How New Street Tech is transforming the finance sector through blockchain

New Street Technologies, a Bengaluru-based start-up, claims to have developed a blockchain platform that can help finance companies process loans in less than an hour

It's said that everyone gets a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make it big in his/her life. But for 28-year-old Anjali Mehta when that opportunity came in the form of an overseas job in 2017, lack of financial support let her down. She applied for a Rs 1-lakh loan in two banks to fund her trip to Dubai, but by the time the money came, it was too late.

This, she laments, was only because the financial sector in India is still non-inclusive and works in a traditional manner. 

However, things have improved since then and especially with the advent of blockchain technology, experts see a positive disruption in the sector. A blockchain fintech start-up working in the sector recently raised about Rs 14 crore in a series A round led by Unitus Ventures, besides a clutch of individual investors.

New Street Technologies (NST), a Bengaluru-based start-up,  claims to have developed a blockchain platform that can help finance companies process loans in less than an hour, a massive improvement over traditional methods that take up to 15 days.

"With our blockchain platform MIFIX, we aim to bring credit five times faster to over 800 million needy customers at an optimal price, while providing the lenders and other intermediaries a substantially more efficient infrastructure that can be integrated into with minimal cost, effort or disruption to existing infrastructure/ processes," the company's co-founder Sajeev Vishwanathan says.

Vishwanathan, a former senior executive at Citibank, founded NST with Mohit Davar, then chairman of the International Association of Money Transfer Networks, in August 2017.

The fintech sector

In India, where the major part of the population is still not included in the formal banking service, the market potential is huge. This is the reason that makes India a hub of fintech start-ups. According to the India Fintech Report 2019, the country is the world's second-biggest fintech hub. 

Speaking about the opportunity in the sector, Unitus Ventures partner Srikrishna Ramamoorthy says: "Fintech in India is well on its way to fundamentally altering financial services through improving access and reducing costs. India has nearly 1.8 billion bank accounts today, but there's not enough transactions and usage".

But ultimately the start-up’s progress will depend on how much the industry trusts blockchain and its openness to adopt the new tech. “This is not something that traditional players in any industry will embrace easily as they have to overcome legacy processes, infrastructure and thinking,” says Vishwanathan.

How it makes money

New Street works on a partnership model, charging lenders a commission on each transaction made on its MIFIX platform.  The start-up starts generating revenue within 6-8 weeks of the client/partners signing up on MIFIX, according to Vishwanathan.

He sees New Street achieving operational break-even on MIFIX in the current financial year.