“Paisabazaar is the market place leader in online financial products and has a loyal and growing customer base across India. By Introducing CASHe’s app-based short-term loan products on its platform, we look forward to leveraging the platform’s wide distribution network and its strong customer portfolio, especially in the short-term lending space,” said V. Raman Kumar, Chairman, Aeries Financial Technologies.

“We are confident that this partnership will create a win-win situation for those customers who would have never qualified for any loan from traditional lending institutions. They will now have access to CASHe’s short-term loan products on a single platform. I am truly thrilled by this partnership,” Kumar added.

The tie-up will enable CASHe to reach out to a sizable online customer base of Paisabazaar. The duo is together targeting to disburse 35,000 loans by the end of 2017.

“As a market leader in the lending space, we get customers from across the spectrum on our platform – HNIs, entrepreneurs, young salaried professionals, low income profiles etc. These customers have varied credit profiles, with credit scores ranging from ‘Excellent’ to ‘Poor’. In line with this, we are delighted to partner with CASHe to help improve access to credit for young salaried professionals with below par credit scores,” said Naveen Kukreja, CEO & Co-founder, Paisabazaar.

Kukreja further said that this is a great platform to access credit for short term, as well as an excellent medium for consumers to behave responsibly on this loan and build their credit profile.

Powered by an algorithm driven credit scoring platform, the Social Loan Quotient (SLQ), CASHe quickly determines a user’s credit worthiness by using multiple unique data points to arrive at a distinct credit profile of the customer. It is completely automated and requires no personal intervention and no physical documentation. The average time taken for a loan to be disbursed is about 8 minutes, subject to proper submission of all documents.

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In advent of this growth, cryptocurrency startup Unocoin has also reported a progress, drawing more than 30 top investors from five countries since its inception in 2013. Based out of Bangalore, the startup is India’s first entrant into the Bitcoin industry. The company operates a BTC-INR trading platform which enables Indians to buy, sell, store, use and accept Bitcoin.

A glimpse into Unocoin’s early days

Being one among the first Bitcoin companies in India, one can assume that there might have been some challenges it faced to establish the company, especially when knowledge about cryptocurrencies was scanty. Unocoin CEO Sathvik Vishwanath agrees that it was a colossal task for them to explicitly explain Bitcoin, while introducing their company. Another major challenge was the absence of any regulatory framework, which made users rather uncertain about transacting with Bitcoins.

However, the times are changing today, with both – the Bitcoin transactions and its value picking up. He believes that the country has become a more favorable ground for Bitcoin and blockchain companies to operate.

Last year, Unocoin raised $1.5 million in a Pre-Series-A round, which was the highest total ever raised by a digital currency venture in India. The startup has been utilizing this infusion of funds for developing its core product, whilst expanding the team and presence across geographies. It is considering to expand into MENA, Europe and Canada in the future, hoping to boost its team strength to 95-100 from 70 by the end of this year.

Were there any roadblocks?

But it has not been all roses for the company. In June this year, there was news of a Unocoin account being hacked and the user losing out a lot of money from the wallet. Vishwanath explains that the security breach was not in the management of Unocoin, its services or server.

“It was similar to someone’s Gmail account getting hacked, instead of the Gmail server. Such incidents are common for any online platform as customers will not choose to employ different security measures offered by the service.”

In order to combat such incidents, Unocoin has revised its OTP sharing policy. In effect of the account getting hacked, it started sharing OTPs only with the mobile numbers registered with the wallet. Subsequently, the OTPs will not be shared on the registered email-ID unless users opt-in for this. The startup is also considering the hardware based protection for users’ accounts.

Should we worry about Bitcoin price surge?

“In 2016 alone, the blockchain technology has raised US$1.4 billion collectively. Yesteryear’s demonetization drive further laid a stronger foundation for the mainstreaming of Bitcoin in India. Surprisingly enough, users have shown a higher interest in utilizing Bitcoin as a digital asset, giving it the status of E-gold,” he noted.

But the ever-rising Bitcoin rates has put buyers in a tough spot, sparking apprehension due to the volatility in prices. Vishwanath agrees that Bitcoin is perhaps the most disruptive concept in monitory system, and perhaps the most evolved one as well.

However, he thinks people should be interested in Bitcoin as it is immune to any manipulation that the normal financial system is subject to. The advantages that the cryptocurrency brought to table by combining immutability, ease of transaction, fast and free settlements is what should drive the Bitcoin wave and the price volatility is the side effect of the same.

In the wake of the same paradigm shift, he expects the Bitcoin prices to get stronger in the near future and believes that any stability in Bitcoin prices and value would at least be quite a few years away, as we are still in price discovery era for Bitcoin.

Are crytocurrencies safe?

There have been reports of Bitcoin trading amounting to money-laundering and that it propagates the financing of terrorist outfits. And this has put the cryptocurrency under the purview of suspicion.

“At its heart, Bitcoin is part technology and part mathematics. Hence, there is a section of individuals that may utilize Bitcoin for money laundering, extracting ransoms etc. To the same accord, Reserve Bank of India advises caution to users transacting in Bitcoin. However, with the right regulations, Bitcoin as a technology holds the power to enable greater financial inclusion, while also commissioning an optimized global transaction system,” Vishwanath said.

To quell customer fear regarding Bitcoin, Unocoin organizes activities like meetups, conferences, seminars, college feasts, coupon based Bitcoin distribution, educating through blogs and articles.

But what about the lack of regulations…

A committee was set up recently to explore the type of regulations that might be required to govern the use of cryptocurrencies in India. When asked about the steps Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) should adopt to police the unregulated cryptocurrency exchange platforms in the country, Vishwanath thinks the limits on transactions, needed KYC and AML docs, and disclosing of the reason for payment, should be a few areas that should be addressed first.

“The space is still evolving and we are yet to see much bigger challenges. However, some of the major factors that the industry needs to keep in mind while developing policies regarding Bitcoin e-wallet services is the FEMA, Forex and Remittance,” he explained.

He further added that proper documentation of identity of Bitcoin users is another aspect that the government should be keen on, proper guidelines have to be issued to exchanges and a detailed regulatory framework needs to be drafted based on inputs from financial experts as well as existing Bitcoin companies.

Back-breaking transaction process

If you have a Bitcoin wallet, you might have observed that transferring money to wallets from individual bank accounts involves the cumbersome process of NEFT transfers, which is both time-consuming and tedious. I have always wondered why these transfers can’t be more like online shopping or mobile wallets, where the user needn’t key in the details of your bank account.

To simplify this process, Unocoin has given an option to use net banking to purchase Bitcoin instantly 24×7, supporting all major banks that support netbanking. What’s further convenient is that it has also integrated with PayU Money using which the customer can buy Bitcoin instantly as well.

Why the price difference?

If you are among those who track the Bitcoin rates in India regularly across platforms, you might have noticed that the difference between the buying and selling price of Bitcoin on the Unocoin site is higher than of its foremost competitor, Zebpay. This means a Unocoin user will have to wait for longer before he decides to sell his Bitcoin for a profit. When asked about this, Vishwanath attributed it to the variation in the market and users across different platforms.

“There were times when we had it least among our competitors and it keeps changing. Our prices depend on our customers’ buying and selling patterns instead of that of the competitor’s prices,” he said.

Will Bitcoin make it to the mainstream?

For Bitcoin to gain mainstream prominence, Vishwanath believes that it will have to break the monopoly and dominance of the way money has been traditionally used and circulated in the economy. Naturally, Bitcoin due to its unique proposition have remained in circulation since inception.

“Since it was a completely new and disruptive idea, users were rather guarded and unwilling to try transacting via Bitcoins. However, the times are changing and the current wave of digitalization and e-currency seems to be in the favor of Bitcoin,” he added.

Since there is an upper cap on the number of Bitcoins that may float in the economy, its value is only set to rise owing to an increase in the awareness amongst the users. Currently, there are quite few well known businesses in India that are accepting Bitcoin through Unocoin’s payment gateway.

The company holds that legalizing Bitcoin would undeniably have a positive effect on the economy since Bitcoin provides a new and upgraded foundational architecture for global currency systems. Simultaneously, it also reduces the cost and infrastructure requirements for the fragmented financial systems that can completely rely on this new, advanced and superior protocol for money.

What’s the future of Bitcoin in India?

Bitcoin has laid a strong foundation for other cryptocurrencies to pivot for mainstream attention. Along with the increase in Bitcoin value and transaction, Ethereum blockchain, which flaunts the backing of corporate organizations like Intel, JPMorgan and Microsoft, has also gained momentum.

Besides the news of Bitcoin on verge of splitting, Bitcoin also has doubled up the capacity of transactions that can happen. But will this encourage businesses to accept Bitcoin as a payment option?

“The aspired number of transactions that we need Bitcoin to support is manifold than what we can fit into the blocks on the blockchain. This means that we need competing transactions to be able to get confirmed but the non-competing ones could take very long to confirm or may never confirm at all. The way we create competing transaction is by paying higher voluntary transaction fee for it,” Vishwanath explained.

Higher fee is detrimental to the fundamentals of Bitcoin protocol and not liked by many and the only way is to fit in more transactions in the blockchain. This is possible initially by technologies called SegWit and lightning network but eventually we will need to increase blocksize to fit in more and more transactions and this could again reduce the transaction fee.

Also, mainstream cryptocurrency transaction would also mean more growing user concerns and complaints. Given the absence of any established framework of customer grievances redressal so far, this can become a herculean task. Vishwanath believes that a formal recognition and regulations are warranted for the growth and longevity of the ecosystem. In the same effect, he appreciates the steps taken the Indian Government in understanding Bitcoins rather than banning the technology.

Digital Assets and Blockchain Foundation of India (DABFI) was formed by the leading Bitcoin exchanges in India. He hopes that India would further learn from the well thought and well implemented regulatory implementations from other major economies such as Japan, China and USA.

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LoanSwift enables LoanAdda to analyze vast amounts of non-traditional credit data to increase loan approval rates and reduce the risk of credit decisions, particularly for thin-file and no-file borrowers like millennials. It is a machine learning platform developed specifically for credit underwriting. The platform uses an algorithm to analyze tens of thousands of data points to provide a more accurate understanding of all potential borrowers. It consists of capabilities such as data aggregation, which identifies, cleans and aggregates data from thousands of sources, regardless of format and modeling tools which help train, ensemble and productionalize machine learning models that address credit risk analysis.

According to Anshuman Mishra, Co-Founder and CEO, LoanSwift uses machine learning to process each customer’s application as a vector of factors. It then maps the corresponding factors to enhance the chances of lending to the customer. This has been operationalized in the LoanAdda app and targeted at millennials, who have no or limited credit history and numerous inaccuracies, something which is not enough to access credit worthiness. As a result, they are denied credit because they cannot be underwritten by traditional systems.

“The platform analyzes thousands of nontraditional and traditional variables to accurately score borrowers, including thin-file and no-file borrowers. It can analyze vast amounts of in-house data, such as customer interaction data, payments profile, and purchase transactions. LoanSwift can also add traditional credit information and nontraditional credit variables, such as how a customer fills out a form, how much time they spend on a site, and more,” Mishra explained.

He further added that traditional underwriting works for evaluating borrowers with a considerable credit history, but when there is limited or no data, there is no possibility of ascertaining the difference between a credit worthy and a high-risk borrower. Machine learning fills those gaps by analyzing a considerably broader set of data.

There are around 456 million Indians living without access to any formal sources of credit. The biggest problem is limited access to credit for unbanked customers and poor guidance in facilitating loans. LoanAdda aims to remove the high entry barriers to formal banking and analyze customer’s data to enable and enhance their credit worthiness.

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According to an official release, the Coco Framework when integrated with blockchain networks addresses critical needs for commercial adoption like high-transaction speed, distributed governance and confidentiality. Providing these foundational capabilities, Coco Framework opens up more complex, real-world blockchain scenarios across industries — like financial services, supply chain and logistics, healthcare and retail — further proving blockchain’s potential to digitally transform business.

Mark Russinovich CTO, Microsoft Azure, writes on a company blog:

“As enterprises look to apply blockchain technology to meet their business needs, they’ve come to realize that many existing blockchain protocols fail to meet key enterprise requirements such as performance, confidentiality, governance, and required processing power. This is because existing systems were designed to function—and to achieve consensus—in public scenarios amongst anonymous, untrusted actors with maximum transparency. Because of this, transactions are posted “in the clear” for all to see, every node in the network executes every transaction, and computationally intensive consensus algorithms must be employed. These safeguards, while necessary to ensure the integrity of public blockchain networks, require tradeoffs in terms of key enterprise requirements such as scalability and confidentiality.

“Efforts to adapt existing public blockchain protocols or to create new protocols to meet these needs have generally traded one required enterprise attribute for another—such as improved confidentiality at the cost of greater complexity or lower performance.”

Coco Framework combines advanced algorithms and trusted execution environments (TEEs), like Intel’s Software Guard Extensions (SGX) or Windows Virtual Secure Mode (VSM).

When integrated with a blockchain network, key benefits of the Coco Framework include:

• Transaction speeds of more than 1,600 transactions per second
• Easily managed data confidentiality without sacrificing performance
• A comprehensive, industry-first distributed governance model for blockchain networks that establishes a network constitution and allows members to vote on all terms and conditions governing the consortium and the blockchain software system

“We are thrilled to work with Microsoft to bring blockchain to the enterprise,” said Rick Echevarria, vice president, Software and Services Group and General Manager, Platforms Security Division at Intel. “Our mutual customers are excited by the potential of blockchain. Intel is committed to accelerating the value of blockchains powered by Azure on Intel hardware, by improving the scalability, privacy and security of the solutions based on our technologies.”

By design, Coco is open and compatible with any blockchain protocol. Microsoft has already begun integrating Ethereum into Coco and JP Morgan Chase, Intel and R3 have committed to integrating enterprise ledgers, Quorum, Hyperledger Sawtooth and Corda, respectively.

“The R3 Corda platform was built for enterprises. We designed it with the financial industry from the ground up to solve real business problems, but we also knew it had to be deployable and manageable in today’s complex IT landscape,” said David E. Rutter, CEO of R3. “No other distributed ledger technology platform is as interoperable or easily integrated, and partnering with Microsoft is another milestone in our mission to facilitate a world of frictionless commerce.”

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The funds would be utilized for technology development and marketing to scale up the business in India and abroad. Myforexeye is looking at expanding its operations across India and other countries in the next five years. It plans to open 105 stores in 65 cities by 2021.

It is working on developing technology solutions to bring in more transparency, enhance user experience and ensure seamless transactions for Indian exporters, importers, individuals (B2C) like non-resident Indians and travelers.

Sharing his thought Anand Tandon, Founder, Myforexeye Fintech, said, “We established Myforexeye with the prime mission of simplifying Forex for SMBs, MSMEs, B2B and B2C businesses. We have put our energy and experience in building this unique concept and have been getting exciting response from the industry. We see a lot of potential for growth in this sector and hence we decided to take on the investment to support our expansion plans.”

Tandon – an ex-banker and an internet enthusiast.

“We are confident that the investment from likeminded investors will support us in creating new technology avenues and marketing platforms to reach out to our clients in an efficient manner. Myforexeye aspires to be the leading one-stop shop foreign exchange solution provider across the globe. The company’s strength lies in its unconventional approach towards problem solving so as to offer unmatched efficiency and effectiveness,” he added.

Speaking on the investment, Rahul Dev Kumar, Singapore-based Senior Transaction Banking and Working Capital professional said, “The industry potential for this unique concept is huge as a better profit margin of businesses dealing with international trade, SMEs, MSMEs and individuals is always at risk due to information arbitrage from intermediaries. As India’s first full service Forex Company, Myforexeye has addressed this major issue by curating services which have never been experienced or exercised in the Indian market. Having invested in this high-potential concept, we will now be supporting this innovative platform aimed completely at increasing profitability of a business in India and abroad.”

In the last 30 months, Myforexeye claims to have serviced 1,000+ clients, processing 50,000+ transactions worth $2.1 billion.

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But what is Ethereum and how it is different from Bitcoin?

Ethereum is often touted as a “world computer.”

What that fancy language really means is that Ethereum is a platform for the creation of decentralized applications (dapps), using what are known as smart contracts. Smart contracts are bits of code that automatically execute an action after certain requirements have been met—say, sending a slice of an app’s profits to investors after a predetermined date has passed. Bitcoin has smart contracts too, but Ethereum makes them really easy to use since they’re baked into the system’s design.

All of this takes place on a blockchain, which Bitcoin uses too. All a blockchain does is act as a public ledger that lists everything that goes on in the network in real-time. It’s the tool that makes the whole thing possible. The blockchain, and thus the Ethereum network, is distributed across thousands of computers (or “nodes”) around the world.

It’s also “Turing complete,” which means that smart contracts on the blockchain can handle most computational functions, allowing them to be pretty sophisticated. For example, say that I want to send my colleague Jordan some money. I would register this contract between myself and Jordan on the blockchain and the Ethereum network would automatically facilitate the exchange of money. Since the blockchain is a public ledger, anyone and everyone can see that this transaction happened.

You may have heard that Bitcoin is relatively anonymous since people are identified by cryptographic addresses, not their names. Ethereum is similar. Unless Jordan or I decide to broadcast our identities on the network, no one will know who executed that transaction—they’ll just see that a transaction for X amount of money occurred at a given time.

If you want to take a look at what’s happening on the Ethereum blockchain for yourself, you can check out all the transactions on the Ethereum network, or look at a particular user’s history, at any time using a tool called Etherscan.

Now you know how it is different from Bitcoin. There are many other cryptos too but none have come as close to Bitcoin in terms of giving Bitcoin some competition. So the question arises:

Why Ethereum has value even after unlimited supply contrary to Bitcoin’s limited supply of 21 million?

It’s because it is the ‘juice’ that keeps the Ethereum network running; one has to spend small amounts of Ether to send transactions that may involve value transfers or (more importantly) function calls on smart contracts.

As such an investment in Ether represents a belief that the Ethereum network will continue to grow in volume/transactional size i.e. that more and more businesses and individuals will start using the cryptocurrency for a wide range of purposes (see, for example, Slock.it‘s recent activity involving Decentralized Autonomous Organizations structured as trusts with the purpose of making decentralized investments).

Smart contracts are what investors are really excited about, and have contributed to Ethereum’s sharp rise in value. So these are some reasons due to which it has value. Now let’s see —

Who made Ethereum?

Ethereum was invented by Vitalik Buterin, a Canadian computer programmer born in Russia who cut his teeth on Bitcoin as a teenager. In 2013, Buterin published the whitepaper that would lay the foundation for the Ethereum network. He was only 19 years old at the time, which is why he is often hailed as a boy genius.

In 2014, Buterin hosted a Crowdsale to fund the launch of Ethereum and raised $18 million through his Swiss company, the Ethereum Switzerland GmbH. On July 30, 2015, the first (or Genesis) block of data on the blockchain was created and the network was born. Many Bitcoin startups like BuyUcoin too have Ethereum on their platform.

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As the industry is gradually surfacing into the mainstream, Brahma Mahesh Khaderbad, Co-founder and CEO, FinMomenta, a Singapore-based fintech startup in an interview with Techseen explains how P2P platforms have managed to cause their fair share of disruptions.

Techseen: How are peer-to-peer lending platforms transforming the consumer lending industry?

Khaderbad: Peer-to- peer lending is a paradigm shift for entire financial industry. Over the years it has proved to be a streamlined lending process. Today, Consumers are increasingly looking for investment products that generate higher returns than traditional savings accounts offered by banks. At the same time millennials are becoming a larger portion of the consumer loan market as they seek
credit to finance major purchases or refinance their student debt.

In the current scenario only about 10% of the population in India get financial help from Banks as they highly rely on Credit Bureau Scores to evaluate borrower creditworthiness. Consequently, large number of loan applications gets rejected and the applicants do not get the loan sanctioned by Banks. But with the simplified lending process, P2P lending is filling the gap.

This is where platform like ours have emerged as a game changer in the consumer lending industry
as we have our own proprietary credit scoring model to identify borrowers’ creditworthiness. Since
inception we have covered large population who remain un-served by Banks. Borrowers are not
required to move out of their home/office and visit a bank; they can apply for the loan anytime
from anywhere and avail a loan.

Techseen: You are planning to raise $2 million to $5 million by the year end in Pre-Series A funding. How will you utilize this fund?

Khaderbad: Yes we are planning to raise Pre – Series A funding by the end of 2017 and we plan to utilize the funds for business development, product enhancement and technology. This will further add to the growth of our company and maximize shareholder returns.

Furthermore, we are in the process of partnering with NBFCs to fund loans for specific products. We will also utilize the funds for providing First Loss Default Guarantee (FLDG) to the NBFCs.

Techseen: What credit scoring model do you use to assess the creditworthiness of applicants? What are the metrics you use?

Khaderbad: Our P2P lending model is growing in popularity with borrowers because of its perceived low interest rates, simplified application process and quick lending decisions. We use a proprietary credit decision model, designed with cutting edge technologies like Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning. This proprietary credit scoring model evaluates between 500 – 800 parameters to identify the creditworthiness of the borrower. We have a 360 degree credit scoring that includes analyzing
the stability, repayment capacity, social reputation and integrity of the Borrower.

Techseen: How have you been monetizing on your FinTech platform? Which are your best markets?

Khaderbad: Our platform Tachyloans charges a one-time non-refundable registration fee to both lenders and borrowers. In addition to this, flat 2% service fee is charged to the lender and a service fee between 2% – 5% is charged to borrowers on fulfillment of loan.

The consumer credit market in India is currently at $300bn out of which $98bn is the personal loans market. The market is currently growing at 14% year on year. The SME business loan market is currently at $600bn and is expected to grow to $3.4 trillion by 2022.

Currently Tachyloans is present in 50 cities in India. We are looking to expand our footprint to 200 cities for personal loans and 50 cities for business loans. We are also planning to expand the platform to other Asian countries by 2020. Our major focus is to cover tier 2 and tier 3 cities in the immediate future.

Techseen: You have revealed plans to launch a loan offering exclusively for small businesses. What has prompted this move and how can it help expand your customer bracket?

Khaderbad: Small and Medium enterprises (SMEs) sector contribute to nearly 45% of country’s GD, growing at an annual rate of 11.5% and employs close to 46 crore people. However, most of these units remain un-served or under-served by regular lending institutions such as Banks and NBFCs due to their stringent lending policy.

Lack of awareness, obsolete data models, inadequate access to banking services, etc. force these businesses to either close their operations or depend on expensive financing from the unorganized sector.

SMEs in India are expected to be a $25.8 bn market for the emerging technologies by 2020. It is here that we see a huge business opportunity ahead of us. Reaching out to this under-served sector will help us expand our customer base.

Techseen: How are P2P lending platforms regulated? Is there any government involvement to supervise them?

Khaderbad: Currently there are no regulations by government for P2P platforms and no Licence available. However, RBI is expected to issue guidelines on the capital structure of the company, permitted activity, governance and the reporting activities. The platform could be expected to be well capitalized upto Rs. 2cr that in a way will only allow serious players in this space.

There could be guidelines on governance also where the management team could be expected to have bankers on board. This guideline will again help bring domain expertise and experience that is much needed by the platforms. The reporting activities are well needed to ensure that frauds are contained and the right borrower is given a fair opportunity to get a loan at the right price.

On the whole, we believe that the much awaited RBI regulations will only make this space attractive for individuals to invest in the loans to earn higher returns and make way to provide loans to the wider spectrum of the borrowers thereby facilitating financial inclusion. RBI recently released a consultation paper to bring P2P platforms under its purview and the final guidelines are expected to be released by the end of July 2017.

Techseen: Since a client does not need to put up collateral to compensate for a non-payment, what are the consequences to defaulting a loan on your platform?

Khaderbad: Borrowers on our platform are not required to submit any collateral. We proactively remind the borrower of the payment due well in advance and keep a track of borrower’s repayment behavior. In case of a loan default it would be reported to Credit Bureaus and will affect the borrower’s credit score.

Techseen: Are you planning to increase the ticket size of your loans, which is capped at Rs 5 lakh?

Khaderbad: We believe that under personal loan segment maximum ticket size of Rs. 5 lakh is a good amount. However, this may vary from case to case and if there will be a need to fund higher amount, we may consider a revision if the requirement is genuine. We will also be soon launching SME loans for which the ticket size would range between Rs. 5 lakh – Rs. 50 lakhs.

Techseen: Do you think it would be better for banks to oversee operations at FinTech companies like yours, or to work together to provide a good overall service?

Khaderbad: Working in alliance with company like ours will add value to Banks as they can make use of the advanced technologies adopted by us in evaluating the credit worthiness of the borrowers. This will help banks reduce the cost for customer acquisition, increase their profitability and enable them to provide loans at lower interest rates.

Techseen: In the US, P2P platforms issued approximately $5.5 billion in loans in 2014 and PwC indicated that the market could reach higher than $150 billion by the year 2025. What are your observations about India?

Khaderbad: In India, we do not have any official figures on P2P lending business, but with RBI final guidelines expected to be released by the end of July 2017, P2P lending platforms will see a huge boost up.

Credit under personal finance segment in India has grown at a CAGR of 7.57% since FY 09 from $54.7bn to $98bn in 2017. There is also a large Market Cap Opportunity of $600bn lying ahead for Private Banks, NBFCs and FinTech companies which is expected to grow to $3020bn by 2027.

Tele-density in rural areas has grown at a CAGR of 71% from 2007-16, opening the doors for digital banking. With almost all the services going online, we expect Digital Finance to constitute at least 10% of overall lending business in the country by 2022.

Techseen: What are the challenges you faced while setting up the company?

Khaderbad: When we had set up our business, there was no verification module available to verify customer data, there were no agencies/companies ready to carry-out physical verification. Banks did not agree to open an Escrow/nodal account. None of the trusteeship companies were ready to take the custody of lender and borrower money.

But now the scenario has changed and we have come a long way ahead. We have tie ups with banks, agencies and trusteeship company.

Techseen: What is your roadmap for 2017? Do you plan to launch in other countries anytime soon?

Khaderbad: We have launched our platform early this year and will disburse 1000 personal loans and 100 business loans by the end of 2017. The disbursement of these loans would be around Rs. 26 cr. In 2018, we have a plan to disburse 6000 personal loans and 400 business loans, totaling to a disbursement of approximately Rs. 115 cr. Moving ahead, we will expand our business to two potential Asian markets by 2019-20.

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Blockchain provides a secure, transparent and tamper-proof peer-to-peer asset exchange. Initially developed for facilitating crytocurrencies such as Bitcoin, the group feels that the technology’s distributed ledger architecture can be used in other industries also,” said Harmeet Singh Monga, Chief Business Officer, BlockSmiths & Blockchain SIG Founding Member.

“We see our partnership to form a SIG with NASSCOM as a wonderful opportunity to develop the Blockchain community in India,” said Harmeet Singh Monga, Chief Business Officer, BlockSmiths & Blockchain SIG Founding Member.

“We strongly believe that India has the potential to lead the Blockchain revolution in the South East Asian region and help businesses from various industries become highly streamlined and efficient by adopting Blockchain.”

The Blockchain SIG will be focusing on four core areas:

1. Blockchain for Fintech— From economising cross-border payments and remittances to facilitating the development of seamless collaborations between various financial institutions such as banks, insurance companies and financial regulators, blockchain is a game-changer for fintech industry.
2. Blockchain for Internet of Things (IoT)— Since IoT’s functionality is dependent on precise coordination between devices; IoT needs a system which can ensure this while maintaining the security of data transfer/exchange. Blockchain also provides the required governance system for connected IOT devices involved in trade or commerce.
3. Smart Contracts and its Applications— A Smart Contract is a piece of code, which executes itself when certain conditions are met. Organizations could utilize this feature to remove third party intermediaries to oversee fulfillment of business transactions and reduce their costs.
4. General Blockchain Applications: This area would deal with general applications of
   Blockchain that are not covered in the rest of the focus areas.

Nasscom Blockchain SIG will focus on Blockchain advocacy, knowledge sharing / collaborating on Blockchain implementations, organizing events like ‘Blockathon’ and by socializing Blockchain based business opportunities with entrepreneurs and students.

“NASSCOM has taken the initiative of forming the Special Interest Groups (SIGs) in Blockchain primarily to evangelize Blockchain Technology, bring together interested member companies in Blockchain space and to encourage various startups to adopt this technology and incubate businesses,” said Rajesh Dhuddu, Senior Vice President, Quatrro and NASSCOM Blockchain SIG Chair.

“Our partnership with BlockSmiths is a good match and provides required our expertise. We are keen to work with them and NASSCOM to bring this technology to the fore in India and elsewhere.”

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Delta Insurance Singapore aims to work with fintechs, startups, SMEs, technology firms and corporates, especially given its expertise in specialist insurance classes. It has also introduced the Cyber Risk Management Package, in order to provide a complete solution across the full spectrum of cyber risks – before, during and after any cyber incident.

“We help firms to protect themselves from areas of risk – cyber, financial and professional – that the fast-growing innovation and start-up ecosystem in Singapore is facing, especially as Singapore moves towards becoming a Smart Nation and a centre of excellence for innovation and technology,” said Eugene Cheong, Managing Director, Delta Insurance Singapore.

“Our innovative business model, including a Cyber Risk Management Package and our proprietary underwriting technology platform, allows us to nimbly and effectively meet the dynamic needs of an increasingly digital Singapore,” Cheong added.

Alongside the insurance policy, the comprehensive Package includes:

Prevention: Identify organisations’ potential exposure to cyber risk and assist in implementing a comprehensive proactive plan with Delta Insurance’s panel of experts – lawyers, cybersecurity specialists, crisis management experts.

Claims handling: Delta Insurance’s team of experts assist with IT triage (investigating the breach and determining how to recover), crisis and reputation management, system and data analysis and restoration, as well as third party claims.

Post lost services: Once the claim is resolved Delta Insurance may also assist with the cost of strengthening the organisations cyber security (such as with shielding) and reviewing the emergency response plan to ensure better outcomes in the future.

Elaborating on the company strategy, Eugene Cheong said, “Our business planning anticipates that Singapore and Asia Pacific will be one of the fastest growing regions for Cyber Insurance, increasing from around USD50 million today to USD500 million by 2025.”

“Cybercrime is now the second most prevalent economic crime in Singapore, with 43 per cent of companies impacted and costing Singapore more than SGD1.25 billion annually. Delta Insurance Singapore wants to work with companies to holistically safeguard against cyber risks, allowing them to fully leverage the technology wave sweeping through the region,” he explained.

Delta Insurance Singapore aims to change the industry dynamic using technology solutions to streamline processes, reducing the time taken for application submission, quotation and policy issuance from what is now typically a one month time frame to within 24 hours of going on risk. The firm will work with brokers and insurance agents initially, with an aim to expand to other distribution networks to provide its risk protection products.

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DBS Accelerator aims to better embed new fintech technologies in banks by creating opportunities for innovators from across Asia and around the world to transform the digital agenda. Under the new “always-on” programme format, it will host startups year round to continuously help strengthen the bank’s key transformational journey, which will be refreshed throughout the year.

“Dynamic new ways to enhance risk management, cybersecurity and the digital customer journey, and opportunities to apply blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies, are helping banks transform through FinTech innovation. With the success of the DBS Accelerator programme, we are excited and committed to driving progress towards a FinTech future,” said Sebastian Paredes, CEO, DBS Bank (Hong Kong).

Participating startups will have the chance to explore collaborative opportunities with the bank. The first batch of startups will be focused on impactful ways to enhance the customer’s digital journey, the bank’s risk management, as well as cryptocurrency, blockchain and cybersecurity. Applications will be accepted all year round, with the first batch of applications closing for review on 31 July 2017.

“At Nest, we believe that open innovation and collaboration will enable and empower FinTech startups and corporates to not only address changing consumer needs but to do so at a faster pace with more meaningful impact. We’re excited to pioneer this new programme format with DBS to further this open innovation movement and achieve positive business outcomes for both DBS and FinTech startups around the world,” said Lawrence Morgan, CEO, Nest.

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