The 10 best emerging fintech startups in 2018

™ www.insightssuccess.in April 2018

THE

CXO Standpoint Crowdfunding- The current industry, its trends and growth Expert’s View Emerging Fintech Trends in India Every Entrepreneur Should Know About

10

EMERGING

FINTECH

STARTUPS

BEST IN 2 0 1 8

V. Raman Kumar Founder, Chairman

Providing Best-in-Class Digital Credit Solutions to Minimize Cash and Credit Crunch to Millennials

Editorial

W

ith a population of around 1.3 billion, India is growing in the Fintech Market. A large percentage of unbanked or under banked population and the fact that it is a young nation witnessing high growth in digital penetration make India an exciting global space. With over half a billion dollars flowing into startups, Fintech companies in India has grown rapidly in the last three years and the segment is expected to grow further. Banks and financial institutions have taken note of this and are actively participating in the ecosystem. The government and regulators have also taken several initiatives to boost the Fintech network and offering new opportunities to startups to launch their competitive services.

Approach, Opportunity and Innovation is the rise in Fintech Market

A major role in kick-starting the evolution of Fintech in India was played by offering digital mobile recharges. For a very long time, Indian consumers used coupons purchased from retail outlets, largely by cash for prepaid mobile phone recharges. This evolved to digital recharges, which in turn evolved into digital wallets and usage of wallets for various other commerce activities. The fact that these new offerings have strongly impacted consumer behavior has not only attracted attention from more technology savvy individuals, but also a lot of investments.

An analysis of Indian Fintech startups that have been founded shows that investments in these firms has grown more and will reach at its peak.

Interestingly, Fintech startups are not limited to mobile wallets. India currently has over 600 Fintech startups in the space of lending, payments, InsurTech, blockchain and RegTech. This number is expected to grow further with initiatives such as focused accelerator programs by local and regional governments and banks, and funding support by leading corporates and Vcs. Innovation in financial services has been growing across the value chain – from product development, packaging, and delivery, to services.

Technological advancement coupled with commoditization trends has led to the development of a new crop of nimble firms providing services in each segment of financial institutions offerings. Fintech startups are redrawing the traditional approach to banking services. However, the ability of these startups to match and – in many cases – surpass the offerings and trust the consumer has built with a bank will be a KPI in the long term.

Overall, India offers a huge market for Fintech that is ripe for disruption.

With rising financial awareness, any startup that comes to India would need to strike the right balance between their product and the market, invest in customer education, develop innovative business models and build Fintech in India.

Poulami Das

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Editor-in-Chief Pooja M. Bansal Senior Editor Shraddha Deshpande Managing Editor Poulami Das Co-Editors Sachin Bhandare Shweta Priyadarshini Art & Design Director Amol Kamble Co-designer Aparna Vanzul Picture Editor Alex Noel Art Editor Savita Pandav Visualiser Poonam Mahajan Business Development Manager Akansha Garewal Marketing Manager Dhruv Apte Business Development Executives Sapana, Meera, Tarun, Ajinkya Research Analyst David Circulation Manager Vivek Database Management Prashant Technology Consultant Swapnil Patil sales@insightssuccess.com

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C O V E R S T O R Y

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Fintech Solutions can Help the Market to Grow Signicantly

F

intech in India is a unique because it is young, growing rapidly, and is fuelled by a large market base. With internet penetration and mobile usage expected to increase rapidly from 53% in 2014 to 64% by 2018, India provides an attractive market for technology startups. The financial services market in India is largely untapped – 40% of the population is currently not connected to banks and more than 80% of the payments in India are still made by cash. This untapped Indian Fintech market provides a robust opportunity to significantly increase demand in almost every category – consumer lending, insurance, trade finance, digital payments and many more. In each of these areas, new Fintech solutions can help the market to grow significantly.

In the issue of, we have presented the innovation in the arena of Fintech startups, who have accomplished trademark by providing state-of-the-art fintech solutions and are well-equipped for continuing the fintech startups industries future. All these companies are persistently overcoming the challenges and modernize the all aspects of the businesses.

Our magazine journey begins with the Cover story; CASHe, which provide immediate short-term personal loans to young professionals based on their social profile, merit and earning potential using its proprietary algorithm-based machine learning platform.

We have enlisted; NeoGrowth Credit as a pioneer in lending based on the underwriting of digital payments data. Finly is delivering India’s first end-to-end cloud-based software to manage all business payments & collection leading to financial automation. Rubique is a leading fintech player using AI-based technology to empower individuals and MSMEs with easy and smooth access to finance. ePaylater- India’s leading payment transaction solution provider. DreamWallets (DW) as a first of its kind online collaboration platform that focuses on the concept of Crowd Funding.DW is a high energy, creative, and a very diverse community of management experts, musicians, dancers, painters, photographers, and they are all united by a common passion to empower the community across the globe and transform dreams. ZestMoney is the fastest way to pay using digital EMI, without the need of a credit card or a credit score. CreditMantri as an India focused Digital Credit facilitator to leverage the power of technology and the digital medium to empower borrowers and lenders make efficient credit decisions. Avail Finance provides Indians with an instant online loan app built for them to have access to fast cash anytime, anywhere. Wealth Direct is an investment Platform which is working on making financial advice, Financial Planner in Noida Accessible to millions of Indians.

We covered, Interview with Insights Success, Jinand Shah Founder of Capital world gave some insightful views about digital platform and highlighting the necessity of financial banking sector in current market.

We have also encompassed some insightful CXO’s of, “Crowdfunding- The current industry, its trends and growth”

by Zaheer Adenwala, Co-Founder and CTO of Ketto. “Emerging Fintech Trends in India Every Entrepreneur Should Know About” by Virendra Singh Ranawat, Co-founder of MySIPonline. “Are Traditional Lenders Ready for Partnerships with Fintech Companies?” by Monish Anand, Founder and CEO, Shubh Loans. “TAKING THE DIGITAL DIVE!” By Ayushi Ahuja, Analyst working in Strategy and Operations in ftcash. “Vernacular Fintech Apps - A Step in the Right Direction” by Samant Sikka, Founder & CEO of Sqrrl Fintech.

So the flip page to gain some insightful knowledge about the current scenario of Fintech Market.

Providing Best-in-Class Digital Credit Solutions to Minimize Cash and Credit Crunch to Millennials

Cover Story

V. Raman Kumar Founder, Chairman

F

intech startups are challenging the status quo and offering an alternative to traditional banking channels for accessibility to financial products. Agility and innovation have set FinTech startups apart from conventional banks and financial institutions. Such firms have “out-of-the-box” business models that leverage technology to deliver financial services in a cost-effective, swift and convenient manner. The potential of

these companies operating in a digital world surpasses that of a high-touch bank model in terms of scalability.

Within the digital sphere, fintech companies can reach the financially excluded population. This implies that financial inclusion can be bolstered through new channels such as mobile lending wallets. This opportunity to “uberise” financial services at high scale and minimal operating costs has formidable potential—expediting the

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CASHe is about giving quick, smart, digital loans to young working people without all the hassles they experience from a typical bank

economic development of middle-tolow-income communities.

CASHe, India’s most preferred digital lending company, recognizes such concerns and offers instantaneous short-term personal loans to young professionals without any hassle that a typical bank makes them go through.

The company provides personal loans based on the client’s social profile, digital footprint, merit and earning potential using its proprietary algorithm based machine learning platform. It is a new-age digital lending company which basically does lending based on a sophisticated algorithm. The mathematical algorithm finds out the risk of a borrower based on his social and mobile data footprints. It examines user’s phone usage and all data that is available in the public domain. Its model goes beyond traditional credit-risk metrics and assesses the goodness quotient in the borrower and the ability to repay.

Hence, the company lends to younger people who are either near- prime or subprime borrowers with or without prior credit history.

Presently, CASHe is financing thousands of Young professionals across India - it has given loans to borrowers in all 37 states of India.

Raman Kumar, Chairman of CASHe proudly said, “We are now two years old. We’ve got about 1.45 million millennials who’ve downloaded the app. We’ve got almost 180,000 customers who have approached us for loans. We’ve given loans to almost

60,000 of them. 70% of these people come repeatedly to us. So, we are one of the fastest Fintech lending companies in India in this particular segment. So that really is the background of the company.”

An Ingenious Leader of the Organization An ingenious leader, V. Raman Kumar, Founded CASHe as a Fintech Company focused on lending to salaried millennials in 2016. After completion of his graduation from St. Stephens College, he was selected to Indian Revenue Service while still doing his Masters in 1984. He then attended Yale university for his MBA. He started his first company CBay Systems Ltd. in 1998 in the US in a city called Annapolis with offices in Bangalore and Mumbai. He started his journey with seven people in the US office and two people in India. His dedication has brought the company from there to a whopping 10,000 people. In 2011, he had 5,000 people in the US & 5,000 people in India as well.

“We were a global company with operations across geographies. We had a listing on Nasdaq as MModal Inc. And then, I sold the company to J.P. Morgan’s One Equity Partners for about 1.1 billion dollars in 2012 in one if the largest healthcare technology transactions of that year. Since then, I have invested in a bunch of businesses across the globe, including India. I’m also a private equity investor in private equity funds, as well as in my personal capacity.” Raman added.

Raman has won awards and accolades including Ernst and Young’s entrepreneur of the year award for 2007 for Maryland.

The Inspiration behind CASHe App Raman muses about the current loan system and says, “The current scenario is that a majority of people falling in the age group 22 to 36 prefer to use digital banking than go to brick and mortar branch offices of a bank.

Earlier, people used to routinely visit banks for all money and credit, but now technology has changed the entire delivery system. Another significant thing to note is that banks and other financial institutions approve loans based on people’s past credit performance. So, if one has a good credit rating and is above the decided threshold, let’s say if it is 750 as per CIBIL ranking system, the person will be eligible to get a loan. On the other hand, if one’s credit score is below 750, the applicant wouldn’t be able to get a loan.”

He also added, “The main issue here is young people freshly recruited in jobs have necessarily no past credit history.

These are the people who hardly ever check their CIBIL Scores, and many of them are unaware of credit ratings.

There are a lot of people who have never taken a loan and have been supported by their parents in the past.

In most cases, they haven’t really taken any loan and have used their parents’ credit cards in their times of need. So how can these people get a loan in their times of emergency? For instance, if a young boy or girl gets

into a job and shifts/relocates to Mumbai, and suddenly there’s an emergency where he/she needs 50,000 rupees. Well, the person has to ask a friend or seek help from the employer.

This is the scenario that inspired me to introduce this innovative loan application - CASHe �

An Inimitable Service that CASHe Provides Loans in Eight Minutes When people requesting a loan from a bank require many essential documents such as multiple forms, signatures, credit rating, address proof and Security collateral or loan guarantors.

Millennials view this as cumbersome and unnecessary. Most of the time they do not avail loans because of this dysfunctional nature of loan taking process. CASHe, after thorough market research realized that the present personal loan giving system required disruption - hence they introduced an app based lending platform using AI, Big Data and even Blockchain to digitize the entire loan giving process.

Empowering the Advanced Technologies to Enhance Clients Base For any business to grow bigger and make a difference to the world, it needs to have a unique proposition.

Technological leadership in the form of AI, big data analytics and Blockchain allows Cashe to predict behavior of borrowers beyond conventional metrics. The second most important thing for any business to be successful is to address a large market. So India, with an abundant young population, the huge contribution of services to GDP and a predicted growth rate of 8 percent with a disproportionate contribution from services sector all make the Indian market a compelling place for innovative ďŹ n-tech solutions like the one offered by CASHe. Out-of-the-box Strategy Execution In a digital world, winning and retaining young customers hinges on

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When a loan application is complete in all aspects, we can give a loan in eight minutes creating value for them that enhances the convenience and quality of their everyday lives beyond mere transactions.

“The whole concept of new-age digital lending is quite unique in terms of giving a young borrower a wow experience by giving a loan in under eight minutes without any paperwork, collateral and the moment he requests for it over his app, anytime, anywhere.

This is an unbelievable experience for first time customers.” Raman asserts.

For the young professionals who often find themselves in complicated financial situations, this easy-to-use application is the best way to get rid of the tedious paperwork and human interactions. CASHe simplifies their borrowing experience by taking out the complexities involved in the taking of a loan. The user experience is hundred percent app based, user friendly, flexible with multiple loan options, and totally digital. The 8-minute TurnAround-Time for loan disbursal, without the user having to leave their home, is a unique feature of CASHe. Besides this, what makes it even more unique is the proprietary credit evaluation framework, the Social Loan Quotient (SLQ), which uses a combination of Big Data Analytics and proprietary Artificial Intelligence based algorithms to evaluate traditional inputs and the user’s digital footprint to measure their credit worthiness. The SLQ determines both the loan amount and the interest rate charged. SLQ is both dynamic and forward looking in nature as it measures a borrower’s propensity to repay based on currently available information, as opposed to traditional credit scoring systems

which deliver a score based only on historical financial behaviour.

Money-making Ideas for Budding Entrepreneurs “An aspiring entrepreneur who applies creativity to any money-making endeavour is almost sure to land on something profitable. They need to figure out carefully what is the size of the market they would be serving, what are the current gaps that needs to be fulfilled, how much investment will be needed to market their product. Most exhaust all their cash flows just by spending a lot of money to acquire customers. What they need to really strategize it how to make their product disruptive enough for them to grow exponentially without spending a lot of money on marketing”. states Raman.

Future Approaches Over the next month, CASHe will work towards a full implementation of its industry-first distributed ledger technology enabled smart contracts to support its loan transactions from origination to pay off, and will subsequently work toward its market adoption. CASHe is the first player in the Indian fintech industry to adapt this technology in its lending business. Further product enhancements will also include offering loans to professionals who don’t have a fixed income and also increase the loan repayment tenures to cover one and two years.

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Phone - India: 020- 7410079881/ 82/ 83/ 84/ 85 | USA: 302-319-9947 Email: info@insightssuccess.in For Subcription: www.insightssuccess.in

Company Name

Management

Brief

Avail Finance availfinance.in

Ankush Aggarwal Founder

Avail Finance provides Indians with an instant online loan app built for them to have access to fast cash anytime, anywhere.

CASHe cashe.co.in

Mr. V.Raman Kumar Founder & Chairman

CASHe, which provide immediate short-term personal loans to young professionals based on their social profile, merit and earning potential using its proprietary algorithm-based machine learning platform.

CreditMantri creditmantri.com

Ranjit Punja Co-founder

CreditMantri as an India focused Digital Credit facilitator to leverage the power of technology and the digital medium to empower borrowers and lenders make efficient credit decisions.

DreamWallets dreamwallets.com

Nikhil Agrawal Co-founder, CEO

DreamWallets (DW) as a first of its kind online collaboration platform that focuses on the concept of Crowd Funding.DW is a high energy, creative, and a very diverse community of management experts, musicians, dancers, painters, photographers, and they are all united by a common passion to empower the community across the globe and transform dreams.

ePaylater epaylater.in

PRABHU RAM MD & GROUP CEO

ePaylater- India’s leading payment transaction solution provider.

Finly finly.io

Vivek AG, Veekshith C Rai Co-founders

Finly is delivering India’s first end-to-end cloud-based software to manage all business payments & collection leading to financial automation.

NeoGrowth Credit neogrowth.in

Dhruv Khaitan & Piyush Khaitan Co-founders

NeoGrowth Credit as a pioneer in lending based on the underwriting of digital payments data.

Rubique rubique.com

Manav Jeet MD & CEO

Rubique is a leading fintech player using AI-based technology to empower individuals and MSMEs with easy and smooth access to finance.

Wealth Direct wealthdirect.in

Vipin Bhutani Director

Wealth Direct is an investment Platform which is working on making financial advice, Financial Planner in Noida Accessible to millions of Indians.

ZestMoney zestmoney.in

Priya Sharma Co-founder & CFO / COO

ZestMoney is the fastest way to pay using digital EMI, without the need of a credit card or a credit score.

Interview with Insights Success

C

apitaWorld is a unique fund raising platform, which is created as a one stop solution for the financial requirements of not only Fund Seekers (Individual/ Businessman), but also for Fund Providers (Banks/ NBFCs/ Other High Net Worth Individuals and Groups) and Service Providers (CA/ CFA/ CFP/ Investment Bankers and other finance professionals). In an interview with Insights Success, Jinand Shah Founder of Capitaworld gave some insightful views about digital platform and highlighting the necessity of financial banking sector in current market.

Please tell us about the journey of your Company from its initial days, the growth, and its expansion.

Capitaworld platform private limited, established in 2015, started with a small team of 8 people with a clear focus in mind to establish a unique digital platform which can simplify all lending requirements not only for retail customers but also for some corporate customers. From a small team in march 2015 to a team of 70 young, dynamic and enthusiastic team with 5 major departments depicts growth journey of capitaworld as robust funding platform.

Capitaworld has been now positioned as a technology platform which can serve digital requirements of Banks/Nifco in current market scenario and has already tied up with multiple Banks/Nifco on digital node, not just as a business provider but also as a white label technology platform. Capitaowlrd has been now present at national level in India as well as various Middle East emirates.

Capitaworld has also been awarded second best technological and innovative product in 2017 by IDRBT (RBI’s technological and innovation wing). Capitaworld is amongst first 5 fintech startups across globe which has been incorporated by Abu Dhabi regulatory lab.

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What inspired you to come up with this idea, which changed the Startup World?

Being a chartered accountant and international CFA, i always aspired to transform lives of many by disseminating technological advancement into financial sector. i previously had been associated with various mid and large corporates, facilitating their funding requirements and that is where the ideation of capitaworld happened. there were lot many human interventions, processes undefined, nonuniformity in credit decision, manual collection of documents and longer tats etc. to eliminate all these, i aspired to develop a digital platform which not only eases fund seekers life but also banker’s life to help them with system which facilitates number of tools enabling and aiding smart credit decision.

Briefly tell us about the CEO/Founder of the company.

Mr. Jinand Shah has more than 11 years of experience across various segments including Financial Sector, Manufacturing, Ports & Infrastructure Projects, as well as Service segments. His expertise includes Commercial and Financial aspects in relation to large Projects and handholding the same. Having an excellent academic career, by Qualifications he is CFA (US), CA (India) Rank Holder, DISA, Certified in International Taxation – Valuation – Forex & Treasury (ICAI).

He is the main Founder Promoter behind this idea and has been actively looking into the automation and digitalization of Banking Sector and the Financial Industry. His Key role in CapitaWorld has been to look into overall strategy and also creation of complete functionalities to ensure simplified and seamless integration of all verticals and flow of information in the Platform.

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Jinand Shah Founder

What are the unique services/ products provided by your Company?

CapitaWorld is a unique fund raising platform, which is created as a one stop solution for the financial requirements of not only Fund Seekers (Individual/ Businessman), but also for Fund Providers (Banks/ NBFCs/ Other High Net Worth Individuals and Groups) and Service Providers (CA/ CFA/ CFP/ Investment Bankers and other finance professionals).

Capitaworld contains all the major products existing in financial market which is high in demand. The product line has been bifurcated in to corporate loans as well as retail loans. The corporate product mainly consists of working capital, term loan; lap etc. whereas retail loan consists of home loan, education loan, gold loan, auto loan etc. capitaworld has devised a unique concept of one form by filling which the end user gets connected to multiple banks

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and nbfc digitally. The customers can track real time the existing application status along with getting connected to right banker/s. On other end, bankers get right proposal to their dashboard as capitaworld has unique service of filtering the proposals as per the eligibility criteria set by the bankers. this filters and enables right proposal to get connected to right bank/nbfc.

The concept of capitaworld has also been backed by various artificial intelligence based smart features developed by inhouse R&D team of capitaworld which includes, but not limited to, smart video conferencing module, chat bot, social profiling etc.

Kindly brief us about your strategies behind those services/products. If possible, kindly give us a one line unique quote that best describes your company.

ONE LINER DESCRIBING CAPITAWORLD:

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A unique Smart Loan Disintermediation Platform and a One Stop Shop Solution for All MSME and individual loan Requirements Key strategy behind launching this product strategy is to cater to key requirement of Indian loan / credit segment.

The off late focus has also enabled capital for financial inclusion of micro loans as well which has been top priority of GoI. capitaworld platform has already developed a platform which can do smallest of a loan to highest of the loan amount. there may be banker’s prerogative of having personal discussion, although capitaworld platform provides the same service through its platform as well. with recent association of capitaworld with a well acclaimed due diligence team, it facilitates the bankers to not just have digital feel but also gives them the option of physical due diligence done by capitaworld’s team as well enabling good foot presence in market across India to facilitate digital drive in initial phase.

How do you work on your long-term relationship with your clients?

Client has always been king for capitaworld and there is an experienced back office team which continously maintains client relationship. capitaworld system has been designed specifically keeping the most transparent approach possible for customers. capitaworld provides the end customers the right to select the fund provider they feel comfort in and eradicates all bias possible at human end. capitaworld also provides client to enlist a list of negative banks if any which enables customer to deselect the bank he/she does not want his/her application to go. as far as system is concerned, capaworld auto saves the last uploaded data of customer which facilitates them when they login for their next application, then, most of the data is auto populated and hence easing customer’s application process to great extent.

Kindly brief us about the most satisfactory experience with a client. What kind of game changing services have you provided to them?

There are 2 major experiences which we would like to quote here. one where a carpenter applied through capitaworld for small business loan worth rs.50000 was able to get the same in 7 working days and second of an established business unit who got sanction through capitaworld worth multi-crores. This shows the diversity of

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funding requirement which capitaworld could serve in most effective manner to different segments of society What challenges have your Company faced on the road to success? Please share with us the issues a company in this field generally faces.

The key challenges are the acceptability factor on both fund seeker as well as fund provider. Initially, it was hard to make customers understand that the loans can be processed digitally. similarly, there were testing time when some bankers were bit hesitant in accepting this newer technology; but with passage of time we found this technology being embraced by not just these two sides of industry but also lot many financial intermediaries which we term as service providers like DSA/CA have started using this platform as full time fund facilitating platform.

What are the values and factors that you attribute to, for your success?

Focused approach, there is a lot much hard work and dedication by all units of capitaworld but it has been key focused approach which has kept us afloat amongst numerous fintechs in country. One more pillar of capitaworld’s success has been highly experienced and renowned mentor’s team which capitaworld has, has guided capitaworld in achieving this current state of success.

What is the greatest strength of your Company? How is it helping to move forward with the future plans?

Technology advancement and product / policy integration is the key usp of capitaworld. The exact understanding on banker’s requirement and accordingly designing the entire product portfoli enabling right customer to match right banker has been key USP of capitaworld.

The future plan of capitaworld is to make this platform highly advanced catering to all bankers’ requirement and user friendly for end customer.

This can be a stop shop solution for all banks and NBFC as a white label product apart for all sme, corporate and individuals for their funding requirement.

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Fintech Future

Are Traditional Lenders Ready for Partnerships with Fintech Companies?

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iven the significant interest in fintech globally, and its ongoing evolution - the word “fintech” is now officially in Oxford dictionary. The fintech ecosystem in India has caught up fast with its global peers in terms of adoption and is expected to reach USD 2.4 billion by 2020. Fintech firms are undoubtedly having a moment.

Fintech driven alternative lending is the second most funded and one of the fastest growing segments in the Indian fintech space. At last count, there were over 20 plus digital, alternative lending companies, each with their version of the truth, and probably another twenty in the stealth mode.

One thing common with most new age lending companies is that they rightly understand that they have a better chance of succeeding by collaborating with the existing lenders like Banks and NBFCs. Banks and NBFCs have also reciprocated these sentiments and are actively tying up with fintech lenders.

How are these partnerships faring?

Many traditional lenders are finding it difficult to “let go” and adapt. They are still second-guessing and in spite of various tech solutions, they want to “eyeball” physical documents.

Fintech lending is so much more than just another distribution channel, it’s an opportunity for the banks to reimagine themselves digitally.

As an ex-banker and now a fintech founder, I feel that banking and NBFC partners have to start by de-learning and adopt fintech lending truly. Every single process needs to be challenged, if it’s not adding value then the same must not be dispensed. Open Innovation is the core of digital revolution.

In their short journey, fintech in India have made credit process simpler, cost-effective and offer better risk assessment. However, while partnering with traditional lenders they are often expected to carry forward their archaic pre-credit and post approval processes.

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Some of the gaps which need to be filled are: 1. Traditional lenders still expect physical business verifications though there are solutions like work email and domain validation.

2. Instead of on-ground visits, use GPS tagging as an effective tool for residence verification 3. Application forms and pre-credit documents are often required in physical format though soft copies are available.

4. In spite of eKYC facility, physical copies of KYC are required 5. Most of the existing lenders have not adopted eagreements For traditional lenders, fintech is an opportunity to innovate and do away with artificially restrictive processes and documentation that have been embraced by their risk departments. They must see themselves as a stakeholder in fintech success.

Traditional lenders have an inherent advantage which fintech companies don’t have, similarly, fintech companies have nimbleness and technology which acts as a great equalizer.

It’s a match made in heaven.

Fintech lenders also have a responsibility to deliver on their promises. A quick look around and all you can hear is big data and machine learning, it’s all too early and too soon. It would be wise for them to look to the past and learn some lessons from traditional banks. Credit grows extremely fast in good times, but can also contract suddenly and if not prepared, it may be overwhelming.

As an eternal optimist, I am sure traditional lenders like Banks and fintech firms get better at working together. This is essential to reap the full benefits of innovation.

Hopefully, these are starting troubles and this partnership will eventually thrive. All it needs is a real sense of commitment to re-imagine the business model.

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About the Author Monish Anand, Founder and CEO, Shubh Loans. His experience of over 20 years in both technology and banking domain helped him think a viable solu on. His brainchild, Shubh Loans which happens to be India’s leading mobile lending pla orm, is already making the loan process simpler and more transparent for people in India.

Monish’s understanding of the lending sector and of technological advancements which cut the clu er can be traced back to his educa on. In 1992, Monish earned a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce from DAV College, Dehradun. He soon enrolled for a PGDM course and graduated from IFIM, Bangalore in 1997.

He has held key posi ons in famed na onal and interna onal organiza ons such as Ci group, Standard Chartered Bank, Infosys and Bri sh Telecom. Such roles gave him exposure to consumer lending as well as banking technology.

To add to the above, his first s nt as an entrepreneur saw him become the founder of a BFSI focused BPO in Bangalore, with an employee strength of 650 people.

Monish Anand Founder and CEO

Shubh Loans

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Fin Tech Revolution

FinTech New Technology Empowering a

Banking D

igital technology provides a low-cost way for people in developing countries to send money to each other, buy and sell goods, borrow and save as long as the financial-regulation environment is supportive,” - Bill Gates, Microsoft, Co-Founder In a developing country like India, the need for the technological disturbance in the banking as well as financial sector is really critical as the 19% population of the country is still unaware of the growing finance and banking practices. The current financial technology is far more different than the traditional methods of banking and financial services, thereby creating its own mark of innovation and technology. The FinTech startups are directly providing with the new applications, processes, products, or business models in the financial industry, composed of varied complementary financial services.

These services are effective as an end-to-end process with respect to the internet. The important and trending factors that govern the startups in the emerging technology related to banking and financial services are: Integrated Digital Banking New start-ups are emerging with the growing economy and financial sector with various functions that include digital banking in an integrated manner. Next generation digital services will create a digital ecosystem that will retain the existing customers and attract new ones. Integrated digital banking deals with the partnership of financial services providing companies and financial technology startups or other non-traditional market participants to lead to the

22

Financial

& Services digital transformation. The digital-only bank provides endto-end services through digital platforms like mobile, tablets and internet smoothly. Integrated digital banking itself is a non-segregated banking exercise which will enhance the customer satisfaction by providing anywhere anytime banking which is beneficial in cost savings and time consuming.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) “With a sophisticated, learning, voice-powered platform able to make app usage, including banking apps, more convenient and user-friendly than ever, the advantages of branch banking will continue to diminish, with stylish, techheavy branches unable to compete with the ease of access and scope of emerging digital channels.” - Temenos, a software company.

Banking and simple transactions with respect to AI-driven chatbots have already begun. Use of banking bots will surely be cost effective and beneficial to the customers.

Virtual reality will soon be able to support most banking queries significantly. Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) are the nextgeneration computing processes that integrate sensors, big data, cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), and wearables. This technology can also be extremely effective in the growing markets, where customers have a less possibility to visit a bank.

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Digital Payments Driving the Financial Inclusions These are the non-cash transactions made with the help of digital channels. The digitalization of financial and banking practices have created an absolute change in the growing market as per the online and offline purchases are concerned. These digital payments will bring a revolution enabling the financial services by replacing classic and traditional payment methods. The digital payments will put an end to the cash payments and build trust amongst the existing users and create new users. This has influenced the present generation to interact with the mobile wallets, P2P (person to person) mobile payments, foreign exchange remittances and real-time payments. Establishment of new agreements and procedures in traditional ways of banking and finance is obtained with the help of FinTech financial services. Digital payments are driving the financial inclusions and leading the establishment of the digital infrastructures.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence has now reached beyond the human scale with respect to the FinTech financial services and banking. Machine learning and AI can process and analyze a huge amount of information about the users. This comparison between data and information results in suitable services/products that customers need which will generate a high-level customer satisfaction. This will also are allow the companies to cut costs, automate different types of processes, as well as boost their bottom line. AI can provide the FinTech with security. This technology can aid organizations in identifying potential future attacks, suspicious transactions, and fraudulent behavior. Machine learning will reduce the processing times. Also, it will help in reducing duplicate expenses and human error.

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Blockchain Technology, Energizing the Financial Services The Blockchain technology is a new innovation for financial services. It basically allows the users to hold and make financial transactions in a completely transparent manner. There is no mediator in between two people making the financial transaction, and the whole process becomes easier, cheaper and majorly reliable. This technology can secure the financial exchange and transactions of the customers. The Blockchain technology consists of distributed servers which will help in sharing information about the customer’s transaction. Blockchain technology is now energizing the business practices in the FinTech startups.

“Blockchain technology has the ability to optimize the global infrastructure to deal with global issues in this space much more efficiently than current systems.” - Marwan Forzley, Founder of Align Commerce The changes in the FinTech technology can bring a great technology variation and innovation to the world for the emerging generation. These FinTech companies have become a genuine alternative for the general public users in the traditional methods by establishing a new way of banking system. The FinTech promises better management of money by making transactions simple and accessible.

The emerging FinTech startups will be able to gain more user confidence and vastly increase their position in the future market. This combination of finance and technology will precisely act as the motor for the markets of the finance and banking sectors with respect to the emerging FinTech startups.

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Finly: A Comprehensive Cloud-Based Platform for All Financial Needs

A

ccounting and Finance professionals are crucial to driving strategy and future business growth. A recent survey showed that 52% of business decision makers agreed that their finance teams can be entrepreneurial in the way they help the business grow. Yet 31% agreed that their companies vastly underrate improvements in financial management efficiency.

Manual processes have no place in the future of finance.

These tedious tasks take up too much time and lead to an uneven workload, long hours, and escalating frustration.

Finance teams end up spending over 65% of their time to manually carry out their day to day operations leading towards inefficiency. This is primarily because of 2 reasons: Excessive dependency on tools like spreadsheets & e-mails and Payments being an integral part of their operations remains highly disconnected.

Finly is India’s first end-to-end cloud-based software to manage all business payments & collection leading to financial automation. It has been designed by finance experts to provide CFOs & the management team with realtime insights into the business’s account payables & receivables while automating & streamline operations in the finance department.

With a mission to empower companies develop a proactive spend culture while providing finance teams with tools and data that enable them to have real-time insights into their spends, Finly builds software products that make your work simpler, more pleasant, and more productive.

MindFree Labs built applications like MintCoins, a platform for developers to crowdsource testing of mobile applications. The platform had over 5 Million Users & 4000 Developers.

Currently, Vivek AG is the CEO, leading product & technology section whereas Veekshith C Rai is the COO, leading business & operations. With both the founders having a technological background, the focus is on achieving the maximum degree of automation externally and internally to achieve the highest efficiency.

Vivek focuses on managing the product team and works actively with Veekshith Rai to automate the sales, marketing & operation activities leading to a leaner & technology driven business. All finance processes with respect to the business are automated with their very own product Finly.

“The challenges we face are mostly on the recruitment side, especially with respect to technology related sales,” says Veekshith. It is challenging to get the right candidate who fits the culture and has a deep understanding of technology and finance, while also being able to communicate and speak the same language as the accounts team of businesses from various industries. However, Finly has set up an extensive training process to combat this.

Unique Approaches

The Entrepreneurial Pillars

It is just 3 simple ingredients which make Finly a far better option than anyone else in the market: Brilliant Product, Quality Service & Fun Team to interact.

Serial entrepreneurs Vivek AG & Veekshith C Rai are the Founders of Finly. It is their second venture, the first one being MindFree Labs which they successfully exited.

Finly is designed to work with multiple payment instruments like VISA Prepaid Cards, Electronic Fund Transfers, Virtual Accounts etc. All of this comes with the

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Vivek AG, Veekshith C Rai Co-founder

“

Finly is a far better option than anyone else in the market because of its Brilliant Product, Quality Service & Fun Team to interact

“

maturity of their payments partner EbixCash, who has had 12+ Years of Experience in this payments space. The system is beautifully designed under the guidance of technology & finance experts along with top-notch UX/UI designers simplifying adoption.

Finly has an amazing team who always goes the extra mile in providing the best of service. They provide support on all possible mediums enabling customers to get responses to any of their queries within a maximum of 15minutes. With new payment technologies being introduced like UPI, they are working with various banks to update their software without the business having to worry about upgrading their transacting processes.

The company is also seeing a lot more mid-sized businesses transacting with other businesses across the border. They are working on Blockchain technologies to make the payables & receivables involved in this process more seamless while integrating the currently available technologies to facilitate the same.

Thirdly, the payment collection system allows businesses to automate the process of collecting & tracking payments received via NEFT/ IMPS/ RTGS/ Cash or Cheques.

All these products are designed to help your management, especially the CFO to have a real-time insight into all business payments & payment collection.

It would also help the team make strategic decisions with this data and help to remove all payments related hurdles as the business scales. All their products seamlessly integrate in real-time with Tally, SAP, QuickBooks & other leading accounting systems in the market.

Moreover, Finly has an API based architecture, which allows them to let businesses integrate with any other business system, allowing data to flow seamlessly across the organization. “This again I would like to point out is an advantage of implementing Finly, as the finance team doesn’t have to manually enter all this data into the accounting system,” says Vivek.

Distinctive Services and Solution Finly has three products automating various aspects of Finance Processes.

Firstly, they have payments enabled expense management system, which helps businesses manage their petty cash expenses, travel expenses, expenses across outlets/branches etc. This is also enabled with a travel module through which you can make your travel bookings and automate the expenses incurred through the same.

Finly's system is highly flexible and configurable to adapt to the needs of different industries. They cater to over 30 different industries. Their experience in architecting complex scalable products makes this possible.

Secondly, they have the Vendor Payments systems, which helps businesses manage, track, report, record & process the payments to vendors. ™

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CXO Standpoint

Zaheer Adenwala Co-Founder

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CROWDFUNDING ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The current industry, its trends and growth Zaheer Adenwala is a high-tech Co-Founder and CTO of Ketto- Asia's most visited crowdfunding platform.

Being a mechanical engineer from Drexel University, Philadelphia, he moved back to Mumbai in 2008 and started his career as a Product Manager @ Affinity, a digital ad network. There he worked on multiple consumer-facing properties as well as internal products. In 2011, he moved to Media.net which is one of India’s largest digital ad networks where he was heading a Product team. Most notable products built there was the Mobile ad suite that contributed 23% of the revenue within 1 year of launch.

In addition to that, he has worked on deploying an Affiliate Management system, CRM, and a host of internal products. Throughout his career, Zaheer has worked within the multicultural environment, from a large company to a startup.

Zaheer has known Varun (CEO of Ketto) since his school days. The master of cool energy joined Ketto and its founding team in 2013. Ketto’s tech department rose to new heights under his guidance and leadership, often working after hours and hours with no breaks.

In his spare time, Zaheer is an intrepid traveller who enjoys reading books over a cup of coffee and facing the cognitive challenge of new personal projects.

W

ith passing years, crowdfunding is becoming popular among entrepreneurs mainly because it’s a great way to ‘test the waters’ before you actually go big and launch the product/service. You understand your idea’s worth and where it stands in the industry. It’s actually the crowd telling you what’s working and what needs to be weeded out - that’s what any entrepreneur wants. So if you’re idea is powerful, we believe crowdfunding is your perfect launchpad.

This encourages people to invest in any particular campaign as per their wish. The range of investment can be from Rs 100 to lakhs and also the investors varies from campaign to campaign, We’ve seen how people invest on a couple of promising products on our platform - for example, a tech company called Leaf Wearables came up with this product for the safety of women called ‘Safer’ and raised Rs. 5,16,670. Unico’s world’s smallest blue tooth earphones also raised over Rs. 90,000 on Ketto. Additionally, edible spoons from a company called Bakeys that took the whole world by storm raised over Rs. 24, 92380 on Ketto. The concept was pretty strong and promising.

Maybe a few more years down the line, we’ll see revolutionary ideas like Pebble and Oculus opting for crowdfunding, and people investing on them.

The direct benefits of crowdfunding include getting market traction, accessing early adopters, social proof, press coverage, potential investor interest, pre-selling, access to capital, risk hedging, etc. It also helps generate user feedback allowing for enhancements or sourcing new ideas.

Lately, we can see some of the new trends emerging in India.

Recurring funding The recurring funding model enables campaigners to raise funds from their donors on a recurring basis. For instance, if the

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campaigner is an artist then the donor will his/her fan. Through recurring, the fans get the exclusive subscription to the artist work in return for their contribution. Introduction of the recurring model will ensure a constant source of income for these artists, helping them to only focus on their art as a full-time job.

India is at a stage where it has just started to understand the value that crowdfunding can add to fulfilling their dreams. These new trends will only add to the country’s fascination towards this emerging concept of fundraising and speed up its momentum towards having a significant global impact.

Campaigner Verification The authenticity of campaigners has always been an issue. But now most of the crowdfunding platforms including Ketto now focus on the identity, motive, and objective of the campaigner. The details of goal amount are shared on the campaign page through graphs.

Page trending Nowadays, the most active campaigns are placed and showcased on the official trending page. This helps viewers to understand which campaign is grabbing more eyeball and they can directly make a donation.

Microsite The microsite provided can be used by various organizational partners like NGO’s, media channels, colleges etc. For instance, Ketto created the microsite for Global Citizen, Colors Infinity, Indian Army etc. Many organizations and NGO’s are using these microsites for their ongoing campaigns.

Team Fundraising Fundraising is best done in a team. Having more helping hands multiplies your reach and helps you raise more funds. Ketto dashboard allows you to add more members to raise funds in a fun and effective manner.

The credibility of NGOs - Some of India’s top NGOs have raised funds on Ketto - Teach for India, CRY, Oxfam, Rapid Response, Nanhi Kali to name a few. We’re Asia’s most visited and trusted crowdfunding platform – so we make sure the fundraisers started by NGOs are safe, transparent and most importantly trustworthy.

Nowadays, crowd provides their full support towards unique projects. Ketto has witnessed these in many of their creative campaigns.

Bakey’s Edible Cutlery- Bakey’s were ‘Edible’ because they were made of flours. They contained absolutely no chemicals or preservatives and were just flours kneaded with water and are 100% natural products. BAKEYS’ was established in 2010 in Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, to provide an alternative to plastic disposable cutlery and the bamboo disposable chopsticks.

The campaign raised a number of Rs24, 92,380.

Mixtale: Drink It ! Mix It !- Mexer Foods and Beverages LLP, a startup born in the city of Mumbai. Young budding entrepreneurs got together to bring to the market READY TO DRINK(RTD), FIZZY(Carbonated),CAFFEINE FREE and NON ALCOHOLIC Beverages(Mocktails). The campaign raised Rs 2,57,700 and gave shape to their business.

In regards to Tapping Emerging Market for Social Impact, crowdfunding platforms in India have been active in every way.

Creating awareness - The process of crowdfunding involves participation from a large number of people which spreads the word among people and their respective networks. It’s the most convenient way to give a wider reach to any cause - that’s what makes it the perfect choice for any NGO/activist with a cause in mind.

More participation - Supporting a cause via donations is no longer restricted to the elite or the upper class of the society.

Now everyone from a philanthropist to a school student can pitch in if they feel strongly for a cause.

Possibilities of collaboration - Ketto has partnered with over X NGOs since its inception. Since multiple NGOs have successfully raised funds on Ketto, we connect NGOs with each other in case they have a cause that could create a bigger and more meaningful impact on collaboration.

The credibility of NGOs - Some of India’s top NGOs have raised funds on Ketto - Teach for India, CRY, Oxfam, Rapid Response, Nanhi Kali to name a few. We’re Asia’s most visited and trusted crowdfunding platform - so the fundraiser started

by NGOs is safe, transparent and most importantly trustworthy.

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Finance Sector

: Shaping the Future of

Banking

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“

T

he best way to predict the future is to Design it.”

–Buckminster Fuller, quoting this spirit, the FinTech is now shaping the world in its own innovative way, and also molding the future of banks by designing a new model for them.

Well, very few of us were enjoying the banking experiences!

And, as we all know, change is the only constant thing, and this is the era where we are going through one of the biggest transformations in financial history i.e. FinTech revolution.

Future will obviously be very exciting, and going to be very different than ever.

FinTech is basically a Financial Technology which makes the innovative use of the technology in the design and delivery of financial services, to transform the banking world. The evolving technological things from Artificial Intelligence, Peer-to-Peer Lending Big Data Block Chain, Crowdfundings, Digital Payments & Robo Advisors, are just few names among them.

However, few of the technologies have totally changed the way of living, and have become a part of our everyday life.

These technologies have bridged a big gap between —what the bank was offering and what the customers are expecting, and the FinTech industry is tacking right now. So all the bankers and even non-traditional banking players have decided to jump in & capture the opportunity, mainly in the technology firms.

Today, Peer-to-peer lending platforms are offering alternative loans to the customers that are previously offered by the banks. Also, Robo advisory platforms offer consumer asset management solutions at a very low cost. Like these all the evolving revolutionary technologies are providing the best services to the customers than the traditional banks. The best part is that the FinTech is involved in the most profitable part i.e. in deposit takings & becoming the deposit taking institutions and leaving the boring back-end part to the traditional banks, and this is how the revolution in banking model is taking place. Where the traditional banks are handling the back ends to provide customized utility providers to these technology firms. FinTech excellently controlling the front end & customer experience, which is bringing the positive developments.

FinTech start-ups, FinTech is transforming the banking industry; it is giving access to the millions of people for the first time. And, this is how FinTech is making positive difference according to the World Bank over last five years.

There are millions of people who have moved from nonbanking sectors to banking sectors, where this is just a start.

Thus, this goes on connecting to the Internet of Things & Wireless Technologies to the banks to increase the customer services.

The financial platforms of the future are not going to be traditional banks, but the technology firms. And obviously, the traditional banks are more concerned about the technology firms. This is because these firms have daily existing touch-points with the customers, and now thousands of new & dynamic FinTech startups are offering proper products that used to be offered previously by the traditional banks. But, now they have realized that the landscape is changing, and in order to survive they need to evolve.

However, surveys shows that in next 10 years, near about 3050% of jobs will disappear because of FinTech. Definitely, new jobs will be created but sustainably in smaller numbers.

These different job roles are with very different skill sets like creative programmers & designers. So, the future bankers are definitely not going to be like traditional bankers, which are somewhat complex & time consuming process, but rather the attractive and impressive banks process with the best designers, programmers and creative thinkers.

FinTech: The new Wave FinTech is an abbreviation of Financial Technology. It is about the technology to design and deliver financial services and products. Basically the Banks, Insurances and other Traditional Financial Institutes are the major users of FinTech. However, currently many start-ups are using it for smoothing the payment process, tackle fraud and more.

Well, today it matters because it is increasing the competition, lowering the costs and providing services to people, who don’t use traditional banking. Thus, the future is on the rise, where the FinTech is growing much faster, where the survey reports showed that global FinTech investment in 2015 grew by $9.6 Billion to $22.3 Billion.

However, the new banking models are emerging with the

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Expert’s View

EMERGING FINTECH TRENDS

In

INDIA

EVERY ENTREPRENEUR SHOULD

KNOWABOUT

I

t wouldn’t be wrong to say that the financial technology has become a new religion for every other aspiring entrepreneur. Catching the latest trend, now and then, someone is coming up with a promising idea with an aim to offer salvation in the troubled financial industry.

Even the government is providing a strong push for financial inclusion, startup activities, and digitization with the introduction of policy initiatives. These include programs like Startup India, Jan Dhan Yojana, Aadhaar Adoption, etc., thus providing a strong back in support to the Fintech segment in India.

With the payment segment reaching its pinnacle, there are several new segments too which are gaining the attention of corporates, entrepreneurs, and even individual investors like you.

provide personalized customer support, and are available round-the-clock as per the investor’s convenience.

Mobile applications offer easy access to the various tools and recommendations from the experts in a cost-effective manner. They provide the facility of investment in various instruments. This is a great solution to the perennial problem of getting started as an investor at a young age to maximize the power of compounding when it is most beneficial, but when the employment income is at its lowest. Even the least tech-savvy investors could enjoy these services and use such apps to create a well-diversified investment portfolio.

2. Blockchain and Digital Wallets with Multi-Currency Exchange

1.The Advent of Mobile App for Wealth Management

With the facility of multi-cryptocurrency exchange services, Indian investors now have the opportunity to buy, sell, hold, and trade their digital coins directly on their registered exchange. Wave goodbye to the stress of exchanging your currency even when traveling in a foreign land. The use of digital wallets has increased exponentially, the reason being that the transactions here are easy, much faster, and secure.

With the explosion of fintech startups in India in the past five years, several digital platforms have introduced their mobile applications. These apps promise to demystify the complex financial processes of wealth management,

This, on the other hand, also provided direct access to the customers’ data to the entrepreneurs. Data being the one that they used for registering their digital and block chain wallets. It further helped the fintech platforms as they

Considering all these aspects, I have done a little hard work for you guys and listed down a few of the trends that we’ll soon get to see in the Indian Fintech segment which is changing with lightning speed. So without any further ado, let’s learn more about them!

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Virendra Singh Ranawat, Co-founder of MySIPonline, a venture of Cognus Technology has worked in many reputed organizations, such as TATA and Metso Minerals (Finland). After gaining a rich experience of 10 years from these renowned companies, he initiated MySIPonline, which is considered as India’s fastest growing mutual fund investment platform. He is also the co-founder of Wooden Street, an online portal for customized furniture.

adjusted their market strategies accordingly.

3. Robo-Advisors There’s no denying the fact that robo-advisory will soon take over the traditional method of financial advising. It is supposed to make the experience of investors easier.

However, there are a few pitfalls that this technology has to overcome which include gauging the inputs provided from user-end being true or not and adjusting advice to account for or balance out any inherent psychological biases of the investor.

Once they do so, it would be hard to compete with these AIpowered robo-advisors that provide digital financial advice based on mathematical rules or algorithms. They will be the next vogue as investors are seeking automated opportunities for investment with cost-effective solutions.

4. Secure Payments Using Biometrics Security is the key when it comes to mobile applications, especially the ones belonging to the fintech group where often a huge amount of money travels to and fro. It is expected that by 2020, mobile payments will be at its peak, reaching the volume of $503 billion. To meet such huge demand smoothly, there’s a rising question on the security.

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Virendra Singh Ranawat Co-founder

With an aim to make consumers feel secure in the shade of proper infrastructure, biometric technology has come into the picture. They provide face recognition systems and advanced tools such as iris detection and fingerprint recognition. Such layers of safety will help individuals to protect their financials whilst being able to be part of the FinTech revolution.

Dodge the tension of remembering all your complicated passwords for mobile payments or digital wallets. All you can do is swipe your thumb or scan your iris the next time you want to use your smartphone to pay.

Conclusion After going through the trends that the segment is bringing alongside, we can analyze the future of the industry. For now, I feel happy to be a part of this segment and would like to experience the changes that it brought along with the change in years. In case you have spotted an opportunity with any of the above-discussed trends, you can be the one to usher in the transition.

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NeoGrowthCredit: Creating a Positive Social Impact through Financial Lending “

D

oing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different outcome is the most basic thing one can do.” This saying can be applied to the way business owners have historically approached funding.

For decades, people depended on traditional banking institutions when they were in need of financing. Since it was the only option, many hopeful entrepreneurs went through the lengthy application process all while knowing they would be in for a time-consuming process that may result in them not getting the necessary financial assistance.

Technology is changing every single industry, and lending is no exception. While lending used to be the exclusive purview of banks and credit unions, numerous fintech companies are now extending loans to consumers and small business owners, and their practices are changing the loan process.

traditional underwriting methods. Addressing this gap in the market is the basis on which the NeoGrowth business has been built.

The company caters to this under-served market by adopting an innovative approach and validating the creditworthiness of the business. They do so by looking at current business performance and stability. Currently, they have helped over 15,000 business merchants to grow their businesses. Their tech-enabled processes and smart analytics ensure that NeoGrowth offers the best products and services in the market. Their in-house technology platform is tailored to meet the unique requirements of NeoGrowth’s innovative loan products.

Headquartered in Mumbai, NeoGrowth started its commercial operations in 2012-13 and is now present in 21 major cities of India.

The Dynamic Duo

One such fintech company is NeoGrowth Credit, a pioneer in lending based on the underwriting of digital payments data. The Company offers unsecured loans to merchants who accept card or other digital payments from customers using its proprietary technology platform. NeoGrowth loans are a short tenor, hassle-free loans with the facility of daily repayment, a key customer delight factor.

At the heart of the NeoGrowth business strategy is a mission to have a positive social impact on the financial lives of small and medium business merchants across India, more than 50% of whom are creditworthy but until now have been excluded from accessing loans based on

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Brothers Dhruv Khaitan(DK) and Piyush Khaitan(PK), Co-founders of NeoGrowth, together have founded and managed many touch and tech-based companies to serve the SME segment. They have leveraged their broad experience in technology, understanding of the retail finance sector along with their intense entrepreneurial skills to bring about a revolution in the fintech sector.

Innovative Services and Products NeoGrowth offers its signature product “NeoCash” to various merchants across India and helps them grow

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Piyush Khaitan Co-founder

“

At the heart of the NeoGrowth's business strategy is a mission to have a positive social impact on the financial lives of small and medium business merchants across India

“

their business by providing much needed financial help in a hassle-free manner.

At present, NeoGrowth offers loans from INR 5 Lakhs to INR 1.5 Crores. These loans are given based on the payment card swipes happening at merchant’s outlet. With an inhouse technology platform, that is tailored to meet the unique requirements of NeoGrowth’s innovative loan products. NeoGrowth relies on analytics-driven underwriting and its unique tech & touch model to serve the SME market in India. Key industry segments that they give a loan to are: Food & Beverage, Apparel, Petrol Pumps, Groceries, Clinics & Lab, Automobile, Dealerships, CDIT, Pharmacy, Hotels, Spa & Salon, Footwear, Home Appliances, and Opticians.

competitive marketplace. At NeoGrowth, they genuinely believe that they have created a product, which serves the need of businesses in India and they aim to bring a positive social impact in the underserved SME market segment in India.

Alternate sources of digital data also play a crucial role in the underwriting process of NeoGrowth loan. These shortterm loans have a vital advantage in the form of the Automatic Repayments offered over a conventional loan.

This small feature helps the merchants to better plan their cash flows especially taking into consideration slow and offseasons.

Future Roadmap NeoGrowth has Empowerment, Accountability, Teamwork, Result Orientation, Integrity Policy, Work-Life Balance, Customer Orientation, Innovation, Trust, and Openness as its fundamental values All their products, processes and services are built around these values, and they proudly adhere to it. This is what makes them unique in the

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Expert’s Corner

TAKING THE

DIGITAL

DIVE!

T

he economical dynamics of India provide a unique vantage point which can be applied to examine tailor-made strategies for India. One of them being its move to envisage a cashless economy.

As we dawn upon a century, the crux of which is expediency and accessibility, the inception of a need for wireless connectivity is undeniable.

As the notions of digitalization and e-commerce breezed through all segments of consumerism and financial services, they rustled leaves at the very foundation of economic activity, i.e., transactions. The inception of the digital age and its trails in e-commerce saw the emergence of new financial needs. It was also apparent, that orthodox and conventional payments systems could not fulfil the urgency for increased liquidity.

At the advent of this need for alternate method of payments, India was only

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able to adopt plastic money in 1987.

Several parameters were made verticals across which the behavioural patterns of Indian customers were infused to ascertain the sustainability and acceptance of these pristine practices.

Advances in technology and increased efficiency of digital transactions provided a lead for atypical think tanks, free spirited entrepreneurs and existent financial institutions to venture out on a journey to explore more refined forms of digital currency. As the payments machinery was being restructured, it provoked one idea after another, in quest of a design that would facilitate both paramount convenience and economic viability. Payment gateways were curated in an exercise to map all parameters to a focal point.

These included the adoptive readiness of the customers, security in transacting, multiciplity in payment options, easy integration, convenience

and primarily, ease in understanding the platform.

Payment gateways rendered all traditional methods of settlement redundant as any e-commerce or digital product store that was set up, turned to a payments gateway provider in search of a platform that could cater to all their needs and effectively provide a comprehensive payments solution. The first gateway in India, CC Avenue, gained momentum and this was followed suit by other gateways that saw an opportunity to explore this market. An incredible verity came to light when PayPal penetrated the market for digital payments in India; even this segment was not going to be bereft of foreign competition.

A new wave flooded the digital payments market when digital wallets were introduced. The idea of transacting just at the snap of a finger had a great impact on consumer | APRIL 2018 |

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About the Author Ayushi Ahuja is an Analyst working in Strategy and Operations in ftcash- India's leading digital loans and payments platform. A graduate in Economics from Loreto College, Ayushi has a keen interest in the digital payments and lending space having worked with multiple banks and institutions on initiatives focused on ď€ nancial inclusion.

In her spare time, she enjoys engaging with people over Graphology. She is Perseverant, enthusiastic and positive to all that comes her way work, life, balance!

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| APRIL 2018 |

Ayushi Ahuja Analyst - Operations and Risk

ftcash

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psyche. The illusion of enhanced liquidity coupled with increased rates of technology penetration (primarily smartphones) and the novelty of these wallets laid down the foundation for an increasing customer base.

Reckoning the success of digitized platforms during demonetization, the digital wallet market was flooded with competitors within two years of its launch, each one contending towards a significant market share. An interesting take on these wallets is to note how the neck to neck competition between these wallets has been beneficial for the customer groups on account of additional services, improvised interfaces, cash back offers, increased limit of transaction and credit and other perks. These wallets too, in quest of capitalizing on growing market avenues, amplified the area of their services at a dynamic rate, introducing payments by QR code scan, switching between online and offline mode of payment etc.

With all the flurry of activities in the payments landscape, both the users and providers of such services are at their toes keeping up with brainstorming developments. Assessing the changes in behavioural trends across various customer groups post these wallets, the providers of such services realized that the steer towards a cashless economy had begun. Fuelling this shift further, the Government of India launched the BHIM application, Bharat QR Code and UPI. This prompt was multifaceted – as it would ease the cash crunch after demonetization, help foster the formal economy, slacken corrupt practices and transform India into a digitally empowered nation.

Enhanced customer experience has been pivotal in changing the game for payment platforms. A major part of the

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adoptive readiness comes from the fact that the consumers don’t feel a pinch in their pockets immediately as the part where the cash has to be parted with, has been done away with. The catalyst for all developments in this field, have been the encouraging regulatory surroundings. To keep the digital inclusion program on track, there have been promising changes in the regulatory framework that include KYC relaxation, Bharat Bills Payments System, exceptions from two factor authentication and contactless technologies in the form of NFC transactions, bar codes and EVM credit cards are accelerating the surge towards a digitally driven economy.

Observing the prompt acceptance of E-KYC and biometric based consent, payments initiated by vocal commands is a concept that fintech firms should ally their resources to. This could do away with the task of entering card details manually and elevate customers from banking at fingertips to handsfree banking. Chatbots to address merchant/customer queries is another area that can be built a flexible user experience.

Having a secured plinth in the payments space, driven entrepreneurs and venture capitalists are looking to build on this by revamping the lending segment. This restructuring has the potential to storm through India’s window of opportunity. Application of Artificial Intelligence coupled with Machine Learning to enable push button extending of credit, I reckon will not only be a breakthrough but will also change the colour of the glass through which the common man looks at borrowing, and spending on credit.

While one can always debate about the mammoth task of verification of documents and the regulatory requirements that are associated with

credit, in hindsight, we possibly cannot ignore the development of “blockchains”. The system of blockchains that is still in the embryo stage can intensify digital footprints across India’s fin-tech terrain. It will cease the necessity for most regulatory systems as ledgers on all individuals subject to their chosen level of privacy and transparency would be available on a peer to peer basis. The onus of these systems to work in tandem would then shift to just consent.

Regardless of all such developments, the one concern that cannot be ignored is the safety and security in interlinking with these systems. Data breaches and the personal information divulged left uncheck, can pose a major threat to this market and could lead to its downfall along with the privacy of millions compromised. India has been taking steps to prevent the privacy catastrophe, with the Govt. of India and RBI working hand in hand to secure digital footprints and making sure that the verification process is airtight. However, it would be wrong to say that we should inhibit the transformation process as the pros outweigh the cons by a majority.

The future of digital payments in India looks nothing short of bright. This foresight is drawn in concern with the rise of millennia’s and the downward spiral of traditional banking systems and methods of payments. With speed, efficiency and convenience brought to their fingertips, customer groups nationwide are encapsulating this change and look forward to more such advancements. Though the digital payments scenario is still at a nascent stage, the process of digitally empowering India is underway.

| APRIL 2018 |

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Rubique: Changing the face of the Indian fintech industry

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ueled by market demand and an innovationdriven regulatory friendly startup landscape, the fintech sector has seen a revolution. Several startups have flourished with traditional financial institutions (FIs) contributing to their growth. The banks and regulators are relooking at their operating models and policies to create a collaborative environment within the fintech ecosystem.

A front-runner in the fintech evolution is Rubique Technologies. Established with a vision to fulfill every financial aspiration in the simplest, shortest and speediest way through loan, credit cards and insurance products.

Built on a proprietary AI-based recommendation and fulfillment engine, Rubique’s online financial matchmaking platform is integrated with financial institution’s systems for real-time processing and approvals for customers.

A Banking Veteran Manav Jeet, MD & CEO, a banking veteran served in several leadership positions in well-known financial institutions like Reliance Consumer Finance, HDFC and YES Bank, prior to setting up Rubique. During his banking career, Manav has handled multiple product types ranging from Microfinance, Retail & SME loans to unsecured business – including credit cards. His vision has ensured that the team is not only grounded but also focused on strengthening the platform solution. His passion and efforts in leading the team has translated itself in numbers which prove the success of the model in the Indian ecosystem.

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Under his leadership, Rubique is operational across 32 cities, partnered with 89+ financial institutions for 267+ products, facilitated loan disbursement of Rs. 2,670 crores and 82,000 credit card setups through its platform while generating revenue of Rs. 47 crores.

Rubique’s Unique Services Rubique’s ‘technology thinking of financial services’ approach has helped them launch various technology solutions for the industry. They are unique since they are a neutral platform bringing transparency by allowing lender & borrowers discover each other. They provide faster access to credit with certainty through their Matchmaking algorithm and Fulfillment engine.

Alongwith a wide range of products, Rubique also offers technology enabled distribution thereby tapping every consumer segment offering end-to-end fulfillment.

Rubique offers a host of technology solutions covering the entire lending spectrum - individuals and SMEs throughout the ecosystem. Rubique believes in improving the current processes and reducing inefficiencies through strategic tech interventions and hence, is focused on developing solutions for customers and partners (FIs, strategic alliances and influencers).

Focusing on building in-house technology solutions, Rubique’s team has built SPOT platform (Single Point Of Truth). SPOT focuses on ecosystem collaboration by linking all stakeholders – internal and external allowing origination, assessment and fulfilment seamlessly for all products. It is integrated with paperless-focused features

| APRIL 2018 |

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Manav Jeet, Managing Director and CEO

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Focusing on maintaining a tech-led asset-light model, while remaining unit economics positive at the transaction level, Rubique plans to bring advanced technology features at every stage of loan processing cycle through its Online Plus Model, improving operational efficiency & reducing cost of acquisition, thereby creating easy access to finance with a focus on bridging financing gap and make finance easy & accessible to the customers.

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like e-KYC, bank statement analysis, credit bureau check, credit memo generation & MCA integration allowing real time decision-making while reducing cost and effort while maintaining security of data. By leveraging distributed systems, cloud offerings, and serverless architectures, SPOT is horizontally scalable and fluid to ensure constant evolution. Apart from this, Rubique has also developed tech solutions like TAB for easing out SMEs loan process, Rubique MAGIC score, etc.

Tackling the Roadblocks with Digital Initiatives When Rubique started out, the biggest challenge was convincing the financial institutions to share their credit policies & open the existing infrastructure for deep integration to facilitate instant approval. When all online models were ‘lead generation’ working as sourcing platforms, Rubique offered a unique proposition. In the initial days, the team struggled but now with supportive regulatory environment and digitalization, Rubique is hosting 165+ policies across product categories.

marketplace and a one-stop-shop technology solution provider for all stakeholders while addressing & bridging the core challenge of credit gap.

These days, when data is a gold mine, Rubique with its milestone of 2,00,000 customer base will invest in data science and hire data scientists to work on the data to generate valuable insights.

Manav says “From the technology perspective, we will definitely take a plunge in creating innovative & customized solutions like alternate data based credit scoring mechanism to facilitate underwriting for firsttime borrowers using machine learning and big data analytics; creating infrastructure to mitigate fraud with deepen security and data privacy and leverage alternate data, image recognition and video analytics on SPOT to automate data filling and verification thus making customer on-boarding seamless and hassle free.” Further, he adds “We plan to expand to 50 cities in first quarter of 18-19 & take it to 100 cities by financial year end.”

Awards and Achievements Rubique has garnered many national and international accolades from The Economic Times, Benzinga Fintech Awards, Abu Dhabi Global Market, IDC, etc. which prove that Rubique’s business model has been validated and has the potential to be replicated in other regions as well.

Having already incorporated India stack which offers paperless layer in the transaction & tying up with government entities like NSIC (National Small Industries Corporation), and the Govt of Andhra Pradesh, Rubique will explore opportunities to work with government as part of their ecosystem focus.

Moving Ahead of the Race The company’s goal is to become the largest financial

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| APRIL 2018 |

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New Treands

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nclusion is one of the core pieces of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vision of Digital India. In order to boost financial inclusion, the focus has been on Jan Dhan Account and Aadhar cards programs. However, despite this progress, the dream of financial inclusion is far from real.

Our failure on the front of financial inclusion points to the limitations in the bank-led model of financial inclusion both in terms of access and its ability to serve the common man, who feel intimidated by the banks and struggle to understand the jargons of the financial industry. Speak to any bank officers or mutual fund distributors, and you will get unsettled by the frequency of usage of jargons such as NAV, exit load, and closeended. While the investment is not a rocket science, it’s certainly is a “riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma” in the words of Winston Churchill.

More importantly, only about 10% of Indians are comfortable with English, which is a major language of communication at banks. According to a KPMG report, titled ‘Indian Languages - Defining India’s Internet,’ only 57% of India’s digital payment user-base are active English users.

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Therefore, even fintech startups, which are doing a great job in making the process painless and jargon-free, could only cater to the 43% of internet user base, as most of them just cater to users who are comfortable in using English. Therefore, in the true sense, we are still quite far from financial inclusion and democratization of financial services. In the context of cutting through the financial jargon and bridging the communication barrier, the fintech startups have one thing that banks don’t - an ability to personalize the service and cater to each customer uniquely. While banks will struggle to serve customers in multiple languages, a fintech startup can serve customers in different languages without any huge investments. Fintech startups such as Paytm, Sqrrl, and PhonePe have done an incredible job of serving customers in the language of their choice.

Vernacular fintech apps have the power to provide an access to financial services to these users in an underserved market, in a language that the users choose.

Besides, expanding the scope of financial services to migrant and underserved segment in Metro and Tier-1 cities, the biggest impact of these apps will be in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, where language is one of the biggest barriers to financial independence.

| APRIL 2018 |

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About the Author Samant Sikka is the brainchild behind Sqrrl, an intuitive DIY digital platform for investments that aims at making the youth of the nation inclined towards saving. He is a procient investor with two decades of experience in the Investment and Asset Management industry.

However, it needs to be pointed out that this is just a start. Only the availability of app in different languages will not solve the problems. The kind of communication required for a person staying in Patna to feel comfortable in dealing with finance will be way different from a person staying in Ludhiana. The apps need dejargonize the communication in the financial world and customize the experience according to local culture. However, in India’s quest to bring about true financial inclusion, we believe increasing popularity of vernacular app is a step in a right direction.

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| APRIL 2018 |

Samant Sikka Founder & CEO

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