Digitalization Will Be The Mantra In The Post-Covid World

Interview - Shikhar Aggarwal Joint Managing Director BLS International Services Ltd.

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Could you throw some color on the company’s asset-light business model? Also, how are you leveraging technology and automation of processes to streamline costs?

BLS International is a trusted global tech-enabled services partner for governments and citizens. Our business is diversified into visa and passport services, consular services, e-visa services and front-end and citizen services to the governments in India and globally. It's globally diversified wherein we serve over 46 plus client governments spread across 66 countries. We have also established a robust network of banking points to deliver banking services to the unserved and underserved rural and remote population of India by bringing last-mile connectivity and financial inclusion. With this, we have successfully reduced the impact of the pandemic on our business to a larger extent.

Our asset-light model and continuous efforts to streamline costs aligned to the level of operations helped us to stay strong during this pandemic. We managed to limit the decline by continuous focus on cost rationalization and realigning expenses in line with the current level of business operations wherein our employee costs were reduced significantly. To sum it up, despite the challenges and a not so stable global economy owing to the pandemic, we have been able to maintain healthy financial performance. There is tremendous acceptance and implementation of technologies like AI in the visa domain. BLS has adopted AI-backed application processing which makes the process easier, faster and effective.