How Indian FinTechs Are Collaborating With Banks – Bangalore FinTech Meetup 2017

By LTP

LTP has been organizing monthly FinTech meetups in Bangalore and Mumbai to nurture a dialogue in the FinTech startup ecosystem in India. For the latest meetup organized in Bangalore, the topic was perhaps one of the most important FinTech topics currently — Value of partnerships between banks and FinTechs: What does true collaboration mean? What is a good partnership strategy? And how do you foster innovation through partnerships?

LTP is the knowledge partner to YES Bank’s FinTech Program called YES FINTECH, a unique business accelerator powered by T-HUB and Anthill Ventures. The people who attended the event got to also hear how YES FINTECH is facilitating a world-class platform for FinTech founders to enable innovation at scale, in true collaborative spirit and used the opportunity to meet with the entire core team of YES FINTECH. FinTech startups, bankers, investors, technologists and other players from the ecosystem were present at the event.

The MC for the meetup was Chiranth Patil, EIR at LTP. The event started off with Amit Goel, MD and Co-founder of LTP introducing the first speaker: Lizzy Chapman, Co-Founder & CEO, ZestMoney.

Lizzy spoke about how she came to India in 2011 and her observation that credit cards were not designed for the Indian market. She continued talking about how we don’t need to build card acceptance because of smartphones because India is the ultimate leapfrog market. Lizzy also emphasized that India has the largest global FinTech opportunity and that Indians are adopting mobile tech more rapidly than any other country ever recorded. She also pointed out that India is the fastest-growing Internet user base in the world and has 65% of all internet traffic is on mobile – one of the highest in the world. She added that India has a very conducive infrastructure for FinTech growth and she said that the notion that India does not have FinTech infrastructure is wrong, quoting IMPS which is available nowhere else in the world. She finally concluded that Indian consumers are relatively open-minded and all we needed to do was to crack a model that worked.

The second speaker at the meetup was Bala Parthasarathy, CEO and Co-founder of MoneyTap, India’s first app-based credit line. Mr. Bala has also volunteered in the development of UTI and Aadhaar. Bala started off by talking about whether banks are going to die. He added that the biggest banks will be the biggest tech companies. He also added that we need to be aware of digital disruption and cited a few examples: Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Alibaba. He then talked about working with banks and stressed that looking at what customers want – flexibility, cost and convenience. Mr. Bala also spoke about MoneyTap and how they crossed 100,000 users in three months, rounding it off with the concept of loans vs. credit lines. This was followed by a small Q&A session where Bala talked about MoneyTap’s presence in 12 cities and its expansion plans, to 30 cities in six months, aimed at the middle-income group. He also answered questions about MoneyTap’s use cases – deposits, medical, education, school fees, etc.

Shradha Sharma, Founder & Chief Editor at Your Story, was the next speaker at the event. She talked about FinTech from a more generalist worldview. She emphasized the concept of studying how technology affects people and understanding people themselves while building ventures. She added that making the human connection in the field of financial technology can do wonders for a startup in the long-run.

Next up was the panel discussion and Q&A on “True Collaboration in FinTech,” which was moderated by Chiranth Patil, EIR at LTP. The participants in this edition of the Bangalore FinTech Meetup were:

• Shanta Thoutam, Director – Innovation Cluster at T-HUB

• Ritesh Pai, Senior President & Country Head, Digital Banking, Yes Bank

• Amit Goel, MD & Co-Founder of LTP

• Shubhanga Prasad, AVP, YES Accelerator, Yes Bank

• Prasad Vanga, Founder and CEO, Anthill Ventures

The Q&A session had the panel discussing the YES FINTECH Accelerator, why it is unique, the specific benefits that startups can look forward to and why startups should strongly consider and apply now. The session also threw light on what the panel’s definition of a successful relationship between a bank and a startup was. The panel also spoke about who the ideal candidates for the program would be. Amit Goel spoke about how LTP added value to the current stage of the program as well as during and after a startup’s sting with YES FINTECH. The panel also spoke about how Yes Bank makes a difference to startups and how speed scaling is relevant to YES FINTECH. The panel discussion ended with the panel answering Chiranth’s question of where the future is.

The panel discussion was followed by a talk by FinTech Entrepreneur Vinay Bagri, CEO of NIYO on collaboration with YES Bank and the advantages it offers. This was followed by a networking session where FinTech startups, bankers, investors, technologists and other players from the ecosystem got to meet each other, exchange ideas and contacts. This edition of the FinTech Meetup was a huge success and we look forward to having you in the future editions!

First appeared at LTP