May 2, 2024

The Business Day

Latest news on business, economy, startups

The May 5 event will be followed by a Draft Fintech Policy for Kerala for the next 10 years, organisers said

Kerala Startup Mission (KSUM) is hosting a Fintech summit this week to ensure that technological innovations in the state benefit rapidly from an ongoing rise in technical and financial knowhow amid economic betterment.

The summit will see the announcement on fintech accelerator powered by Open Financial Technologies, the Bengaluru-based company, in association with KSUM, is carrying out the six-month programme for five startups.

The Fintech Summit will feature experts-led panel discussions on eight subjects and startup pitching besides the results of the Hitachi National Innovation Challenge.

Such is the boom in disrupting innovation around the financial sector that India’s overall fintech market opportunity is estimated to be $1.3 trillion by 2025. This would imply a growth at a CAGR of 31 per cent during 2021-2025. Of this, lending tech is likely to account for 47 per cent ($616 billion), followed by insurance tech at 26 per cent ($339 billion) and digital payments at 16 per cent ($208 billion).

Among these three, insurance tech is the fastest-growing fintech sub-segment in terms of market opportunity, growing at a CAGR of 57 per cent, followed by investment tech (44 per cent) and fintech SaaS (40 per cent).

Thursday’s event aims to build an inclusion in the fintech sector and lay the groundwork for creating such an ecosystem, as the KSUM is conducting a Fintech roundtable with industry, banking sector, government, technology experts and startups to prepare a draft fintech policy. This document, organizers said, will help support the entire financial sector in the state and enable disruptive innovation.

The upcoming summit is in continuation with a roundtable KSUM had proposed on April 19 to facilitate an interface between top leaders from the industry, government and academia on the use of technology in the financial area.

In fact, KSUM has been taking various initiatives to build a robust startup ecosystem in the state. It has successfully completed various policy interventions and scheme implementations on the technology and entrepreneurship development initiatives. To further strengthen and build focus sectors and theme areas to the state’s ecosystem, KSUM proposes to select theme areas and is taking active steps to engage the communities and stakeholders in it.