Govt allocates Rs 20 Cr to roll out CoE incubator for fintech startups in Chennai

Chennai is all set to roll out ‘Centre of Excellence (CoE)’ an incubator programme for fintech startups by this year.

Fintech startups with a focus on regulatory technology, compliance technology, insurance and payment technology will be selected for incubation through a slew of events including hackathons and pitch fests.

The selected companies will be incubated with mentorship and support from TiE, Chennai Chapter, and IIT Madras. With a 100 seat facility, the CoE will be housed within the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI).

For the infrastructure development of the incubator, the central government has allocated Rs 20 crore while Rs 23 crore will be contributed by the state government of Tamil Nadu and few private investors.  Meanwhile, UIDAI and India Stack will also provide support and tools to build and test products for the incubator.

“A total of 500 companies have contributed Rs 34,000 crore worth exports from the state of Tamil Nadu which have also become a financial services hub for back office work in the country. This prompted us to think on why there shouldn’t be a centre of excellence in fintech in the city,” said Sanjay Tyagi, director, STPI, Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology.

The government aided incubator will also be signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for guidance and technical assistance.

In February, Minister for IT and electronics Ravi Shankar Prasad had announced seven CoEs in the country. The Chennai Centre for Excellence incubator is one among them.

From the last few years, several incubation programs have been organised to promote startup culture in the country.

Also Read: Startup conclave ‘Huddle Kerala’ to begin from April 6

Recently, Kerala-based hardware electronic incubator ‘Maker Village’ host its first national hardware startup conclave, where around 1,200 hardware startups from across the country, as well as several major companies including Lockheed Martin, Siemens, Dassault, Qualcomm, Intel, and others, participated.

In January, Kerala Startup Mission or KSUM in association with Zone Startups India launched ‘Kerala Accelerator Program’ to promote revenue making startups across the country.

Last year in November, India’s largest technology incubator T-Hub announced the launch of its first accelerator programme in collaboration with Microsoft.

Last year, digital payment platform Paytm had also launched ‘Indian Open Source Project Incubator’, with an aim to enable building and sharing of solutions among technology developers in India. The incubator programme was the part of ‘Paytm – Build for India’ initiative.

The news was first reported by ET.