BankBazaar

BankBazaar, a Chennai-based online financial marketplace founded in 2008, faced a customer acquisition challenge common to digital-first fintech companies: how to reach financially engaged premium users beyond their owned web and app properties. In India's crowded digital lending and credit marketplace, cutting through competitive noise required meeting high-intent users where they already consumed financial content. The company needed a scalable channel to educate prospective customers about financial planning and its product suite — loans, credit cards, and insurance — while converting that awareness into website visits and applications, without relying solely on paid search or display advertising.

Haptik built a conversational AI-powered Intelligent Virtual Assistant (IVA) for BankBazaar, branded as 'The Finance Shop,' and deployed it on two of India's largest news platforms — Times of India and Economic Times — during a January–February 2019 campaign. Built on Haptik's Concierge Bot product for Android, the IVA delivered interactive financial education content within the news app environment, meeting users mid-context as they consumed business and market news. The bot guided users through financial planning topics, surfaced relevant BankBazaar product offerings, and used intent signals to redirect high-engagement users directly to the BankBazaar website for product applications — completing an awareness-to-conversion funnel entirely within a third-party channel.

The two-month campaign demonstrated strong performance across both reach and efficiency metrics:

• 200,000 unique users engaged through Times of India and Economic Times placements
• 96% automation rate — nearly all user interactions handled end-to-end without human agent intervention
• 28% conversion rate — more than one in four engaged users were directed toward BankBazaar's financial products

The 96% automation figure is particularly significant: it confirms the IVA successfully managed the full engagement funnel — education, intent qualification, and handoff — without requiring a human support layer. Ashwin CT, Sr. Manager of Digital Marketing at BankBazaar, noted the platform provided an innovative channel to reach and serve target customers with encouraging early results.

• Third-party high-traffic platforms (news apps, content aggregators) can function as effective top-of-funnel acquisition channels for fintech brands, reaching users already in a financial mindset.
• Embedding genuine financial education content into the bot flow — rather than leading with product promotion — builds trust and improves conversion quality before the handoff.
• A 96% automation rate requires tight intent scoping: the IVA was purpose-built for a defined campaign objective, not a general-purpose support bot.
• Short, campaign-bound IVA deployments (4–8 weeks) are a low-risk way for financial services companies to validate conversational AI ROI before committing to always-on implementations.