Recruitment Challenges at Jocata
I
t was a pleasant Saturday morning in mid-June
2012, and Sundari Vedula (Sundari) was seated
in her office alone, as it was a weekend. She was
the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Jocata
Financial Advisory and Technology (Jocata). Jocata
is a product-based financial intelligence firm, which
started its operations in January 2011 in India. While
she was busy reviewing her teams’ work, she was also
waiting for candidates whose recruitment test and
interview were scheduled on June 14th 2012. Jocata
was planning to recruit few fresh employees for the
entry-level positions in the technical team. Around
10.30 am few of the staff members and the candidates
entered the office and arrangements were being made
for conducting the recruitment test. Sundari was of
opinion that these just-out-of-college graduates
should not just be tested for their technical knowledge
but also for their analytical skills and other behavioral
attitudes and select the ones suited for the start-up
company. Sundari believed that, “While these
candidates might be very good at technical
knowledge, most of them would be aspirants of jobs
at multinational companies and show reluctance to
join a start-up firm”, which posed a challenge for her
and the company to find the right entry-level talent.
However, recruiting for the entry-level positions was
not the only challenge that Sundari and the
management at Jocata faces. Finding apt professionals
for the middle-management was even tougher for
this start-up company. In addition, giving the entry-
and middle-level employees the best career path that
matches with their personal goals that are in sync
with the company’s goals was the biggest challenge
of all. Can Sundari overcome these challenges? Can
she find a solution to the challenges faced by her
company – Jocata?
Jocata
Jocata Financial Advisory and Technology (Jocata),
a niche advisory consulting and technology services
firm, was founded in 2009 by Prashant Muddu
(Prashant) and Andrea Weist (Andrea). While
Prashant is the CEO and Managing Director at Jocata
and specializes in Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-
Money Laundering (AML) and Combating the
Financing of Terrorism (CFT) technology strategy
as well as systems design and implementation, Andrea
is the Managing Director in the New York office of
Jocata. She serves as the Global Financial Advisory
Practice Leader and specializes in addressing KYC and
other AML regulatory and compliance matters, where
she also solicits clients for Jocata. Both have a
collective experience of over 30 years in the areas of
KYC, AML and Data Analytics from leading
consulting firms like Deloitte (New York).
Jocata was registered in the US in 2009 and Prashant
moved to India to set-up the Indian operations in
June 2010. The Indian entity, after acquiring trade
licenses, company registrations, etc., began its formal
operations in January 2011 in Hyderabad, which
serves as the product development centre for the
company, while its offices at Pune and New York
serve as the business development centres.
Jocata’s mission is to assist financial institutions in
minimizing their financial risk, compliance risk,
operational risk, and reputational risk from the abuses
of financial crime, including money laundering,
terrorist financing, and other illicit financial
transactions. The company works closely with
financial institutions to develop, implement and
maintain effective AML measures tailored to the
institutes’ requirement based on its products, services
and business practices and that monitors the ever-
changing strategies of money launderers and terrorists.
Jocata specializes in writing AML policies and
procedures, leading regulatory ordered transaction
look-backs, conducting historical transaction reviews,
managing KYC remediation projects, conducting
AML training, and developing customer risk ranking
methodologies.
Jocata partnered with various consulting firms and
IT services companies like BASIX Consulting &
Training Services Pvt Ltd., iGATE Corporation,
Cognizant, QuadRisk, Verinite, Mphasis, Sutherland
Global Services, CRISIL Risk Solutions, Aryan
Imaging & Business Consultants Pvt. Ltd., Middle
Path, etc., for deployment and implementation of
its products (Annexure I) at clients’ site and also
provide business development support. Jocata offered
its advisory and technology services (Exhibit I) to
some of the Indian and global banks like Hyderabad
District Cooperative Central Bank, Andhra Pradesh
State Cooperative Bank Ltd., etc. In September
2014, Jocata was selected as one of the 8 Most
Innovative Financial Technology Companies in Asia
by a panel of global Banks (Barclays, Bank of
America, Merrill Lynch, HSBC, UBS, JPMorgan
and Morgan Stanley).
Attracting Fresh Talent
Jocata was conducting the screening test for the
prospective software engineers for the entry-level
positions and around 20 candidates had come for
the test. As they were busy answering the questions,
Sundari was wondering as to how many of them
would be the suitable ones for her company. Sundari
was of opinion that while the candidate has to be
Exhibit I: Services Offered by Jocata
ADVISORY SERVICES:
• Developing and implementing a global KYC strategy in 40+ countries
for a large Corporate & Investment Banking business for a large
European bank.
• Performing a KYC strategy assessment and helping set-up a KYC
Technology Centre of Excellence (COE) for one of the top 10 Banks in
the world.
• Jocata was selected by the National Federation of State Cooperative
Banks (NAFSCOB) at a national level to perform:
1. KYC & AML Gap Assessment across the entire sector that consists
of 32 State Cooperative Banks (SCBs) at an apex or state level,
380 District Cooperative Banks (DCCBs) under them at a district or
regional level and over 85,000 Primary Agricultural Society’s (PACs)
at a rural level.
2. Develop a comprehensive baseline Policy & Procedure document
taking into consideration the findings of the assessment.
3. Develop a customer acceptance and risk ranking methodology
that includes various factors such as Customer Demographics
(Customer Type, Politically Exposed Person, and Length of Business
Relationship, etc.), Geography/Jurisdiction, Products/Transaction
Types, and other factors relevant to the sector.
• Special Invitee to the NAFSCOB Working Group Sub-Committee to
review, decide and prioritize the existing standard alert indicators as
proposed by the Indian Banks Association (IBA).
TECHNOLOGY SERVICES:
• Customer Data Analytics for over 80 lakh customers for a large private
bank in India prior to recent acquisition.
• Over 30+ State Cooperative and District Cooperative Central Banks run
Jocata’s Customer Analytics and Transaction Monitoring Platforms on
the cloud.
• Digitization and KYC remediation of over 4 lakh customers for a large
Cooperative Bank to centrally manage and view electronic files.
• Implementation of Jocata’s cloud platform for a large global Japanese,
Australian and South African Bank operating in India.
• Cloud platform for KYC currently being implemented for a large European
m-commerce platform.
Compiled by the author from company database
good at technical knowledge (coding/programming),
it was not the only criteria for the selection. The
candidate also had to be good at analytical skills along
with passion and an attitude that is suited to face the
challenges that crop up in a typical start-up company
like Jocata.
The candidate would need immense analytical skills
(along with the technical knowledge) to develop
products at Jocata, as the product would be designed
to process/deal with huge amount of client data (in
this case, data from customers’ transactions at a bank),
monitor, analyze and report the transactions patterns
of the bank’s customers to avoid usage of funds in
illegal activities.
In addition, the candidates are required to be
passionate enough to work in a start-up firm. In India,
most of the students dream of working for an MNC
or big Indian company with a hefty pay package after
completing their education. However, for some, the
pay package does not matter as much as the brand
name. Even the parents, relatives, friends and
acquaintances nurture the typical mind-set that, ‘if
you are not working for an MNC, then you have
achieved nothing/not successful’. In some regions,
the MNC names, one is working for, are so important
that they are a criterion for marital alliances. With
such preference for big brands and attitudes of the
prospective candidates, it becomes difficult for start-
ups like Jocata to hire the right talent, even if the
candidate possesses the necessary technical and
analytical skills required to develop the product.
Jocata, being a start-up and not among the preferred
recruiters of the country, also offers comparatively
lower pay during the first year of employment.
However, after examining the employees’
performance, their understanding of the company
requirements and their attitude, the company
increases their pay to match the industry standards.
Moreover, many candidates would not be able to
adjust themselves in a start-up work environment.
In a start-up, as someone would expect, there
wouldn’t be defined role clarity, office timings, etc.,
as everyone is expected to do everything, with a lesser
pay package, i.e., an employee may have to take up
any role as per the need of the hour. The employee
needs to have extra passion for working at a start-up
company. Sharing one of her experiences with a fresh
recruit, Sundari said that a candidate who joined the
company left the job the next day, because the
employee was given some data crunching work on
the first day, and the employee felt that the job did
not suit his expectations as he was expecting to start
programming on a project. Sundari also mentioned
that the current generation – the millennials – are a
restless generation and expect to achieve greater things
in lesser time.
Apart from all these hindrances, faced in recruiting
fresh and right talent, Jocata faces a bigger challenge
in terms of finding the right/good educational
institutes to source the candidates from. As most of
the students prefer MNCs and bigger Indian
companies, they are invited first to the campus for
placement and all the good/talented candidates from
the top universities and colleges are picked by the
big firms. Later, if there are students remaining to be
placed, firms like Jocata are invited to the campus
for recruitment.
Jocata loses on both fronts – good universities/
colleges and good talent. However, Sundari says, that
Jocata till now had managed to find talented software
engineers (programmers, coders, etc.) from other
sources. However, it is more difficult to find the right
person for the middle-level management.
Finding the Middle-Level Management
Jocata’s organization structure consists of mainly two
teams – the technical team and the business
development team. The HR/Admin team forms the
supporting team within the organization. The
hierarchy at Jocata starts with the Founders followed
by the top management, the middle-level
management and the software engineers or business
analysts at the entry-level (Exhibit II).
Jocata has seven employees at middle-level
management. The responsibility of these middle-level
management personnel is to translate the vision of
the company from the top-level management to the
entry-level employees and embed/implement the
same into the product/service of the company and
lead them to achieve the company goals. They act as
a bridge between the top management and the
entry-level employees to enforce the vision of the
company into the products/services developed by the
company.
 Exhibit II: Organization Structure at Jocata
Compiled by the author
However, this does not mean that their responsibility
ends by just taking orders from the top-management
and delegating work to the employees reporting to
them. Instead they need to act as mentors and guide
employees towards achieving the company goals.
Especially in a start-up environment, they need to
take even greater responsibility – like being available
for the top-management and the junior staff at all
times, have complete knowledge of the technicalities
of the product and its making, recognize the need of
the customer as well and translate that need into the
product feature, and groom the entry-level employees
to the higher level within the organization and
simultaneously contributing to the organizational
growth, etc.
Sundari opined that it is difficult to find employees
for the middle-level management positions with
relevant experience and generally takes 6–8 months
to find a perfect fit for a middle-level management
position. Even if found, they tend to come with pre-
set notions. Having developed a certain way of doing
things in a highly structured and process-oriented
environment, most of them come with a wish list
that’s not to be found in a start-up. The junior
employees turn towards their seniors for guidance in
their work. Most of the Senior Managers (but not
all of them) are used to delegate tasks to their teams
instead of taking it up as a collaborative effort. The
activity therefore lacks the company’s mission and
vision getting translated into the product the
company had planned as the message of the top-
management does not reach the entry-level employee.
In one instance, Sundari recalls, that a candidate was
found suitable for the position of the Senior Manager
for the technical team, as he had vast experience in
the field and had good knowledge about the
products. After 6 months, the top-management
found that the person did not possess the passion
that is required for a Senior Manager in a start-up to
motivate or to provide guidance to his team in the
development of the products. The management also
found that the Senior Manager would take up a
project and only delegate the work to the team
without providing any guidance or mentoring them.
Sundari opined that technical skills of a senior
employee alone do not help in such instances. They
also need to be judged based on their attitude and
passion to work with a start-up, which is lacking in
most of the cases and would jeopardise the career
path of the middle-level manager as well the team
members.
Planning a Career Path for Employees
Every employee of any organization – big or small
or a start-up – would like to grow professionally (and
therefore personally). Before opting to join a
particular company or take up a specific role in the
company, all employees analyze the pros and cons of
the decision they take and make sure that the decision
would help them achieve their personal goals of
growth and achievement. Companies, on the other
hand, would want the employees’ goals to be in sync
with the company goals such that it could grow and
in turn help their employees grow along. However, in
many cases, the employees’ goals would be personal
and would not contribute to the company’s growth.
Jocata, however, plans career path for each of its
employees, be it for the entry-level or middle-level
employees. In one instance, an entry-level employee
had discussed about her career growth within the
organization, after 3 months of joining Jocata. Since
then Jocata started planning a career path for all
employees, but only after each employee completes
6 months at Jocata. In the meanwhile, the company
observes the employee performance, working style,
people skills, intellectual levels, analytical skills,
communication skills, etc., and then comes up with
a career path for the employee.
Jocata broadly offers two career paths for its
employees based on the analysis of their skills – one
that leads to a career where an employee heads a team
and starts managing people and the other where an
employee is individualistic in his working style and
therefore contributes to the development of the core
product individually. Jocata also considers the
employees’ preference before planning their career
path. However, if there is a mismatch between the
employee’s individual goals and his skills, then the
employee is informed about the skills he/she lacks
to take up the career path he/she desires and is advised
to improve those particular skills. The company also
provides support to the candidate in improving the
required skills.
For instance, an employee who is an introvert might
have expressed his desire to lead a team while he/she
might be lacking in terms of interpersonal skills and
communication skills. Jocata, while suggesting him/
her to take up the role of an individual contributor,
provides training as per the individual requirement,
and helps them in developing the skills required to
achieve their individual goal. Jocata also provides
training in communication skills through British
Library and Ramakrishna Math. It also provides
etiquette training for all those employees who need
to travel abroad on business assignments.
An employee at Jocata would be allowed to take the
career path from an entry-level Software Engineer to
Senior Software Engineer to the role of a Principal
Software Engineer (generally known as Technical
Lead/Team Lead). Even after assuming the role of a
leader, the employee has to allocate 50% of his time
to contribute towards product development along
with his team and the remaining time in catering to
the required managerial activities such that he/she does
not lose touch with the technical skills. However,
every employee at Jocata is made familiar with both
sides of the product – product development and
implementation at the clients’ site – to provide a
thorough knowledge and hands-on-experience of the
product they are developing and deploying.
The analysis of the employee skills and the career
path planning is done through a review system. There
are three formats of review at Jocata – confirmation
review (after the employee completes 6 months at
Jocata), mid-year review and year-end review. These of these processes. Would the company be able to
review forms are filled in by the employee, and the attract right candidates for the entry-level and middle-
Team Leads of both the technical team and the level positions and plan the best career path for them
business team. The forms also contain the ‘goals’ in the organization that would help in employee
section wherein the employee explicitly growth and simultaneously achieve company visions
communicates his personal goals. However, the and goals?
reviewers or the management checks whether the
individual goals of the employee are in sync with the
company goals and whether they could collectively
help in fulfilling the company’s mission. The career
path is then set taking into account the goals of the
individual and aligning them with the goals of the
company. The employee along with the Team Lead
keeps a track of these listed goals on a monthly-basis
and checks whether the employee is moving towards
achieving his/her goal and in turn fulfilling the goals/
vision of the company. Sundari mentions that the
career planning initiative helps the employees ‘grow
as we grow’.

The Challenges
The confirmation review, the mid-year review and
the year-end review are also done at Jocata to check
the individual performance of the employees and
conduct their performance appraisals. The
confirmation review is done 6 months after the
employee joins Jocata, to confirm the completion
of the probation period. This is also used to analyse
the employee skills and planning a career path for
the employee. However, the other two reviews (mid-
year and year-end of the financial year) are the ones
that are specifically used to keep track of the individual
goals of the employee, the work status, the progress
in terms of achievement of goals and completion of
assigned tasks, behavior in the place of work, etc.,
which are used for the performance appraisal of the
employee.
While the performance appraisal is the final outcome
to the processes of recruitment, confirmation review,
skill analysis, planning a career path, mid-year review
and year-end review, Jocata faces challenges in each
 Annexure I: Jocata’s Products

- Client Enterprise Acceptance & Review

The comprehensive KYC solution from Jocata to let financial institutions know the true identity of each customer and that they have effective due diligence
policies, procedures, and processes in place in order to comply with regulatory requirements. Its features allow financial institutes to:
- Use a flexible KYC engine to dynamically define requirements based on key customer characteristics.
- Manage global clients centrally without compromising local regulations or privacy restrictions.
- Perform risk-based Due Diligence including Simplified, Standard and Enhanced Due Diligence.
- Calculate AML risk using Jocata’s proprietary model or implement your own. Create and manage multiple models, if required.
- Verify identity of customers using documentary and or non-documentary methods and store the evidence within the application. Configure the
application’s document matrices to automatically generate requirements based on customer type, risk or other parameters.
- Log correspondence with customers for diligent follow up and track best efforts in keeping customer information up to-date for regulatory purposes.
- Match customers against Politically Exposed Persons Lists, UN Sanctions lists or other lists. Define and manage internal lists, if desired.-
Household customers to identify hidden relationships using our industry leading algorithms.
- Recertify customer information on a pre-defined time-frame based on risk level or other important changes to customer information.
- Remediate old customer accounts with outdated or missing information and or documents.
- Mine customer data and discover a wealth of information for cross-selling of products and services or other purposes.

- Central Tracking and Reporting Application

CENTRA acts as a central repository and management interface for all reports required to be submitted by financial institutions for regulatory compliance
purposes. These reports could be created by users or automatically generated from external systems such as STAR. Its features include:
- Satisfies reporting requirements automatically, with the click of a button
- Maintains history of previously filed reports and allows users to preview reports before finalizing and submitting with an ability to regenerate
reports with refreshed data for submission
- Multiple levels of approval formats for reports
- Schedule definition for reports generated

- Suspicious Transaction Analysis & Reporting

STAR is a comprehensive Transaction Monitoring solution for customer and account transactions across business lines and products, which helps a Financial
Institutions detect and analyse potentially suspicious activity. The application provides a robust alert and case management platform for proactive investigation
and reporting of money laundering activities. Its features include:
- Sophisticated Rule Engine for Alert Generation
- Alert Management Platform to Investigate and Document Transaction Review
- Automated Electronic Fiilliing of Suspicious Transaction Reports (STRs)
- Link Analysis to detect hidden relationships
- A number of coverage areas for monitoring, including Retail Banking, Retail Brokerage, Private Client, Corporate or Wholesale Banking and Insurance
- Monitoring Algorithms covering products like Funds Transfers such as SWIFT or CHIPS, Savings, Checking, Currency Transactions, Letters, Journals,
and Monetary Instruments, Electronic/Internet transactions including ATM and Bank/Debit Card Activity, internet payment services and ACH transactions

- Cloud Implementation of CLEAR, CENTRA, & STAR

AML on the GRID is Jocata’s premier KYC and AML solution offered on the cloud with a customized suite of CLEAR, CENTRA, and STAR on a single integrated
platform that plugs into the bank’s core banking systems through a custom developed interface. Its features include:
- Facilitates outsourcing AML and KYC reviews
- Rapid setup and deployment with considerable savings and minimal upfront costs
- Scalabilliity through on-demand resources
- Ideal for small and mid-size banks with easy/quick technical support and updates of new product features

- Monitoring, Analyzing and Reporting for Centralized Surveillance

MARCS provides a flexible framework for regulatory bodies, federations and other institutions that are required to collect and analyze information from
members. It provides a data entry and upload interface, performs analysis of the data input and generates graphs and reports based on client requirements.
Its features include:
- A flexible framework that allows rapid product customization (for small or large financial institutions)
- The system allows access at the member or central level with role based multi-tier permissions.
- Imports and stores historical data to perform comparative analytics to monitor performance over time
- Supports multiple data collection mechanisms such in both online and offline models
- Advanced technology provides scalability, rich user interface for easy interaction, one click navigation, remote backup capabilities and optimized
performance.
- Automated data processing design (validations, calculations and analysis for centralized surveillance)
- Multi-format reportiing (PDF, Word, Excel and XML) for detailed reporting at various levels over time
- Multiple licensing options are available for deployment in both on-site and Saas delivery models

Compiled by the author