The Bharat Fintech Summit 2024, organized by The Digital Fifth in Mumbai, saw the participation of 3,000 people from the Indian fintech ecosystem. Held between February 7 and February 8, the second edition of the summit hosted as many as 23 speaker sessions, five fireside chats, and 10 demonstrations.
The panel discussions touched upon a wide range of relevant issues, including the dynamic fintech landscape in the country right from product-led innovations, much needed collaboration between banks and fintech players, cybersecurity and the need for increased regulatory compliances in payments and digital lending to improve banking experiences for customers and protect them from various frauds.
Entrackr was present at the event and held conversations with several stakeholders of the fintech industry.
It’s worth noting that the event comes at a time when the fintech industry is benefiting from the radical digital transformation of the banking industry and e-commerce growth around India and the globe.
Banks and financial institutions are moving towards 100% digital for the retail and MSMEs segments in upcoming times and major innovations in the Indian BFSI industry have been propelled by the regulators and public infrastructure such as IndiaStack, Account Aggregator, and the ONDC. Enterprise fintechs are poised to expand, with projections estimating a market size of approximately $20 billion by 2030.
The Digital Fifth cofounder and CEO Sameer Singh Jaini told Entrackr that the last decade witnessed a continuous influx of funds into enterprise fintechs. This, coupled with the entry of new-age players in various enterprise segments, is shedding light on the previously untapped potential of this market.
“We organize the summit which are focused on content and depth and welcome here everybody from the entire Indian fintech ecosystem including the participation of 70 – 80 VC firms where they share fruitful insights, collaborate and intend to thrive their businesses amongst each other,” he added.
Embedded Finance also was under the spotlight during the event as a general sentiment was to bring more focus on the need for more players to drive customer engagement in partnership with banks.
During his keynote speech, RBI executive director P Vasudevan stressed the need for frictionless credit and highlighted it has the potential to become the next digital public infrastructure.
“It’s a vibrant experience for me to attend such a summit and also marked presence in one the panel where we discussed tech led credit networks, leveraging multi-layered lending partnerships and cutting-edge tech for the future-ready financial sector.
MSMEs lending landscape, challenges, innovation, collaboration and others. MSMEs sector has been the backbone of the Indian economy and the emergence of technology in this space is worth watching,” Alok Mittal, co-founder & MD at Indifi, told Entrackr.
Indifi offers loans for small businesses which turned profitable last year and crossed Rs 1,500 crore AUM in March 2023.
Perfios’ Chief Strategy Officer Ramgopal Subramani appreciated the summit saying such events are instrumental in facilitating knowledge exchange, fostering partnerships, and driving comprehensive sectoral growth.
“At Perfios, we are happy to partner with events like BFS that serve as collaborative platforms across the BFSI sector to address challenges and explore innovative opportunities,” he said.
“It’s always great to be associated with The Digital Fifth and the summit which can be a game changer for the entire fintech Indian ecosystem and curated this event for the last where a lot of collaborations took place,” said Vaibhav Tambe, co-founder, TransBnk.
TransBnk is a SaaS-based platform where it takes a minimum guarantee for a particular number of services and charges per transaction basis.
According to Movin Jain, Founder of Skydo, a cross-border payments platform, who was a panelist in the session on “Entrepreneurial X-Factor: Traits That Attract Early-Stage Investors”, a combination of factors such as a good prevailing market environment during its seed round, good reputation from previous stints and relevant experience helped Skydo raise its seed round quickly.
“Choosing the right cofounder is much more important than choosing the right business idea. With alignment on values, shared objectives, and complementary skills, you will eventually arrive at the right business idea,” Movin said.
The summit also saw the attendance of spokespersons from different fintech startups like Trifecta, GetVantage, Zaggle, FinBox, Skydo, Bureau, Fixerra, and others.
