We Provide Real-Time Tracking, Risk Assessment Tools To Help Businesses Stay On Top Of Compliance: Aparajitha

Labour laws compliance forms an important part of every enterprise’s functions. As labour laws evolve over time, technology is playing a critical role in automating many of the compliance processes. Meanwhile, rise of gig economy is throwing new challenges for companies in terms of compliance. Labour, employment and industrial are the three segments, which are the key focus areas in terms of compliance. Aparajitha is one of the biggest regulatory compliance entities of India provides all types of solutions to enterprises in these three areas. Leveraging technology, the company provides real time tracking and risk assessment tools to enterprises.

In a conversation with the Bizz Buzz, Ramya Subramanian, Chief Strategy Officer of Aparajitha Corporate Services (P) Ltd, said that the company provides all kinds of services in the compliance front that includes the emerging theme of ESG. She said that the company currently serves more than 3,500 clients that includes marquee names like Amazon, Google, Oracle, HSBC, HDFC, Airtel, Boeing, JP Morgan, Intel, J&J, Samsung, Shell, Puma, and Sony among others. According to her, as the gig economy space grows, the compliance within this segment is likely to see further momentum in coming years

Can you provide a brief overview about the operation of Aparajitha? What are your focus areas? Also, please give some sense about the scale of Aparajitha in terms of revenue and employee count.

We are close to Rs 500 crore of top line and around Rs 90 crore of EBIDTA. We have more than 2,000 employees. We have around 3,500 clients and we serve around 100,000 units across India. We have 35 branch offices across the country.

The way we define the domain (of Aparajitha) is LEI, where L stands for Labour, E for employment and I for industrial. In industrial, themes like environment, health and safety are covered. If you look at ESG, which is very popular these days, we are very much focussed on this segment. Within social (segment), labour law is of course the biggest portion (for Aparajitha) which covers laws relating to minimum wage, equal pay, abolition of child labour and related aspects.

We are also into governance as these things need to be reported to the management level and the management needs to track it. On the environment part, which is still evolving in India, we help clients in their registration and licensing part. We don’t offer any technical support under the environment law. As far as contribution is concerned, employment is the biggest area which covers all the social benefit aspects and employer-employee relationship among others.

Can you throw some light on the operating models of Aparajitha with its clients? Do enterprises completely outsource the compliance related to labour, employment and others to you or is it a collaborative model?

There are various kinds of model, which we follow. One model is where we completely take over the client’s compliance. The typical engagement usually is, we first do a risk assessment, check out client’s internal processes, and then give a report. Our internal systems help us to generate the report, finding out where the client stands in terms of various compliance-related things. After this assessment, the client can opt for any of the model. First approach is the client may completely outsource the compliance.

Today’s HR resources are not into compliance as their specialisation is no longer in this area. So, the complete outsource model works the best for those organisations, which don’t have a dedicated team. Our team in this case manages the whole process. Most of these compliance parts are automated. What we also provide the management team is a dashboard in which they can track the status on real-time basis. We provide risk reports every month. That’s the most popular model for companies which don’t have a dedicated team for compliance.

The second solution, we provide is like an audit solution. The client usually has a compliance team and we offer an audit solution. Take for example the instance of any conglomerate. They have factories, establishments, employees and others spread across various locations of the country. A minor slip up can lead to labour unrest or issues. So, we offer our compliance tools for deployment by clients. These tools not only cover various ESG-related compliances, they also map all the laws related to commercial, fiscal and others. So, if it is an insurance company, there are laws stipulated by the insurance regulator that it has to follow.

Similarly, if it is a banking company, there are various RBI laws that it has to follow. For a listed company, multiple SEBI regulations have to be adhered to. So, we offer solutions that help companies to comply with all the regulations related to their specific sectors. Our tools break the compliance part into task items, and it maps the periodicity. So, the company knows what is the compliance periodicity, so that it can assign the task to internal teams.

Our system also creates a repository where all the records are available, which helps the management team to know the details with one click. So, we provide monitoring tools and audit solutions. These engagements can be monthly or quarterly or on annual basis depending on the requirement of the company.

Gig economy is growing very fast in India with number of gig workers rising every year. Do you offer any solution to enterprises for complying with this new space?

Yes, the third solution we offer is vendor solution. This space is growing as the gig economy grows in the country in recent years. All companies are relying on contractual workers, whether you are a bank or you run a franchise of a multinational companies or a new age company, they have to rely on contractual workers. In India, the principal employer on whose premise the contractors and contractual employees are working continues to remain liable.

So, the principal employers are worried because any lapse by contractors will create problem for them. Vendor compliance service is our third big offering to enterprises, where we handle the contractors and contractual workers. Within this space, we have collaborated with biometric service providers through which attendance of contractual workers is registered.

Many SaaS companies have come up that have automated several compliance related matters through technology. Aparajitha is also leveraging technology to automate multiple compliances. What are your views with regard to competitors?

Technology penetration in the compliance space is a welcome move and this helps all players. Many new age companies have approached this problem through a technology angle leveraging AI and genAI, which is excellent. What we bring to the table is that apart from leveraging technology, Aparajitha has the transactional procedural knowledge.

Technology alone can’t help at the time of audit, or replying to a note raised by authorities. For these things, you need domain knowledge. So, competition is welcome as they help in widening the market. With technology, we bring in a lot of value in terms of domain knowledge across the spectrum.