Eight things India’s fintech ecosystem is celebrating

With the festive season, most Indians are busy seeking blessings for financial prosperity and

building their portfolio of financial products, but this time, it could be digital. Be it gold, savings, gift cards, loans, investments and whatever else, Indians have moved online for it all.

And this is the transition which fintech— financial technology— has created. From being a cash dependent nation which spent furiously in offline spaces, the country has moved online with the help of government’s continuous digitisation move coupled with innovation from entrepreneurs.

To put it in context, a recent report released jointly by World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO), Cornell University and INSEAD, the 12th edition of Global Innovation Index ranked India at 52nd position out of 129 countries. OF this, innovation in fintech has gained global accolades, especially government’s unified payments interface (UPI) which is now making inroads to foreign land. However, in the last few years, the fintech industry has been growing to focus on niche areas with products such as Cred enabling bill payment for credit cards, to INDWealth enabling wealth management for HNIs to Paytm becoming a decacorn payments startup to Policybazaar enabling millions of policy management. According to Datalabs by Inc42’s most recent report on the fintech sector, $6.97 Bn was raised by 2707 Indian fintech startups across 453 deals from 2014-2018, wherein the maximum $3.3 Bn came in 2017. Fintech companies such as Paytm, PolicyBazaar, BillDesk, PhonePe and PineLabs have already attained unicorn status. Full article