Nomura names eight startups for FinTech programme

Nomura, Asia's global investment bank, on Wednesday hosted a demo day for start-ups chosen as part of the 'Voyager - Nomura FinTech Partnership' programme in India that was launched earlier this year with the aim to build innovative solutions for Capital Markets and Investment Banking (CMIB) that can be deployed across the firm and financial services industry.

Eight start-ups were selected from over 150 global applicants that collaborated with Nomura over a 10-week period to develop "Proof of Concepts". The start-ups showcased a wide range of banking solutions, including those for client on-boarding, business intelligence and market insights, enhanced risk and control, and human resources management, using emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), anomaly detection, natural language processing (NLP), natural language generation (NLG) and chatbots.

Selected start-ups worked closely with Nomura, leveraged its domain expertise and utilised the Nomura Innovation Centre (NICe) throughout the programme. These are Datum Solutions, Recommender Labs, Senseforth, Simility, Stride.ai, Surukam, Tookitaki and vPhrase.

"Rapidly evolving technologies are transforming the way we operate, and this wave of technological disruption is poised to reshape the industry. Nomura is focused on nurturing innovation across the value-chain using new technologies to redesign and re-imagine our operating model. The Voyager initiative in India is a further sign of our commitment to drive financial innovation globally," said Yo Akatsuka, Senior Managing Director, Innovations, Nomura Holdings.

Nomura collaborated with PwC as a strategic programme partner, and Google, IBM, Amazon Internet Services Pvt. Ltd. and Let's Talk Payments to bring industry expertise to the Voyager program.