BUSINESSNEXT focused on APAC expansion following ServiceNow investment
“So, look, currently this is built as a strategic partnership. ServiceNow has picked up about 5%. For us, it was not just about funding. It is about cementing this strategic partnership where ServiceNow brings the distribution muscle to the scale and the reach to get us to different markets,” says Pulkit Midha, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Global Operations at BUSINESSNEXT.
When ServiceNow announced a US$40 million investment in BUSINESSNEXT, Pulkit Midha, Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Global Operations of the Indian autonomous operating platform for banking and financial services already had a planned of how they can expand their portfolio beyond India and towards the whole APAC region.
Speaking to CRN Asia exclusively during the ServiceNow World Tour in Sydney, Australia, Midha said that while the company has a strong presence in India, it has also worked with several financial institutions in Southeast Asia. With the investment and reach of ServiceNow in the region, Midha is now hoping to go broader in the region with Australia being a clear country for growth opportunities.
“The first phase we are focusing on is APAC. That's our priority for the next 12 to 18 months to start prioritizing especially markets like ANZ where we don't have a footprint, but ServiceNow has a footprint. In India, we have a very strong footprint and so does ServiceNow. So, we're figuring out how do we have joint account plans, how do we be complementary and bring some of the goodness of the stack from one side of the house together,” Midha explained.
For example, Midha shared that a client is using ServiceNow in IT and how does BUSINESSNEXT bring them to the other buying centers and lending in the branch and so on so forth along with a joint solution.
“We have customers across all Southeast Asia countries, but what we want to do is grow our base from there and that is where we think that to capture market share further, a joint GTM will come in and help us accelerate that. It's already in the process and so in the next 12 months, the focus is APAC across ANZ Southeast Asia and India. After that, once we've proven traction and shown the right joint solution has come together, we'll take it global across other markets,” Midha added.
Midha added that while both ServiceNow and BUSINESSNEXT do also complement each other in some existing accounts, there are new frontiers in white spaces across markets like in APAC where BUSINESSNEXT is already starting to work together in some of the large logos.
Specifically, BUSINESSNEXT’s customer relationship management (CRM), verticalized AI capabilities and digital lending platform for financial services combined with ServiceNow's commitment to delivering industry-specific AI solutions underscores the significant growth potential in working together to accelerate the autonomous banking across the Asia Pacific region.
Both companies are focused on creating a unified autonomous operating fabric for financial services enterprises. BUSINESSNEXT manages customer-facing acquisition, engagement, and real-time customer signals, while ServiceNow's Financial Services Operations (FSO) platform orchestrates middle and back-office operations—including case management, complaints handling, and agentic AI workflows.
This combination along with ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower helps eliminate fragmentation and enables financial services organizations to deliver a seamless system of execution for creating future ready autonomous operations with regulatory sector guard rails at scale.
Customers excited on future
When asked how existing BUSINESSNEXT customers are reacting to the investment made by ServiceNow, Midha shared that the customers are not just excited but also looking forward to how both platforms can come together.
“One of the things we've done is communicated outright together to customers to look at how the partnership is stitched together, including sharing the use cases. So I think that's clarity they have been seeking of how both the platforms will interoperate, and we've been proactive enough to tell them some of these stories. This include how the front to back of the stack story will look like, how an autonomous journey looks like, what will the AI Control Tower role play, and how will autonomous be safe governed through some of the pieces that both ServiceNow brings. We also have AI control surfaces for each of the agents to be able to be governed and secured,” Midha explained.
At the same time, Midha pointed out that integration should not be a concern as BUSINESSNEXT is already working with banks and integrating with more than 300 systems. With a typical large bank having more than 800 systems in the landscape, integration is pretty much on the BUSINESSNEXT DNA and there would not be any issues, even when it comes to integrating touch points with ServiceNow.
“Of course we'll need to have much deeper integration as there will be many more touch points that we need to have. That is something we're carving with our solutioning team and this is being run as a full business unit within BUSINESSNEXT. We have a solutioning team dedicatedly focused on having those kinds of integrations in,” he said.
Midha also mentioned that the integration concerns will not slow BUSINESSNEXT in its go-to-market plans as things will evolve. He believes banks will have specific use cases where both teams will come together and do customer specific kind of stitching and integration as well.
Challenges and opportunities
Apart from integration, one of the fundamental issues with banks is the fragmented or “spaghetti architecture” they've gotten into which got even more accentuated during the pandemic a few years ago. Midha said a lot of banks were siloed for resiliency as they had to buy and then now combine.
On top of that, he said there is almost a cottage industry of AI within banks. For example, there are AI experiments running across different portions of the bank.
“What we are trying to do now is how do we make it more organized for banks, in terms of what should be the autonomous fabric, what should be the right autonomous architecture, where do you run systems of innovation and where do banks run mature processes versus running everything everywhere. How do we have a single entity model such that agents will actually be able to use the single source of truths versus different data sources, different permission sets, etc,” Midha explained.
Referring to this as the autonomous operating layer at the top, Midha believes that these are also the areas that BUSINESSNEXT is working on with ServiceNow. Midha added that ServiceNow has also been working on a similar dynamic on their own as well. The philosophy is very similar when it comes to unification of platforms.
“I guess with ServiceNow, the security acquisitions that they've done as well on AI in identity security fits quite well, especially for a bank. We've been talking to ServiceNow on how identity fits in so well, especially with agents having their own identities as well as since it kind of becomes a centerpiece of what agent can access,” he added.
According to Midha, BUSINESSNEXT is also working with neobanks and digital banks in Southeast Asia. While the company has primarily focused on traditional and incumbent banks that are modernizing and on their digital journey, Midha explained that they have had conversations with digital banks in the region.
“So, we're working with a few digital banks across Southeast Asia. We are in conversations with a bunch of them. A lot of digital banks build on their own as well, so that's a piece that we go use case by use case. Merchant management systems are areas that we explore with them. This includes onboarding of merchants, giving loans to merchants and such. Those are the type of use cases where we work with some of the digital banks,” he said.
Going beyond the investment
Given the investment by ServiceNow, CRN Asia also asked how BUSINESSNEXT would react should the investment move towards an acquisition in the future. Here’s what Midha had to say.
“So, look, currently this is built as a strategic partnership. ServiceNow has picked up about 5%. For us, it was not just about funding. It is about cementing this strategic partnership where ServiceNow brings the distribution muscle to the scale and the reach to get us to different markets. That is vis-a-vis as going to a financial investor. We've been capital efficient capital surplus. So the priority from the deal is the complementarity and the distribution muscle which underwrites the rational for this partnership as of now.”
“The focus is to jointly execute together, capture more market share in APAC and then look to go global. That's the thesis. Currently there's no further downstream conversations at this point.”
“We've been working with a lot across teams at ServiceNow and I think people are very excited about the potential of this partnership and how we can potentially together sort of capture market share across some of our competitors as well. Our customers are seeing fatigue in the market as the cost of ownership has risen. So, how do we deliver more value together to the customer.”
“Everybody is trying to navigate how they should consume AI and what guardrails and sort of fortifications do they need. I think that's the set that's been the central theme. There's a fair amount of mature buying in this market and I think that's what we've been seeing but yeah, I think the potential of this is certainly very exciting for both sides of the house,” he concluded.