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While traditional banks have successfully earned customer loyalties and successes over the years, in today’s times customer experience plays a much more significant role than anything else. And, this is where fintech comes in. India is home to 20+ fintech unicorns, and the fintech industry is expected to reach $1 trillion in throughput and $200 billion in revenue by 2030. Like every other startup, fintech needs tech too, but they have a different kind of approach towards it, owing to the involvement of huge financial data.
In the frame: Souparno Bagchi, COO, Balancehero India, Hardika Shah, Founder and CEO, Kinara Capital (Online), Amit Tyagi, CEO, Payworld Sumit Chhazed, Co-founder and CEO, OTO
According to Souparno Bagchi, COO, Balancehero India, there are fundamentally two things which are very different in the fintech space deep domain orientation and having a good understanding of the regulatory expectation. “Any product which is coming across deep domain orientation be it from the aspect of safety, responsibility, regulation put together, if you are not imbibing, it is going to be difficult to build a good product which a consumer
is looking for.”
Says Hardika Shah, Founder and CEO, Kinara Capital, “Regulator is bringing in control. But even though we are a fintech, we are building a newer version of old school so that regulatory frameworks remains intact. One must understand that we want to work with the regulator.”
Amit Tyagi, CEO, Payworld, opines, “If you are a consumer tech startup, it is you and the
consumer by default. But in fintech, you work with regulators, other industry participants and consumers.
If your head is not in the right space, the regulator ensures that there is no starting of
the business unless you have got the basics sorted from the security and consumer perspective.”
But what about disruptive technologies like blockchain in fintech? Industry insiders say that blockchain technologies with wider use cases are going to really amplify the trust quotient in the sector. Sumit Chhazed, Co-founder and CEO, OTO, says, “Fundamentally there are three things for any technology to thrive-trust and transparency, making processes more efficient, reducing the cost. In blockchain the cost of running the payment decision is getting lower. When it comes to assets, blockchain can give real time access to data. There is a lot more trust and transparency.
Fintech companies have made money accessible for all. Says Pallavi Shrivastave, Co-founder & Director, Progcap, “There has been openness from the regulator side to explore and let fintech
experiment. Concuss Chitresh Sharma, CEO & Co-founder, Refyne “We are taking
financial wellness to the last mile. And when you do that you are servicing 93% of the
crowd who are not used to credit scores.
Another interesting aspect of the fintech industry is the payment system, its subset. One example of this is UPI. “It is here for multiple reasons-ease of payment from customer point of view to zero MDR (merchant discount rates) for merchants,” says Krishnan Vishwantahan,
founder, executive director, Ring.
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