Fintech- India's New Sunshine Sector

Indian fintech firms are making waves. However, the availability of sustained growth capital will have a crucial role to play in the sector’s future

- Aniruddha Bose

29% Expected Roi On Fintech Investments In India

Over the past few years, Fintech in India has taken a giant leap forward. For those not aware, ‘fintech’ is a portmanteau that combines the words ‘finance’ and ‘technology’ and represents the amalgamation of traditional financial services with innovative technologies resulting in value propositions that enrich the financial lives of consumers. It is estimated that more than 600 startups, coffers filled with burn-capital, are currently jostling for a piece of the Indian fintech pie across a multitude of subdomains.

Interestingly, the very definition of what constitutes fintech has undergone broad changes over the past few years. Originally coined as a term to define backend technologies that enabled banking and financial institutions to strengthen their existing brick-and-mortar setups (think ‘finacle’), fintech in India now covers a much wider spectrum of business models and service providers comprising of e-lenders, online payments systems, automated investment advisory platforms, personal finance platforms such as tax filing portals, insurance aggregators or ‘insur-tech’ platforms, and banking technology.

“Today you can summarise fintech as an evolving ecosystem driven by disruptive technologies, helping to deliver banking and financial services to customers in a way that is faster, more cost effective, intuitive and easy to consume,” says Vikram Pandya, Director, Fintech, S.P. Jain School of Global Management.

India, A Fintech Breeding Ground?

The emergence of new and exciting technologies such as machine learning, big data and AI have resulted in the mushrooming of several innovative fintech ventures in India in recent times – and a confluence of factors suggest that this is just the beginning.