By Leo Leung, Group Vice President, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle Technology

Unico Housing Finance is a new-age housing finance company formed in 2023 to help customers with limited credit history or banking experience in purchasing or building homes. The Chennai-based company turned to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to expedite processes, making loan disbursement fast, secure, and easily accessible to this growing market segment.

Unico’s CEO Babu Vellingiri spoke with Leo Leung, Group Vice President, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and Oracle Technology, about the challenges OCI helps the company overcome to best serve its customers. The interview was edited for clarity and length.

Leo Leung: What’s the startup climate like in India?

Babu Vellingiri: It is thriving, especially in Fintech, BFSI (Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance), healthcare, e-commerce, and SaaS sectors, fueled by a young population, widespread digital adoption, and strong government support. In addition, the availability of venture capital, incubators, and accelerators nurtures this growth. Government initiatives like Startup India are crucial in simplifying regulations, providing funding, and offering tax incentives, making it easier for startups to scale.

Leo Leung: What problems are you solving? Who are your customers?

Babu Vellingiri: We are a registered housing finance company addressing India’s need for affordable housing finance. We support the underbanked and underserved population with a seamless digital-first experience, a super quick loan approval process, and disbursements. Our primary focus is on first-time home buyers and individuals in smaller and less developed cities and rural areas who require accessible and affordable housing finance solutions.

Leo Leung: What’s the market potential for your business in India?

Babu Vellingiri: It’s significant. The affordable housing finance market in India is a dynamic and promising sector with the potential to empower millions of low- and middle-income families to achieve homeownership. This market is characterized by a significant housing shortage, a growing focus on reaching underserved customers, and the rise of specialized Affordable Housing Finance Companies (AHFCs). By addressing the challenges and capitalizing on the opportunities, this sector can play a critical role in promoting financial inclusion, social mobility, and economic development across the country. We aim to build $1 billion in assets under management in five years, and to acquire around 100,000 customers.

Leo Leung: You use technology to help an underserved part of the community. What led you to OCI as part of this mission?

Babu Vellingiri: We chose OCI mainly for its agility, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. With OCI, we can roll out new applications quickly, ensure high uptime, and manage resources on demand—all of which help us maintain a quick processing time essential for serving our customer base efficiently.

Leo Leung: Are there technology considerations or challenges specific to India that OCI helps address?

Babu Vellingiri: The Indian market is growing, especially the BFSI segment. For a small company like us, the cost element is critical. We may not be able to afford huge licensing costs. Oracle Cloud provides both OCI and SaaS on the same platform, which is great for us. We can adopt a SaaS option with a consumption model based on use. That option provides a lot of headroom for OCI in India.

The Reserve Bank of India requires that all data be hosted within India. It has introduced data localization requirements to safeguard financial data and protect citizens’ privacy. OCI ticks all the boxes—ensuring both primary and disaster recovery sites are within India—which is crucial for compliance and performance. Also, Oracle’s optimized licensing costs help us keep our expenses intact. OCI delivers top-class services and takes care of all our concerns.

Leo Leung: Unico uses both cloud services and applications from Oracle. Did you need infrastructure, applications, and industry solutions?

Babu Vellingiri: Yes. We evaluated AWS as well but found OCI much more compelling in terms of superior performance, scalability, security, and ability to adjust capacity based on demand at a lower cost. In addition, we needed a provider who offered infrastructure as well as applications tailored to our industry. Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) helps automate our financial processes to increase productivity, reduce costs, and improve controls. We also leverage loan management capabilities in Oracle FLEXCUBE and Oracle Banking Collections & Recovery to help speed up loan origination, maintain all the critical documents and collateral associated with individual loans, and support loan payment collection. With OCI, we get a unified platform that simplifies management and ensures our business runs smoothly so we can focus on serving our customers better.

Leo Leung: Have you seen specific performance improvements that OCI enabled that allow you to achieve your quick turnaround goals?

Babu Vellingiri: Since switching to OCI, we have observed several key benefits. Firstly, lower cloud costs. Secondly, we have experienced improved uptime and faster, more seamless rollout of new products. This means we can serve customers more efficiently and keep up with the fast pace of the market. Thirdly, Oracle’s extensive experience in safeguarding applications and data has enhanced our security. OCI offers a more secure cloud environment, instilling confidence and protecting our critical data from potential threats, while also ensuring compliance with Indian regulations.

Before, paper-based processes like document verification that required in-person meetings and inspection of the applicants’ physical assets, which usually took several days. Now, with Oracle Loan Management System, that can happen in the five to 10 minutes. And then, with approval, actual disbursement can be completed in another five to 10 minutes. Using Oracle, Unico has disbursed $125 million in loans to 1,000 customers in 200 days.

Leo Leung: You have at least one mobile application that pulls together a community of tradespeople or construction people for homeowners to access. Is that out yet? Is that part of the OCI marketplace?

Babu Vellingiri: We plan to launch this initiative later this year and will also explore opportunities within the Oracle Cloud Marketplace. The mobile app marketplace will serve as a lead generation model for Unico, allowing service contractors to share potential leads related to home construction projects with our team. In turn, service contractors will benefit from commissions and incentives offered by Unico, thereby increasing their income.

This approach is distinctive as traditional banks and Fintech companies rarely engage service contractors as a lead generation community. Unico is poised to be a pioneer in collaborating with this segment, and we believe this partnership will create mutual benefits, enhancing value for both our product and the individual contractors involved.



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