Bandhan Bank: The new kid on the block in India’s banking system has surprised many with the speed at it which it took banking to the unbanked — seven million and counting in just three years. Bandhan Bank has managed this by levaraging its vast experience in the microfinance space.
Photo: Bandhan Bank
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Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion: Part of the Institute for Financial Management and Research (IFMR), Chennai, it was established in September 2014. The Centre focuses on four key areas — Research, Innovation and Scale, Policy and Programme Support, and Dissemination. Research is used to develop a deep, field-level understanding of relevant issues; to identify and assess intervention areas; to understand facilitators of cashless transactions and evaluate the impact post intervention. Under innovation and scale, the Centre promotes product development and scaling of new digital payment use cases, business process re-engineering and developing an ecosystem comprising infrastructure, partnerships and collaboration to further digital financial inclusion. Policy and programme support is used to create a favourable and conducive environment for interventions and to ease administrative and regulatory bottlenecks that limit innovation and scale. Dissemination aims to spread the learning from interventions for the benefit of others. Since its inception the Centre has initiated research studies, programme-support projects and technology-intervention projects in various domains. The Centre has also set up a digital innovation lab in Bengaluru to promote development and scaling of new digital payment-use cases and to encourage research.
Photo: Centre for Digital Financial Inclusion
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KinaraCapital: This Bengaluru-based company focusses on lending to micro and small businesses. The company was founded by Hardika Shah in 2011 to create a financially inclusive community by providing products and solutions to micro and small businesses, thereby generating new jobs and improving livelihoods. Kinara Capital provides loans without asking for any collateral. It has a presence in six states — Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Gujarat, Karnataka and Maharashtra — and in Puducherry. As of December 2017, Kinara Capital’s total assets under management was ₹250 crore and the number of active loans, 8,779. Its debt partners include Shriram City Union Finance, RBL Bank, Vijaya Bank and DCB Bank. Investors in Kinara Capital include Shriram City Union Finance, the Susan and Michael Dell Foundation and Unitus Capital.
Photo: Kinara Capital
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Oxigen Services India: One of the largest payments solutions providers in India, its business involves service aggregation and distribution, utilising mobile services, PoS and web-for-online payment processing, and money transfers. It has a large bouquet of services integrated into a single transaction and payment processing platform. They include prepaid, postpaid and subscription-based services such as mobile money transfers, recharges, bill payments, ticketing and subscriptions for leading service providers. The Oxigen Wallet is India’s first non-bank mobile wallet app. Approved by the RBI, the app allows users to send and receive money through popular social channels such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, SMS and Email. It has a customer base of over 150 million and a pan-India retail network with over 2 lakh access points.
Photo: Oxigen Services India
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Paytm: Founded by Vijay Shankar Sharma, it is the consumer brand of mobile internet company One97 Communications, India’s largest mobile payments and commerce platform. One97’s investors include SoftBank, SAIF Partners, Alibaba Group, Ant Financial (Alipay) and Mediatek. Paytm started out offering online mobile recharges and bill payments and today has over 280 million registered users. It has even expanded to have its own online marketplace. Sharma had first pitched the idea of entering the payments ecosystem in 2011, at a time when India was still a cash-driven economy and the envisioned marketplace was practically nonexistent. Digital payments got an unexpected push after demonetisation. The note ban threw up an immense opportunity for Paytm, and the company ran aggressive campaigns, including full-page ads in all leading publications, the day after demonetisation was announced. Paytm quickly launched its app in 10 regional languages and started aggressively signing on merchants and reaching out to customers in every nook and corner of the country. After receiving $1.4 billion in funding from the SoftBank Group in May 2017, Paytm has continued to invest in new growth opportunities, launching Paytm Gold, a wealth management product, and acquiring online ticketing and events company Insider.in. The launch of the Paytm Payments Bank is yet another feather in its cap.