Passion for biz markets gives successful returns

Finarkein targets the growing demand from enterprises trying to comply with RBI framework

- Namita Shibad

PUNE: Despite an engineering degree in computer science from a Pune institute and job at a product lifecycle management (PLM) sector, Nikhil Kurhe was always drawn towards the finance industry.

"I used to play around in the business markets, investing in different assets and keeping updated on new innovations like unified payments interface (UPI) and so on. I always found it very interesting and engrossing. My friends Dheeraj Kumar, Akash Agarwal and Pradip Waghmare and I also built a robo system that could provide investment advisory using algorithms," the 32-year-old said, adding that Dheeraj later became the co-founder.

At that time, financial organisations relied on manual data like bank statements, pay slips and income tax returns (ITR) for something as simple as taking a loan. It always led to lots of back and forth for financial institutions to process data and delay in compliance of financial services and products like loans. Then, in 2017, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) brought out a circular NBFC-AA (Non-Bank Finance Company-Account Aggregator) that laid down the ground rules for sharing KYC (know your customer) data in the finance markets. Now, the play at the fringes of the finance industry had an irresistible lure that drew Nikhil right into it.

Where others saw a regulatory update, Nikhil saw an inflection point.

"Customer data now had to be shared in a specific, standardised format between entities like banks and insurers," he said. "This presented a real opportunity for us to step in and solve a major problem."