Ninja Credit
Ninja Credit
Ninjacart'24 - Impacting the lives of people with lending
CONTENTS
My Role
My Role
Design Owner - Strategy, Research, Flows,
Interaction Design, Visual Design,
Prototyping and Testing
Timeline
Timeline
2 Months and some sunsets
Overview
Overview
Ninja Credit is Ninjacart's own lending platform
that aims on giving loans to all the small and
medium sized businesses across the country.
I owned and led the entire design strategy of
Ninja Credit's global vertical which has been
adopted by other PODs in the company for its
user friendly flows which has been used since
then to disburse loans worth more than
₹2800+Crs since its launch in October 2023.
HIGHLIGHTS
Lending made simpler — get a loan for your business
in just a few clicks.
seamless access to everything loans
track, manage and repay your loans
get disbursal in an instant
A lending friend to grow your business
CONTEXT
.
Timeline
Creating an experience that is as seamless
as a personal loan app
THE PHILOSOPHY
.
Timeline
Breaking the flow into pieces and optimizing
each part
THE APPROACH
.
Timeline
Getting the user and setting the limit
THE ONBOARDING / UNDERWRITING
.
Timeline
Ask and take away the loan in a few clicks
THE LOAN DISBURSAL
.
Timeline
Repayment made simpler
THE LOAN REPAYMENT
.
Timeline
The repayment module is very crucial of a lending process as it is the main behaviour that determines the
success of a loan cycle
It was all worth it
THE IMPACT
.
Timeline
The product became a hit and was welcomed well by the customers of Ninjacart. As planned initially,
it was also adapted by the other business units of Ninjacart with minor changes and has been implemented
successfully across the organization.
The designs was adopted by the other business units and products present in Ninjacart and was tweaked
according to their design system and users.
THE PROBLEM SPACE
.
Timeline
Not another lending product
THE RESEARCH SUMMARY
.
Timeline
Getting into the who's and what's
In Q3 of 2023, Ninjacart decided to digitize the lending business that has been
running on pilot for over a year by then. The pilot was gaining some real traction
and all the process was being manually done by the team then. There were
multiple business units that were running this on pilot servicing to different
customer bases.
So, the company decided to create a product for it and bring all the versions of
the of the pilot into one bracket. To start with, the product was aimed to launch
on NinjaGlobal, thereby expanding it to each POD based on the adaptability.
The product was aimed to be open thereby easily making it adaptable by the
other teams once its launched.
The Lending Hand
As mentioned, one interesting challenge of the product was in making the
flow simple and open that it can be plugged into other business models as
well.
This is a very important and challenging problem that needs to be solved
because we were convinced that creating a similar and seamless flow
across apps for the credit journey is important as it would help for cross user
persona's and any user that would want to get a loan for a different usecase.
Ninja One - Fitting it into the
ecosystem
During a market visit, our team discerned that the primary motivation for
MSME's to secure credit is to maintain their operational capital cycle. So,
what exactly is this Operational Capital Cycle?
Typically, most business owners possess a finite inventory at any given time,
which they use to sustain operations. Once they sell off this inventory, it
has to be replenished even though the payment for the sold goods tends to
arrive about a week or two post delivery. Hence, there's a temporal gap from
when the owner sells their goods to when they recuperate the payment.
However, to keep the business running in these intervening days, they opt for
a loan.
Operational Capital Cycle
Banks - The overall UX is pretty average. There's a lot of of hassle to get a
loan, might be needed to visit the bank, high interest rates and much more.
Local Lenders - Very Bad UX, the lending process is fast but unprofessional.
The interest rates are extremely high and the repayment is not so welcoming
and is a big hassle for the owners to keep up with the fear.
NBFCs - There are so many NBFCs in the country and each of them are
specialized in a particular sector. The experience ranges between great
to bad depending upon the type of loan your taking and the company.
Usually personal loans NBFCs have a better experience since the process
is a bit simpler. Business loans are usually not that great in terms of the
experience.
The Gap to design
Huskur Market Visit
Why do they take loans?
How do they get these loans from?
Putting in some perspective
What it leads to — the North
Star Metrics:
Design Principles
Flow and Design Timeline
Almost 99% of the loans disbursed by Ninjacart is to the MSME's of the
country. These group of people consists of Farmers, Retailers, Importers,
Exporters and few more.
These are a unique bunch of user base that consists of a variety of people
from being highly educated to users being not so educated.
Getting these context is crucial before designing as it put into perspective
the potential scale of impact your product might have in the user's and
company's business.
An analysis to find the gap and optimize the expereince
Keeping a clean and simple entry point
Clear entry - Credit is very important part of offerings that the
company provides and its very crucial to have it straight up
on a clean spot, without having the user navigate too much.
This approach has been followed across Ninjacart platforms
enabling the credit
Keeping a clean and simple entry point
Keeping it clean - Once the onboarding is done, the user
lands straight in the landing section which has been
designed to focus only on the important parts clearing
out any other cluttered details.
Track and manage all your payments
at one place
The Payment Section -
A user would have the possibility of having multiple loans at the
same time. Different loans would be having different due dates
and timeline. Providing a page for the user to see all his upcoming
payments in one page segregated by filters and dates acts as an
important tool to track the payments.
Apart from the payments section, when a user enters the Ninjacart
ecosystem, he would also be having payments and trades and
orders. That is also included in the section, thus providing a overall
view of everything payments in Ninjacart at one place.
Friendly and Trustworthy landing
Knowing the user
Lets take a selfie
Understanding the applicant's persona
Self Upload: For the users who are savvy
enough to go through the document uploadand few business info processes
Assisted Doc Upload: For the not so savvy
users to go through an assisted flow with
an agent powered by the The TradeDesk
Getting in some additional informations
Multiple entry points for repayment
Repayment journey
The KYC
It is one of the most boring part of any onboarding experience because this is
the part of the journey that requires the most amount of input from the users.
Few more business details
Few business documents and informations are important for assessing the user's
business and arriving at conclusion for the actual limit and credit worthiness
Sign and takeaway the cash
The journey is done and the limit has been set. The user can just sign and takeaway
the money with a few clicks
Each screen of the journey has been thought through and has been optimized for
speed and some clarity
4 Screens - 6 Clicks and disbursed
Comparing it with —
the North star principles :
The Disbursal Flow
Optimizing for speed — The flow was designed with
keeping in mind the primary focus which is to help the user take a
loan quickly.
The user should be able to take a loan as quickly as possible
without having to think too much about the steps.
Unlocking your potential limit
Know your potential limit — This was done because it was
observed by AB testing that showing your limit at the end of
onboarding made the users feel a sense of disappointment
and gave a sense of untrustworthiness because most of the
times the limit that a user gets allocated based on a rule engine
considering multiple factors usually always ends up being less
than the maximum possible amount that can be taken.
Therefore, resetting and showing the potential limit based
on the income level sets the expectation of the user straight
right from the start helping build a sense of trust and
transparency for the user.
Back
I gained a lot …
THE RETROSPECTIVE
.
Timeline
I gained the first hand experience of collaborating and working with talented people from around the
country in the shape of PMs, Engineering Managers, Devs, Business and Sales folks.
I gained the first hand experience of designing for users at scale who are not so tech savvy.
I gained the first hand experience of working in a Fintech product.
It was personally a satisfying experience for me. Being given the opportunity to work on such impactful
projects and being the sole designer for the POD creating the experiences for users across the country
and globe has been very satisfying.
some happy moments