With the penetration of handheld devices Fintech has attained significant growth and attention across the globe, especially in India and South Asian countries where the banking penetration was low. Each country is making considerable amount of contribution to build a robust environment for fintech based on their needs. For example, India’s fintech is more of focused into consumer facing and Europe’s fintech’s are mostly into Investment Banking and asset managements. Growing economies in Asia are focused in providing banking services to the population who are into cash economy and tend to move people to digital transactions. On the other side developed economies like U.K and U.S. fintech’s are working more in the areas of providing personalized services, efficiency and cost cuttings. A perfect combination of various factors is accelerating the growth in these fintech hubs.
The perfect mix of a progressive startup hub is:
Government programs and grants allocated for startups and how flexible its regulations and policies to comply with the fintech advancements sets the first milestone in setting up a successful fintech hub. With this context, the current Indian Government wants to curb the free cash economy and move to digital economy. This was a major boon for the current Fintech players in India.
Technology readiness and availability of tech skill market and infrastructure make the foundation stone of a fintech hub. In this context, when a job rare job description is posted, there is high chance to get 1000’s of resumes the next day morning. Cybersecurity levels are improved with multiple layer security features and internet penetration in India has been increased to 480 million people with the increase of Handheld devices.
Business environment is essential to expand and evolve in the market. Even though the value of Indian rupee is less and the number of competitor is high, the size of the market is too big to adopt the new players. Availability of business help and favorable environment is a surplus to form a financial hub in India.
Innovative and Entrepreneurial Mindset Entrepreneurs is a necessity to make dreams come true. Even though in entrepreneurship index India ranks at the 69th position, with its huge population, and passed outs of prestigious Institutes, India managed to have 8 startups in billion-dollar club and more is expected to enter the billion-dollar club.
Funding Availability is comparatively low with just around 2000 angels. But foreign investors like Accel Partners, Blume Ventures keep the Indian fintech hub hot and warm.
Readiness to Acceptance of Technology is more in India when compared to grown economies like Europe and US. When the term digital banking always accompanies with cyber frauds. Indian currency is of low value and most of the users tend to have assets rather than cash in their bank. This attitude of Indian consumers lead to easy acceptance to fintech disruptions.
India is growth percentage in fintech ladder is high, mainly driven by its robust fintech ecosystem. Huge players are supportive in terms of funding and building tech and entrepreneurial skills. The most challenging part faced by the Fintech startups would be KYC process and lack of infrastructure to build a robust of Fintech platforms. Since, fintech in India is expanding without any limitations, the focus should be given to build an independent fintech focused trade body which could sum up the efforts and create a lean sector for young entrepreneurs.