India Fintech Forum, a non-profit Fintech advocacy group, revealed on November 24, 2020, that it had shortlisted 27 financial technology firms for its 5th installment of India Fintech Awards (IFTA).
The Fintechs will be presenting live demos to the event judges, beginning on November 30 and ending on December 2, 2020. These companies are competing for the Fintech Startup of the Year award. Six innovative Fintech firms are expected to compete for the Fintech Scaleup of the Year award.
India has quickly become a major global Fintech hub. As reported in October 2020, India has introduced a Fintech sandbox program that will be managed by the recently established International Financial Services Centres Authority.
As covered, the Fintech sandbox program will allow established industry participants and startups to work cooperatively in order to develop solutions related to banking, capital markets and insurance services. The products and services will be used in a live environment with a few “real” customers for a certain time period (before potentially moving to the production or official launch stage).
The Indian Fintechs shortlisted for the IFTA were selected from a pool of more than 600 applications that came from across the globe. As reported by the Entrepreneur, the applicants are based in the US, the UK, the UAE, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Norway, New Zealand, Netherlands, Ireland, India, Hungary, Hong Kong, Germany, France, Canada, Brazil, and Algeria.
The India Fintech Forum reportedly has over 1,000 Fintechs and more than 20,000 individuals listed as its members. The forum aims to enhance India’s financial tech ecosystem so that the country can continue to be a key player in the global Fintech economy.
The India Fintech Forum has teamed up with Amazon Pay, PayU, CashRich, TransUnion CIBIL, and Big Four auditing firm Deloitte. These companies will be supporting the forum as it focuses on promoting Fintech adoption.
Previous winners of IFTA have raised more than $1.5 billion in capital (to date).
Fintech firms are now a “critical constituent” of India’s financial services sector, according to a recent report. The country is now home to more than 2,000 Fintech companies and has become one of the world’s largest financial technology markets (after the US, China and UK), according to a report from McKinsey & Company that was released earlier this month.
The report notes that the first wave of Indian Fintech firms had focused mainly on offering payments solutions. However, Fintech companies are now present across a fairly wide range of segments and financial services products, “with distribution of companies mirroring the global trend,” the McKinsey report states.
IFTA finalists are expected to demo innovations in various Fintech segments such as AI, banking infrastructure, online lending, cryptocurrency, Regtech, Robo-advisory services, digital identity, digital payments, and Insurtech.
The finalists for the Fintech Startup of the Year 2020 award include: UK’s AssetVault and MyEarth.ID, DriveWealth, Lokyata and US-based Tala Security. The finalist also include Bambu, ConfirmU and Singapore’s Flow, Germany’s MODIFI, Brazil based SalaryFits, Switzerland’s TECH5 and Cashfree, Chqbook, Crediwatch, HAPPY, HyperVerge, Jupiter Money, Khatabook , Leegality, Nearby Technologies, Novopay, Open, Payswiff , Recko, Simpl, WazirX, Xtracap Fintech from India.
The finalists for Fintech Scaleup of the Year 2020 award include US-based Asset Vantage and BCT Digital, ClearTax, OneAssist, and Paytm Money with Perfios from India.