Fintech Valley Vizag and Knowledge Partner KPMG Announce Startup Market Connect 2018

Business Wire India
Fintech Valley Vizag, an initiative of Government of Andhra Pradesh, conducted a demo day to enable startups to showcase their solutions to leading corporates in banking and financial industry. As a part of this Connect, eight corporate partners who were looking for innovative solutions shared their 19 high priority use cases. These corporate partners included ICICI Lombard, DCB, Kotak Mahindra, RBL Bank, Fullerton India, IDFC, Tata Capital and Bajaj Allianz.
 
The Innovation Challenge was held in three stages. The first phase is the challenge phase that began in February 2018 in which use cases were opened to the startups for application. This phase had applications of over 120 from startups pan India and a few from across the globe. This was followed by a screening phase in which the startups underwent an initial screening process to help sieve through the applications. A final shortlist of 38 startups was selected for a final demo to the associated corporate partners. Post the demo day on 4th May in Mumbai, a final set of startups were given a chance to carry Proof of Concept (PoC) with corporate; all of which will need to be executed in Fintech Valley Vizag.
 
Shri Nara Lokesh, Hon’ble Minister of IT and Rural Development, State Government of Andhra Pradesh said, “Andhra Pradesh State government plans to promote innovation and would adopt new technologies to encourage the youngsters to display out-of-the-box thinking. The Govt. of Andhra Pradesh is making all the efforts to embark on its vision to make Vizag the Fintech hub of India.”
 
J A Chowdary, Special Chief Secretary and IT Advisor to CM, Andhra Pradesh said, “To build a strong startups ecosystem in the new state besides the local entrepreneurs we need to attract the best minds from across the globe.”
 
Dharmendra Sunkara, CEO, Fintech Valley, Govt of Andhra Pradesh said, “Fintech is a very promising sector and with the rapid rate of adoption of mobile transactions, it will prove to be one of the most profitable sectors in the coming years. We aim to make Vizag a central hub for all businesses and investors dealing in fintech.”
 
The Startup Market Connect was divided into 6 themes seeking solutions across these themes:
 

1. Customer Experience: In a bid to boost the average revenue per customer, solutions are required to increase client life-cycle stickiness and engagement. Insurance companies also require facial recognition technology to identify customers and predict their life-span, BMI, health issues etc. and reduce the need for extensive and invasive medical procedures to judge their qualification for insurance.
 
2. Process Automation: Solutions are required in the field of auto insurance, one of the most frequently availed services in the insurance industry, to automate damage assessment to motor vehicles and fast-track reimbursements to customers. Additionally, there is a growing need to enhance KYC norms and automate e-KYC using Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to reduce manual labour.
 
3. Financial Inclusion: With the rapid adoption of cashless transactions, there is a demand for the inclusion of rural communities to engage in the model and simplify financial transactions for their inclusion using innovative solutions.
 
4. Risk Management: The health-conscious consumers today are heavily dependent on mobile applications and wearable devices to monitor their vitals. This information can be leveraged by insurers and consumers themselves to track their health and deviations from the norm. Solutions which can provide predictive recommendations and alerts to both parties can revolutionize the healthcare and insurance industries.
 
5. Lending: With the soaring cost of healthcare services, it has become difficult for the average citizen to borrow money from commercial institutions. The need of the hour is to identify new models of lending including crowdsourcing and P2P lending enabled by credit scoring and credit risk management amongst others.
 
6. Payments: The wind of change in the payments world is gaining strength as financial technology’s (“fintech”) potential to alter how, where and when payments are made – as well as who it is that facilitates them – is further explored and leveraged.