India emerging a hub for fintech start-ups

According to a report by Nasscom, there are close to 400 companies in India focused on the fin-tech market globally.

In June this year, UK-banking giant Barclays will operationalise its fintech innovation hub Rise in India. This will be the banks fifth centre across the globe to tap into the fintech start-up ecosystem.

According to a report by Nasscom there are close to 400 companies in India focused at the fin-tech market globally. This is also attracting investor attention with almost $450 million being invested in fin-tech product startups in 2015. No wonder than several fin-tech focused accelerators and incubators are being set up in India.

It is not just Barclays that is tapping into the Indian fintech start-up ecosystem. Several accelerators and incubators are being set up in India to nurture this talent. Some of these include, PayPal’s StarTank, Bangaluru-bases Rainmatter, Yes Bank collaborating with T-Hub and others.

Nasscom predicts that the Indian fin-tech software market is estimated to cross $2 billion by 2020, representing a 2x growth. In total there are around 200 fin-tech start-ups, almost 60 per cent are focused on the payment processing segment.

“Nasscom along with its 10,000 Start-up initiative has identified four focused area for start-ups and one of them is Fin-tech. Other than creating a platform that will showcase the fin-tech talent in India to the global banking community we also want to help start-ups spot the white spaces that they can target like block chain, wallets etc,” said Sangeeta Gupta, sr. VP, Nasscom.

Other than just talking with global banking, finance and insurance segment, Nassom is also reaching out to Indian public sector banks and get them involved in the fin-tech start-up eco-system.

With the banking industry always at the forefront of technology adoption the need to tap into fin-tech start-ups also arises as they need to be fast at adopting these new changes. As Ian Buchanan, group chief information officer at Barclays earlier said: “The banking industry has always been the first to face disruption from technology. With these centres the intent is to connect with the startup eco system so that problems that we need to solve can be shared. We feel that a lot of startups and smaller company can come in and help to accelerate this. I think they can be the change agents for us and our partner ecosystem.”

Aditya Kumar, founder and CEO, Creditexchange, a peer-to-peer platform connecting borrowers and institutional investors feels that India's domestic market is a unique opportunity for fintech start-ups. "The payment and wallet space has got the maximum funding but I think the lending space is yet an untapped opportunity in Indian financial segment. Around the world the largest fintech companies are lending companies. In India the P2P segment has just about 40-50 players, unlike in China where you have thousands of players," he said.

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. Importantly, the Indian fin-tech industry too is expected to grow by 1.7x by 2020. At present the total Indian fin-tech market is about $8 billion with fin-tech software market at $1.2 billion.  

Top verticals that the Indian fin-tech start-ups are targeting include BFSI and next-gen commerce. Transaction gateways and platforms, mobile banking and ATM & POS are emerging horizontals.