January, 2017
This Suffix Called ‘Tech’
Jan 19, 2017
Recently, I had a very interesting conversation with a veteran banker and former CEO of a bank, on India’s startup ecosystem. The topic of conversation was the ‘tech’ suffix – foodtech, mediatech, insurancetech, fintech, healthtech, etc. – that entrepreneurs, investors and…
Fintech & Financial Services Fintech 35
The KPO with a difference
Jan 19, 2017
Sathya Kumar R, founder & CEO, Techindia Infoway, started his entrepreneurial journey in 2000 building custom ERP software applications for clients in manufacturing and healthcare. In early 2003, a serendipitous meeting with a client in the US, who was building…
Zoho, Now Built From Rural India
Jan 31, 2017
At a day-long tete-a-tete during the launch of Zoho Desk at Tenkasi, its co-founder Sridhar Vembu uncovers the entrepreneur, the strategist, and the Buddhist in him.
As soon as I set foot into Tenkasi, while acres…
The Fintech Wave
Jan 31, 2017
Every one of the 35 fintech entrepreneurs we spoke to, is bridging a gap in two segments; for MSMEs, the glaring gap in availability of finance, and for consumers, improving penetration of basic financial products. But, how conducive is the…
“Opportunity lies in using technology and innovation to deliver financial services that can increase adoption and expand the market itself”
Jan 31, 2017
Bala Srinivasa, Partner, Kalaari Capital, helps us understand the nuances of the fintech sector and the various opportunities available for the entrepreneurs.
For Bala Srinivasa, the fact that he is able to get a ringside view of the best and…
A chatbot for banks
Jan 31, 2017
Founded by banking veterans, Active.ai wants to enable better customer experience for banks using artificial intelligence.
Singapore-headquartered Active.ai, is working towards a grand vision of using AI-based Chatbots to help banks not only handle customer service…
Making BFSI software agile
Jan 31, 2017
Founded by Kalpesh Desai, the former COO of 3i Infotech EMEA, Agile Financial Technologies (Agile FT) has made a serious dent on the InsuranceTech segment, thanks to the domain expertise of its founder.
Agile Financial Technologies (Agile FT), with its…
Deal makers go digital
Feb 06, 2017
With its mid-market deal origination platform, BankerBay aims to challenge the traditional means by which capital is sought world over. Currently, it brokers over 600 deals a month and has recently entered the Chinese market.
Imagine a Tinder for…
Easy Access to Foreign Exchange
Feb 06, 2017
Bookmyforex.com has a slew of offerings related to foreign exchange, aimed at making travelling abroad easy for Indians.
“When you are travelling, right from booking rooms to hiring a porter, you could order online. But the currency that you…
Scaling up digital lending
Feb 06, 2017
Capital Float is an online lending platform which provides collateral-free working capital loans to small-time entrepreneurs, with a focus on Tier II and Tier III regions as well.
Gaurav Hinduja and Sashank Rishyasringa founded Capital Float in 2013…
Attention to detail, the key
Feb 06, 2017
Citrus Payments, which was recently acquired by Naspers-owned PayU, offers a range of digital payment solutions with detailed reporting and analytics especially for merchants. Jitendra Gupta, the founder believes that, attention to the finer needs of merchants and consumers…
The Business of E-Tax Filing
Feb 06, 2017
ClearTax was initially founded with a goal of making tax filings easy for individuals, SMBs and large corporations. However, currently, with a million end users and 20,000 CAs and employees using its service, it is now introducing a slew…
Covering all the angles
Feb 06, 2017
Accel & SAIF-backed Coverfox, an online insurance portal that sells general insurance products, has understood that the only way to fuel the growth in this sector is by making it extremely transparent to understand and easy to transact. With…
Determining Your Financial Merit
Feb 06, 2017
CreditVidya was initially founded to use traditional and alternate credit insights from 10,000+ data points of each customer (borrower), to arrive at a credit score for lenders, typically banks & NBFCs, to base their decisions on. In the near…
Breaking the silos
Feb 06, 2017
Founded by a team that was part of the products division of Infosys Technologies, Customer XPS, aims to help banks identify frauds real-time and helps them take preventive action.
Rivi Varghese, the co-founder of Customer XPS, believes that…
The electronic payment network
Feb 06, 2017
Aavishkar, Apis Partners and Asia Participation B.V-funded Electronic Payment and Services is a prominent retail banking technology and Automated Teller Machine (ATM) services provider. Since incorporation, the company has grown steadily and aims to focus on ATM deployment…
The integrated payment acceptance platform
Feb 06, 2017
Targeted at retailers, Ezetap’s plug and play device is creating a universal payment solution to adapt to any existing or newer payment methods that may arise in the market.
Imagine this. Today, in a move to make India a…
The peer-to-peer lending platform
Feb 06, 2017
Faircent founder Rajat Gandhi got the idea that peer-to-peer lending would work, thanks to observing a colleague buy a bullet by borrowing credit from a bunch of friends. Today, Faircent processes over Rs. 1 crore worth of loans…
Transforming into a payments bank
Feb 06, 2017
Incubated by ICICI Bank, FinoPaytech is a payments technology company that pioneered biometrics smart card solutions that helped banks, MFIs and other financial institutions identify customers and facilitate financial transactions in remote rural areas. By Q4 2016-17, the company…
A retail platform for mutual funds
Feb 06, 2017
Faering Capital-backed Funds India is a platform focused on mutual funds for retail investors. It is all set to expand its customer reach across the country and plans to enhance its service offerings especially using mobile platforms and seeks…
Expense management for enterprise customers
Feb 06, 2017
Angel Prime-backed Happay, a business expense management solutions company, aims to take its product deeper into the B2B segment and handle all their expense management needs. It also plans to onboard around 10,000 businesses in the next two…
Breaking the digital divide
Feb 06, 2017
IFMR Holdings sees technology as the means to product innovation that will change the way the underserved customer views and accesses finance in India.
India’s best known financial inclusion platform, IFMR Holdings, has managed to address unique gaps in…
Reducing friction in MSME Lending
Feb 06, 2017
Alok Mittal, the entrepreneur-turned-VC-turned-entrepreneur, wants to use big data to reduce friction and inefficiencies in the process of lending to MSMEs. At a macro level, he believes Indify and several companies of its ilk will play…
India’s first invoice discounting platform
Feb 06, 2017
Kredx, founded by experienced bankers, is betting on a financial product based on ‘receivables’, to help SMEs get collateral-free working capital.
Invoice Discounting is a complex product but not a new one. Our effort to setup a technology and…
Carving A Niche in Online SME Lending
Feb 06, 2017
Lendingkart has developed a doctrine for credit comfort, wherein, it has identified proxies to evaluate a borrower, to enable online lending of up to Rs. 10 lakh for Indian SMEs. It counts its key differentiations to be a focus on…
How MobiKwik serves 40 million end users
Feb 06, 2017
MobiKwik, an Indian wallet major with a network of over 2,50,000 direct merchants and 40 million users, is taking strong strides towards realising its vision of digitalising India and head towards a cashless economy.
Founded in 2009 by…
The automated financial advisor
Feb 06, 2017
MoneyView was initially designed as an app to help customers manage their finance by displaying expense and income-related information, bill payment reminders and similar features on a single platform. Now, it’s introducing newer features such as using customer…
A Universal Investment Gateway
Feb 06, 2017
Aditya Birla Money’s MyUniverse allows the customers to track all their money in one place, get advice on what to do with the money and convert the advice to action, essentially transacting in a paperless manner.
Aditya Birla Money…
Paying attention to unit economics
Feb 06, 2017
Omidyar Network, IIFL Seed Ventures, Khosla Ventures and Aspada Investment Company funded NeoGrowth facilitates digital lending to consumer facing small businesses and aims to build a sustainable competitive advantage around achieving scale, favourable unit economics and superior customer experience.
“According…
“We believe our biggest competitor is cash.”
Feb 06, 2017
Paynear Solutions, a transactions processing company which builds solutions for payment processing, customer and store management, aims to serve more than one million merchants and process billions of transactions in the coming years.
Incorporated in 2013 by Prabhu Ram and…
Bringing simplicity into PoS Systems
Feb 06, 2017
Pine Labs provides retail PoS solutions which simplify payment acceptance (for merchants), while also offering a host of features to benefit the issuer, merchant, brand and customers.
While Pine Labs made a foray into the financial technology space in early…
Seeing through it all clearly
Feb 06, 2017
Set up with transparency as its core policy, PolicyBazaar.com is an online insurance comparison portal that has sold about Rs.1000 crore of premium since its inception in 2008. Over the next four years, the company aims to take…
The Razorpay Story
Feb 06, 2017
RazorPay is an online payment gateway that allows merchants to collect payments through credit/debit card, net banking, or wallets such as MobiKwik, Freecharge, PayU and the like.
In 2013, when RazorPay made an entry into the online payments space…
The bot platform
Feb 06, 2017
Senseforth.ai’s intelligent action bots also perform tasks, resolve issues and make the right product recommendations besides answering queries.
For the past few decades, computers were merely tools in our hands to perform various tasks. What if we can…
Going beyond the common man
Feb 06, 2017
While Suvidhaa initially began by creating s-commerce boutiques to serve India’s common man, today it has introduced a host of fintech services, in partnership with leading banks and NBFCs, such as prepaid card programs for merchants and customers…
A grassroots approach to saving
Feb 06, 2017
By addressing the fundamental problems of traditional investment methods through transparency and simplification of investments, Tauro Wealth is inculcating the habit of online investment in the stock market amongst India’s young population.
With a savings rate of nearly 31…
Focus on greater transaction experience
Feb 06, 2017
Nirvana and Faering Capital India-backed Transerv, a payments enabler, was setup with the goal of building unique payments experience which not only facilitates payments but also delivers convenience and engagement to the consumer. Its goal for now remains consolidating…
A discounted investing platform
Feb 06, 2017
RKSV, the discount brokerage, has now rebranded itself to Upstox, and the founders have launched a low-cost, mobile-first stock trading platform. Shortly, the company wants to foray into mutual funds and also service the NRI market.
Mumbai-based…
Financing the ‘Missing Middle’
Feb 06, 2017
Vistaar Financial Services is striving to create financial inclusion for the ‘missing middle’, typically family businesses run by entrepreneurs who deal with cash. So far, it has disbursed Rs. 1,100 crore in loans to over a lakh customers through…
Improving credit delivery in India
Feb 06, 2017
Ribbit Capital and Omidyar Network funded ZestMoney is a technology company that facilitates EMI payment option for products purchased online or offline through its partner merchants without the need for a credit card.
Instant digital lending. That’s the buzzword…
Where can I get ideas?
Jan 31, 2017
The author believes that ideas are everywhere. It is up to us to pick, choose, adapt and implement – all towards the outlier-marketing goal of achieving the set business objectives.
The last two articles spoke about the basics of Outlier…