The Rupali Restaurant is pretty much last place you would expect to find life insurance. But this ramshackle roadside pit stop in Bhubaneswar, Orissa, is an excellent location for ING Life to sell insurance: in recent years the dhaba has got so popular that a chowk had been named after it.

But this was not going to be an easy endeavor. "They only had two desktops. The place operated without air conditioners, coolers or even a UPS," recalls Ravishankar Subramanian, director-IT and corporate services. Also, at 20 percent of a new branch's cost, IT was the second largest chunk and limited the insurer's ability to provide facilities and still keep costs low.