Ever walked into a bank on a busy day and waited for a long time to get a simple information from a counter? Well, I have walked into a bank and found myself hunting for the right counter to get the right information. HDFC bank has found a way to employ technology to assist customers who walk into the bank. They have launched IRA 2.0, a Humanoid Robot in their Koramangala Branch in Bangalore.

Humanoid Roboto IRA 2.0

The first version of IRA was launched at HDFC Bank branch in Mumbai and now IRA 2.0 is much more advanced than the first version. Apart from greeting and guiding the customer to the right counter, like the IRA 1.0, IRA 2.0 can interact with the customer and answer banking related queries. In the future, IRA will be able to educate customers about banking products, give information about bank accounts, handle service requests and provide the status of applications or requests.

IRA 2.0 is developed by Invento Makerspaces. It is a 5 feet tall robot shaped like a human mannequin with a 7.9” tablet on its chest. It can navigate inside the bank and detect obstacles with its sensors. It also has Face detection and speech recognition algorithms (SWARA) which will be enabled soon. Senseforth’s EVA chat engine can answer customer queries and give them information.

HDFC Banking on Alexa with EVA

The chat engine EVA is also integrated with Alexa, Amazon’s AI-based home automation engine. After integrating your account with Alexa, you can speak to Alexa and chat with the bank’s virtual assistant, EVA. EVA will answer all your banking related questions. I tried it on Echo Dot and also the Alexa app on my mobile. It worked flawlessly. You will have to enable the HDFC Bank skill on the app and then you can talk to Alexa and get general and product related queries, without lifting a finger.

HDFC Banking on Google Home with EVA

EVA, the chat assistant developed in association with Senseforth, can also be enabled on Google Home speakers and integrated with Google Assistant.

On both these platforms, EVA can answer a bunch of questions like

• Features, benefits, and charges of HDFC Banking products
• Instruction on various banking procedures
• Find IFSC code and bank branches
• Track and analyze customer issues
• Guide to various types of transactions

I was present at the launch event of IRA 2.0 and EVA at the HDFC Koramangala branch and got a first-hand experience of these technologies that are bound to revolutionize the BFS (Banking and Finance Sector). The demo was followed by a Twitter Chat session where Mr. Nitin Chugh (@nitinHDFCBank) and answered many questions about IRA and IVA on twitter with tweets having hashtag #ReImagineBanking. You can follow the session by following the hashtag #ReImagineBanking#.

If you are in Bangalore and curious about IRA and EVA, you can walk into the HDFC Bank branch in Koramangala and experience it in person.