.
Result, illustrative
How it would be measured
Seconds from page load to the first tile tap, and the share of taps followed by Back within five seconds.
What changed for agents and the bank
Each row compares the old way of working with Smart Saathi. Bars are scaled within each row, so they show the size of the change, not the units.
- Farmer visit to a bank-ready fileTractor loan example-95%4 days before5 hours Smart Saathi
- Time to capture a tractor loan application-69%52 min before16 min Smart Saathi
- Time to find a product on screen-80%41 s before8 s Smart Saathi
- Applications right first timeNo call-back for missing details+33 pts58% before91% Smart Saathi
- New agent to first live transaction-67%9 days before3 days Smart Saathi
- Support calls per agent per month-67%12 before4 Smart Saathi
- Products sold per customer+38%1.3 before1.8 Smart Saathi
- Rural loan leads per agent per month2.4x3.1 before7.4 Smart Saathi
- 90-day agent retention+15 pts64% before79% Smart Saathi
About these figures: apart from the 55 services and 7 categories, counted from the design, every number on this page is an illustrative placeholder, not HDFC data. They show how each decision would be measured and what a result would look like. Swap in validated numbers, or label them as estimates, before sharing this as evidence.
What I took from it
Designing for an assisted channel meant treating the correspondent as the user and the customer as the stakeholder. Most of the gains came from taking choices away: fewer places to look and fewer fields to fill.