Meet The 8 Startups Selected For The Autumn Cohort Of YES FINTECH Accelerator

YES BANK, in partnership with LetsTalkPayments and PricewaterhouseCoopers, has launched the second cohort of its fintech startup accelerator, YES FINTECH.

The 15-week innovation programme will witness eight startups, chosen from over 500 applicants across 10+ countries, undergo rapid enhancement of their value quotient through product-market-fit guidance, Proof of Concept (PoC) validation and Go-To-Market advisory.

Commenting on the development, Rana Kapoor, MD and CEO of YES BANK, said

”With fundamental changes in the economy powered by Digital India and Startup India, startups in India will increasingly become agents of development and enable ample job creation. The successful launch and implementation of innovative solutions from around the world, as a part of YES FINTECH’s innovation programmes, stands testimony to YES BANK’s relentless efforts towards embracing new technologies, innovating and expanding the Indian start-up ecosystem for the future.”

Within the scope of fintech, the key focus areas of YES FINTECH’s Autumn Cohort include Alternative Lending, Digital Payments, Real-time Data Analytics, Process Automation, Smart Decisioning, Wealthtech and Invest Tech.

A look at the 8 startups participating in YES FINTECH’s 2nd Cohort

Here is the list of eight startups that will be part of YES FINTECH’s Autumn Cohort:

1. Balance Technology: Based in Bengaluru, Balance is a personal savings app that allows users to save the petty change and invest in mutual funds. Balance enables financial education and product adoption through adaptable goals.
2. Karza: Headquartered in Mumbai, Karza provides cloud-based solutions for lending decisions and aims to assist lending institutions in addressing critical issues of NPAs and loan frauds through big data.
3. Sentimer: Sentimer is a Spanish fintech startup that offers AI based customized solutions for customer acquisition, cross-selling and customer service.
4. Pingal: Founded in 2017, Mumbai-based Pingal Technologies is focused on analytics that acts as a workbench for intelligent dashboard creation.
5. Fyle: Specialising in intelligent employee reimbursement and expense automization, Fyle is a Bengaluru-based startup that was founded in 2016. The platform’s solutions link to email, consumer apps and other platforms, geared towards streamlining the sharing and processing of expenses within a company.
6. FinBit: Delhi-headquartered FinBit was launched in 2016, with the aim of providing solutions to automate the process of reading and analysing bank statements helping underwriters in understanding a customer’s financial behaviour.
7. bNESIS: Based in Warsaw, Poland, bNESIS is a fintech startup focused on building a unified API service that reduces the complexity of integration with multiple clouds, social, payment, analytics and other services into mobile apps.
8. Dov-E: Launched in 2013 in Israel, Dov-E is a startup utilising sound waves to provide seamless, secure, quick and easy mobile payments.

What’s in store for the participating fintech startups

As per the official statement, startups participating in the second cohort will be provided with funding of up to $1 Mn via VC partners without any equity commitment to YES FINTECH. Additionally, the eight companies will be offered mentorship from global sectoral experts.

In addition to 100+ YES BANK APIs, the fintech startups will be given access to YES BANK’s expansive network of over 2 Mn retail and 10000 corporate clients as well as exclusive international exchange programmes wherein the startups can visit foreign markets.

The aim is helping these fledgling companies to understand the global fintech landscape and avenues for market entry by leveraging YES FINTECH’s 20+ global partnerships that were forged last year.

Amit Shah, Senior President and Country Head of Corporate Strategy at YES BANK, says, “As part of the 15-week programme, a comprehensive mentor matchmaking exercise is conducted by the team. On the basis of the core technology that their solution is based on and their defined use case, YES BANK not only matches them with internal technology and business leaders, but also with domain experts from around the world, who can guide them in their scaling up the process.” 

An Overview of YES FINTECH and its objectives

With the YES FINTECH platform, YES BANK aims to co-create innovative solutions and partner in taking the solution to the bank’s retail and corporate customers. It was in January 2017 that YES BANK had announced the launch of its business accelerator programme – YES FINTECH for fintech startups, in collaboration with T-Hub, Anthill Ventures and LetsTalkPayments.

The month of March saw it announcing the names of the 12 startups that joined its inaugural cohort- including two global fintech startups – So Cash from Singapore and Paykey from Israel.

Among the 10 Indian startups that participated in the first cohort are Signzy, Rupeeseed Technology Ventures Pvt. Ltd, RedCarpet, R1mo, Numberz, Morph.Ai, FRS Labs, Click & Pay, Authme and Anytime Loan.

Building on the success of the first cohort, the Autumn Cohort of YES FINTECH received overwhelming participation from global startups. As per the bank, over 500 applications were received from across the globe including 162 global applications which were then carefully scrutinised to shortlist 33 startups from 10 different locations including international ones such as Israel, Hong Kong, Singapore, mainland Europe, London, and South Africa.

With a presence across all 29 Indian states and seven union territories, Mumbai-headquartered YES BANK is currently the fifth largest private sector bank in the nation. Keeping pace with the country’s growing startup culture, YES BANK is becoming increasingly active in the Indian startup ecosystem.

For instance, in September 2017, Ola’s wholly-owned cab leasing subsidiary, Ola Fleet Technologies, procured a term loan of $156.3 Mn (INR 1,000 Cr) from YES BANK. Prior to that, Ahmedabad-headquartered SME lending startup Lendingkart Finance Limited raised about $7.7 Mn (INR 50 CR) debt funding from YES BANK.

Apart from providing funding support to fledgling startups, YES BANK is also laying the groundwork for a well-connected and robust fintech ecosystem in the country. In September 2016, YES BANK launched a banking proposition for tech-enabled startups, called YES: Head-STARTUP.

Before that, in April of the same year, it signed a MoU with T-Hub, a technology incubator set up by the Telangana government, to set up a centre of excellence for startups in fintech space. Under the agreement, the association will help create a conducive business environment and support system for a large number of fintech startups.

Earlier in December 2015, in collaboration with software product think-tank iSPIRT, it also launched a fintech app store for Indian startups in the financial technology space.

To learn more YES BANK and what it is doing for fintech startups, check out our detailed article on YES FINTECH Accelerator.