The Mint FinTech Summit- India’s FinTech Revolution

2015 was a prelude to transformation in the lending, payments as well as personal finance space due to the pace at which financial technology companies emerged in India. The emergence of new technologies such as cloud-based systems and bio-metric recognition have changed the face of payments. Event the year 2016 continued with the same pace.

Mint put together a high-powered business conclave which brought together industry experts, regulators, FinTech, bureaucrats’ startups who discussed various issues that are an obstacle in building a favorable environment for the FinTech Industry.

V. Vaidyanathan, Founder and Chairman: Capital First

“As all of these are gradually moving to the E-World, the eco system is changing, new market flow is opening up, and new profit pools are opening up and with this context suddenly the game does open up for collaborations and not for confrontation.” - V. Vaidyanathan, Founder & Chairman, Capital First

India’s FinTech sector may be young but is on the rise rapidly, fueled by a large market base, an innovation-driven startup landscape, along with government policies and regulations. Several startups populate this emerging and dynamic sector, while both traditional banking institutions and non-banking financial companies are trying to catch up. The Opportunities and Challenges in the India FinTech stack was discussed in a presentation by Sharad Sharma from iSPIRIT.

Sharad Sharma, Co-Founder and Governing Council Member: iSPIRIT

“If there at all is a golden rule when it comes to banking then it is, Thou shall the bank, shall not debit my account without my permission” - Sharad Sharma Co-founder and Governing Council Member, iSPIRT

T.R. Ramachandran, Group Country Manager: India and South Asia at Visa

“One word which all of you will hear more and more and more and it’s important that you understand it is the notion of tokenization. This is one big thing changing payments without adding to the clumsiness.” - T.R. Ramachandran, Group Country Manager -India & South Asia at Visa

Financial technology has changed the way industry practitioners, consumers, and policymakers think about innovation in the financial sector. Blockchain technology is making financial transactions open and transparent, crypto currencies are changing the way we think about money, and real-time payments systems are slashing down the costs of credit inter-mediation. FinTech has offered an impressive array of opportunities for economic growth.  The ways to Strike balance in Innovations and Regulations in the FinTech sector was discussed at Mint FinTech Summit in conversation with Lowell Campbell and Monish Shah.

In Conversation with Lowell Campbell and Monish Shah on FinTech: Balancing Innovations and Regulations

“People are trying to problem a solution rather than solution a problem.” - Lowell Campbell, Principal Global Specialist, Digital Financial Services, IFC (World Bank group)

“We have sent the customers into this big wide world, told them to go and transact somewhere over there and it’s not happening so well.” - Monish Shah, Partner, Deloitte

Kevin Wu, CTO: Data Center Solutions, South-East Asia, Huawei

“If you build a city as smart as possible, I guess the Financial Services actually cannot be left out.” - Kevin Wu, CTO, Data Center Solutions, South-East Asia, Huawei

The event even included an informative Panel discussion on How to Spot and Nurture FinTech Startups with Bala Srinivasa, Nikhil Balaraman and Shailesh Lakhani as the panelists.

Panel Discussion on How to Spot and Nurture FinTech Startups with Bala Srinivasa, Nikhil Balaraman and Shailesh Lakhani as the panelists

“FinTech in India is pretty different. There’s a whole not to disrupt but there’s a whole lot to create. So I don’t view it as FinTech disruption, its more in terms of what can you create using technology.” - Bala Srinivasa, Partner, Kalaari Capital

“You’re dealing with someone else’s money, you’re not selling a product you’re selling a service where someone in the system, either a lender or a consumer in the case of wealth needs to trust you with their money.” - Nikhil Balaraman, Partner, Orios Ventures

“Regulations and new initiatives by government are both welcomed and feared at the same time.” - Shailesh Lakhani, Partner, Sequoia Ventures

Watch the events’ webcast where experts discussed on ‘Regulations that make it conducive for FinTech’ at Mint FinTech presented by Capital First which took place on 30^th June, 2016 in Bangalore.

Know about the various startups showcased at Mint FinTech Summit 2016 by clicking at the following link:

https://minteventsblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/13/indias-fintech-revolution-emerging-fintech-startups-2/

https://minteventsblog.wordpress.com/2016/07/12/indias-fintech-revolution-emerging-fintech-startups/

India’s FinTech Revolution: Emerging FinTech Startups

According to a report on FinTech by KMPG, the transaction value for the Indian FinTech sector is anticipated to be approximately $33 billion in 2016 and is expected to reach $73 billion in 2020. The growth in smart phones and consumers’ willingness to transact online has spawned a large number of start-ups, who are trying to take advantage of this opportunity.

Here are a few other FinTech Startups from India that were showcased in the Mint FinTech Summit 2016:

• ToneTag (Naffa Innovations Pvt Ltd)

ToneTag from the year 2013 provides an app that enables contactless payments on any device, bringing an Apple Pay like experience to millions of Indians, without having to add any infrastructure. This is by done using sound waves to enable proximity-based payments. ToneTag talks to a merchant’s point-of-sale system using encrypted sound waves, and works even with background noise. The system works well, even without mobile Internet. ToneTag offers a patent-pending software development kit that can be integrated into applications that would either accept payments based on tone, or based on near-field communication depending on the merchant.

ToneTag

• Unocoin (Unocoin Technologies Pvt. Ltd)

Unocoin founded in the year 2013, operates a Bitcoin wallet that Indian users can use to sign up and buy or sell bitcoins. Unocoin has partnered with various companies around the world such as BTCjam, a peer-to-peer lending marketplace using bitcoins, and Purse, which helps translate Amazon gift card balances to bitcoin and rupees. It has also partnered with wallet provider MobiKwik and lets its users transact on MobiKwik with the help of bitcoins. It even launched a point-of-sale app for merchants to accept money through bitcoins.

Unocoin Technologies

• SayPay Technologies Inc

SayPay Technologies, founded in 2013 is a biometric authentication provider that works on identifying customers uniquely based on biometrics like sound. SayPay Technologies users speak a one-time code instead of a password which is much more secure than the one-time-passwords that are in use. An entire transaction can be completed in seven seconds. The start-up, which has filed a patent for this technology, has partnered with two banks and is looking to partner with more. It says it can be extended to most financial transactions, including consumer bill payments, e-commerce, payment gateway integration, step-up authentication, P2P (peer-to-peer) transfers and corporate payment approvals. It works with both, feature phones as well as smartphones.

SayPay Technologies

• Scripbox (Scripbox.com India Pvt. Ltd)

Scripbox started in the year 2012, offers an online mutual funds investment platform for individuals. When they sign up, individuals can decide how much they want to invest— be it monthly or long-term—in equities, debt fund and tax-savings fund or equity linked savings scheme. The funds presented to the users are chosen by algorithms and have no manual intervention. Scripbox doesn’t charge users but makes money by getting a distributor commission from asset management companies. However, it doesn’t have any tie-ups with them and takes the commission they hand out.

Scripbox

• Senseforth (Senseforth Technologies Pvt. Ltd)

Senseforth started in 2012, offers an artificial intelligence platform that can offer all the services of a bank has over chat. The platform, called A.ware, has been bench-marked against various industry standards, and the start-up claims it performs better in most respects. Senseforth has at least 12 different bots that are capable to perform functions as varied as evaluating risks facing businesses and providing alerts to avoid adverse impact.  It even helps the businesses comply with regulations, standards and governance-related issues, one that surfaces a business’ products and services where needed, as well as structuring personalized portfolios to your customers and advises on investment opportunities. It works with clients such as HDFC Bank Ltd and T-Mobile International AG.

Senseforth Technologies

Watch the events’ webcast where experts discussed on ‘Regulations that make it conducive for FinTech’ at Mint FinTech presented by Capital First which took place on 30^th June, 2016 in Bangalore.

Know about the other startups showcased at Mint FinTech Summit 2016 by clicking at the following link: http://mintevents5.blogspot.in/2016/07/indias-fintech-revolution-emerging.html

India’s FinTech Revolution: Emerging FinTech Startups

Mint FinTech Summit 2016: India's FinTech Revolution

The mounting collaboration between technology and finance has fired the imagination of entrepreneurs to come up with innovative ideas, thereby escalating the scope of India’s tech startups. According to a report by Nasscom, there are close to 400 companies in India which are focused on the fin-tech market globally.

So, here are a few emerging FinTech start-ups from India that were showcased in the Mint FinTech Summit 2016:

• Active.Ai (Active Intelligence Pte Ltd)

Active.Ai, founded in 2016 is a platform that offers Chat Bots for large banks to interact with their customers in the format that they’re most contented with. The more customers interact with the application, the more the Artificial Intelligence behind it, learn about them and offer personalized advice and service, increasing engagement as well as loyalty of the customers. The use cases range from getting the balance in the account to transferring money to friends and paying bills. The bot can be integrated via various utility channels, including Wechat, LINE, Kakao Talk, Facebook Messenger, Amazon Echo and Siri.

Active.Ai

•  Hummingbill (Hummingbill Technologies India Pvt. Ltd)

Hummingbill (2015) accounts receivable software for small businesses to help them automate receivables. One of the biggest problems faced by small businesses is of not receiving their payments on time, often due to clerical errors or logistics issues. Hummingbill hopes to help them overcome this with a simple tool for financial officers and accountants. Its software works as a plug-in for Gmail enabling businesses to create invoices and track them. It also allows one to mechanize payment reminders as well as track the collection routine of sales representatives and account managers.

HummingBill Technologies

• mymoneysage.in (Shreem Datatech Solutions Pvt. Ltd)

This start-up from 2015, offers Cloud-based Money Management software for individuals as well as financial advisers. Individuals can not only add their bank accounts, investment accounts, insurance accounts, rather get actionable advice from experts. For advisers, this works like a customer relationship management software where they can create and manage tasks, offers SMS and e-mail reminders about client and prospect meetings and a dashboard where they can manage all their client data in one place. It also helps them get more visibility in a marketplace it offers and at the same time acquire new clients.

mymoneysage.in

• Tauro Wealth (Tauro Investment Advisors Pvt. Ltd)

Tauro Wealth is a robo advisory start-up founded in 2015, targeting individuals who are confused and intimidated by the stock markets. It tries to make it simple for them to invest in a stock portfolio by offering, individuals a primer on understanding what stock investing is about and making them aware of the risks involved. Tauro Wealth generates portfolios using proprietary algorithms to minimize manual intervention and remove human errors or personal biases. Tauro Wealth’s investment portfolios are built to achieve a mix of passive and active investment strategies.

Tauro Wealth

• fonePaisa (fonePaisa Payment Solutions Pvt. Ltd)

FonePaisa, founded in 2014 offers multiple payments solutions. For an individual, it offers a wallet that aggregates the most popular payment options, including other wallets, enabling them to carry out transactions at various retailers and pay their utilities’ bills. For merchants, it offers a payment gateway to accept payments, and also offers them software to create loyalty programmes, targeted marketing campaign, and show merchants a consolidated reporting and monitoring dashboard. FonePaisa also offers businesses accounts receivable software that automates matching payments to invoices, eliminates manual processes while reducing the costs.

FonePaisa

These were the few startups in the Indian FinTech Sector. Look out for more in our next blog.

Watch the events’ webcast where experts discussed on ‘Regulations that make it conducive for FinTech’ at Mint FinTech presented by Capital First which took place on 30^th June, 2016 in Bangalore.

Know about the other Startups showcased in Mint FinTech Summit 2016, by clicking on the following link:

mintevents5.blogspot.in/2016/07/indias-fintech-revolution-emerging_13.html

India’s FinTech Revolution: Challenging Traditional ways of Banking

India's FinTech Revolution: Challenging Traditional ways of Banking

As consumers’ trust in the banking system begins to reduce, a growing number of financial technology startups are ready to steal away up to $4.7 trillion worth of business. In the year 2014 the global investment of FinTech companies tripled to more than $ 12 billion. This trend continued in 2015 when more than $ 10 billion were invested within the first three quarters and not to miss, 2016 continuing at the same pace.

Growth of FinTech Ecosystem in India

Big companies across various sectors are stepping up open-innovation collaborations with small high-tech ones across the world. The number of FinTech partnerships forged by big banks, multiplied threefold globally throughout the years 2009-2015.

An Accenture survey of executives which included 205 large companies and 201 small high-tech firms based in China, India and the US. It disclosed that 92% respondents from the big companies believe in open innovation with small high-tech firms for the propose of accelerating new product development.

However, more than 70% respondents from the small high-tech firms expressed enthusiasm to take advantage of such collaborations to meet important goals like gaining new insights and experiences that could help them develop.

Technology is changing the way people transact and do banking operations. Numerous startups in the FinTech space, backed by venture financing are unsettling the financial services as well as banking industry. With the increasing internet penetration in our country, more and more people have started to buy things online and using digital wallet services to make payments. A report by Nasscom concluded that e-commerce and retail verticals are leading the adoption of FinTech and the industry is anticipated to grow extensively in the coming years.

Use of Digital Wallets Services to make Payments

These upcoming companies are focused on building financial products, developing innovations that include peer-to-peer lending platforms and creating friction-less payment and trading solutions. In India, the rise of the connected devices especially the smart phones has led to the incubation and growth of startups in the FinTech sector. TransferWise is a London-based peer-to-peer money wire platform which is, at present processing as much as $750 million in personal global transfers each month.

TransferWise: London Based Peer-to-Peer Money Wire Platform

Additionally, the global fin-tech industry is a $45 billion opportunity by 2020 growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 7.1 per cent. Significantly, the Indian fin-tech industry is expected to grow by 1.7 s by 2020. At present the total Indian fin-tech market is about $8 billion with fin-tech software market at $1.2 billion with over 750 FinTech companies in India.

Predicted Market Value of FinTech Industry by 2018

The FinTech sector is becoming more competitive with several startups being imaginative on the way to satisfy the same needs in a better way. With the banking sector always at the forefront of technology adoption the necessity to tap fin-tech start-ups also arises as they need to be fast at adopting the new changes. The manner in which technology has been evolving, a conventional retail bank will have to adapt to the digital highway to remain efficient while capturing the new business value at the same time.

Today, there is a blurring line of difference between a conventional retail bank and technology companies. The whole system of payment gateway has opened up completely new opportunity for technology companies. With such opportunities comes a great sense of regulating the activities and performances of the FinTech industry. A survey of financial technology founders and investors released by Silicon Valley Bank identified regulation to curb as the impediments to growth.

Workings of Payment Gateways

Watch the events’ webcast where experts discussed on ‘Regulations that make it conducive for FinTech’ at Mint FinTech presented by Capital First which took place on 30^th June, 2016 in Bangalore.

Top FinTech Trends and Opportunities

2015 was arguably the year of Financial Technology and 2016 has certainly started off with a bang with more than 5,000 FinTech startups in the world; undoubtedly making FinTech a hot topic. While 2015 was probably the best year for venture investment, 2016 will be a crucial year for the future of FinTech, which will create new solutions that might change the financial services industry forever. In a sign of just how significant FinTech has become, global funding of FinTech companies tripled to an estimated value of more than $ 30 billion. According to CBI insights it is forecasted to reach $ 45 billion by the year 2020.  FinTech companies are no longer mere startups; some like Lending Club have popularized FinTech as an attractive industry. Others giants such as Paytm, MobiKwik and BankBazaar have become household names.

In fields such as online lending, money transfer, and credit ratings, FinTech companies are breaking the control of financial services’ largest players in novel ways. Financial Technology startups have become attractive, for numerous reasons.  Some FinTech companies are developing next-generation robo-advisors that better define savings solutions on the basis of goals and risk appetite whereas another innovator has engineered a new technique for capturing and sifting data to spot fraud and monitor trading activity. As we head deeper into 2016, here are a few emerging FinTech Trends to keep on your radar:

·        Collaboration in Technology

2016 will be the year of mass market adoption and consolidation. Surveying 10,131 digitally active consumers in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK as well as the US, a study confirmed that 15.5% have used at least two FinTech services. The result also suggested that the FinTech adopters include young and higher-income customers. Respondents between the ages of 25 and 34 years old used at least two FinTech products (25.2%), followed by those aged 35 to 44 (21.3%), and those aged 18 to 24 (17.7%). Early FinTech adoption is being led by a high-income populace, but is set to develop across all demographic groups.

·        Artificial Intelligence and Wearable Technology

2015 has been a year of many exciting technology innovations, and there isn’t any slowdown in the year 2016 with underlying technology setting off. With the ever-shrinking attention span of the millennial, 2016 could be the year where, commercial applications through machine learning start to surface in the financial services industry. The year  is expected to see a greater attempt by FinTech companies to augment their services with the help of wearable tech. 82% of financial professionals believe that smart watches will facilitate financial transactions in the future while 72 percent of these professionals have wearable applications on their three-year road map. With the demand for greater computerized monitoring, it’s clear that machine learning is here to stay. People will gradually embrace wealth management solutions like robo-advisors and simultaneously companies will influence technology to make the processes even easier and handier.

·        Security Management

The biggest issues for the year 2016 are transparency and security. Security within financial services is one of the most talked about trends and holds the power to affect us adversely. Several innovative technologies are being introduced that enhance protection with new integrated machine learning techniques. With mobile banking and payment technologies growing at record-breaking speeds, security management is growing at corresponding paces to keep up with such innovative products. Today’s mobile-first customers expect immediacy, convenience as well as security to be integral to financial services. Security and privacy are vital to galvanize support for emerging forms of digital transactions, and are critical components in creating an atmosphere of trust for new payment paradigms.

·        Blockchain Technology

2015 was the year when banks started to discover blockchain and the upcoming years are predicted to see its institutional adoption by the banks. Blockchain technology has the potential to change the way our world works. While it is impossible to predict how the tech will evolve in future, the potential of the blockchain lies in tasks like remittances and currency alteration, cloud bank processing, as well as insurance.  Blockchain technology will be able to provide public accountability and help expand trust and secure easy adoption in the financial services’ sector.

·        Change in Traditional Banking

The trend of collaboration between young FinTech companies and traditional finance services are expected to be the key theme of the future. Rather than competing, banks are now looking to plug up gaps by working along with FinTech firms. As recent collaboration announcements indicate, the banking incumbents are finding smart ways to align with financial technology partners in order to meet the needs of millennials through referral as well as licensing partnerships. Banks want to better serve their customers, and reach new customers simultaneously because online lenders benefit from banks bringing customers and capital to their platforms.

With innumerable opportunities comes along few challenges. To overcome such issues efficiently, regulatory bodies are coming up with several rules and regulations for the FinTech Companies.

Watch out for the experts discussing ‘Regulations that make it conducive for fin-tech’ at Mint FinTech presented by Capital First on 30^th June, 2016 in Bangalore. Catch us Live at www.livemint.com