 Hello everyone. Welcome to this discussion today. We have a couple of amazing people joining us. We have Ankita, Poppy, Shridhar, Amish from different parts in South Asian region and obviously Anupam who is leading our blissful initiative and thank you Tommy for putting this together for us. Glad to host all of you today. My name is Abhijeet, I lead the Rukshi ecosystem foundation as an executive director and we've been hosting this Misfits series for primarily social entrepreneurs doing some amazing work in our region and today we thought hey let's build something around the fintech domain. It's obviously the buzzword in today's time and with the recent Coinbase IPO I think crypto is another emerging buzzword that's on everyone's mind. So let's hear from the experts out there and I'll pass it on to Ankita, our host to take it forward. Hello everyone. I on behalf of Rukshi ecosystem foundation welcome you all to this regional Misfit event and to start with I would like to introduce you to fintech. So anything you do online like from making a transaction online or paying through your mobile or even as simple as checking your bank balance online you are already a part of multi-million dollar industry that is fintech and fintech as simple as it seems like finance plus technology it includes wide range of technologies, products and business models. It can be anything related to a crowd funding to a robo advisory to a virtual currency to a cashless transaction. So in last 10 years only we have noticed a hundred billion dollar jump in the investment in fintech industry and to tell us about more about the impact of fintech and the future of fintech we have these amazing panelists with us today and I would like you to introduce to our first panelist Mr. Shridhar. Mr. Shridhar is a founder of Billion Cart. Billion Cart manages network for marketplace places platforms and he is also associated with Pesa book. Pesa book is like an online ARP platform which helps in user friendly, hassle free, invoicing and tracking your expenses and then we have Mr. Bobby from Indonesia. Mr. Bobby has a local consultancy in Indonesia which helps in IT solutions, risk management and product management and then we have Mr. Anish. Mr. Anish is a founder of a new bank, Neobank pink capital and pink capital focuses on financial inclusion of low and middle income groups. So I would like our panelists to introduce themselves and I would like to start with Mr. Shridhar and I want three things from you sir. Like first is what is fintech to you in your introduction like three elements I really want that you should include what is fintech to you and what has been your journey and what according to you is the future of fintech. Thanks Sankita and thanks Anupam for organizing this and hello Abhijit and Bobby and Anish and all the participants and thank you for joining us on a Friday evening. I know there's a lot going on so here we are again zooming. So really quick my background you know it can probably take up the whole session so you know I'll keep it brief relevant to this is I spend quite a bit of time consulting in across Europe and US particularly large banks doing M&A post M&A transformation across various domains within the financial industry including in all the way from wealth management to cards to liquidity to wholesale banking and treasury. So that's kind of a slice of finance as a domain where I got some exposure and that's that I carried on that to you know deploying several solutions reorganizing you know enterprises and calibrating them for you know future growth and in the US as some of you probably know there's a lot of mergers and demerges that take place based on regulatory environments based on other events so that's kind of some you know context if you will you know in a global sense where I got my exposure and we dealt a lot with Southeast Asia you know Nike as a brand for example and its traders are on the globe was one of our wholesale customers for a large bank I won't mention the name but you know we did a lot of work with them in the wholesale treasury department so in liquidity we helped another client so there was a lot of global exposure but it was based out of primarily US and some out of Europe that's from a corporate and enterprise standpoint but I've always been an entrepreneur at heart so in terms of fintech to me is the intersection of finance and technology right so then the enablement of solutions that are more cutting edge more more if you will use a friendly or consumer friendly and consumer could be a business or a pure customer or a pure denizen or a citizen and that's really that intersection is where the beauty lies I mean that's that's really where all the possibilities lie and it's a it's an ocean I mean to me one definition is fintech is an ocean so I mean it's fairly wide as you mentioned and there are lots of subdomains and categories within fintech as an ocean and and you know this you could have several sessions obviously to introduce people to aspects of it and the new trends and things that are happening from new banks to you know what started as wallets in India for example and where wallets are today wallets have been converted into banks now very shortly so that's the headliners of two days ago so so a lot happening there what it means to me is it's pretty exciting I mean I always as an entrepreneur I always wanted to be in the midst of a transaction so that's my that's my business mind so I want to be in the middle of a transaction I don't care what I build I have to be in the middle of a buyer a seller a trade like I look at it as a black box and I provide value in between and I cream something off the top and that's how I make my money so all the models that we have built and billion card is a broadly a holding company concept and we are in the very early stages of rolling out you know vertical SaaS products and you know by subbook as you mentioned is one example of that so and there are many I mean we have plans for a loan marketplace we have plans for a loan exchange where you refinance and so on and so forth so I'll leave it at that I mean that's a long-winded answer to your introduction but you know we're happy to feel questions as we go along we have a small panel and a group so we'll be keep it open and let Bobby and Anish China please thank you thank you and yes over to you Mr Bobby again I'll repeat I want three elements what is fintech to you and what is with impact it has created so far like how much impact you have created so far in fintech and what is the future of fintech according to you okay thank you so much for the opportunity that you gave to me let me introduce myself again my name is Bobby Lannica Putra but just call me Bobby I'm coming from Jakarta Indonesia in daily basis I'm building my own consultant risk consultant in Jakarta Indonesia since November 2016 but we already published in the market in 2018 for me in Indonesia we have two two largest fintechs in Indonesia like Dana and Gopay as you maybe know um the uh Indonesia have like some uh one of the the largest population in in in the globe uh we have like uh maybe like uh one and a half billion people in Indonesia uh but uh some of them uh we have like uh they they don't have like mobile phones or uh financially uh bank it that's why uh we we have like uh like uh the new markets are in fintech that's why uh Dana and also uh Gopay already raised uh in uh past in Indonesia uh for me uh fintech uh we we will use uh uh fintech for our daily operational to pay uh maybe like uh some operational cost or something like that um in the future I think uh fintech will uh be like collaborated uh in banking but I think uh fintech cannot replace the banks but I think fintech will be like uh make some collaboration and uh in the banks I think that's all thank you Bobby thank you so much now we have Mr. Nish uh yeah hi hi hi everyone and uh so a brief introduction so I started my entrepreneurial journey a couple of years back where I started a agritech company to help farmers in northern states uh to grow more commercial crops uh and get out of your meat and MSP cycle of meat and rice crops and there is when you know where I understood how the rural ecosystem works in India and you know how what are the major challenges uh in terms of financial services that exist there so my so my what is fintech to me uh you know would be solving your core problems for the rural masses you know making financial products available to them uh which are which weren't available to them maybe a couple of years back you know the with the technology and with the fintech coming this is possible now where you know every product you can co-create any imaginable product you know with with the bank with the nbfc with uh with the insurance player and you know presented to the rural masses yeah and that is you know that is what fintech is to me in terms of you know future uh I would say you know fintech I would categorize fintech into you know four categories you know one would be your payment infrastructure and uh and in terms of payment infrastructure we are doing really well either urban market or rural market where your in rural aeps adhar enable payment system is is growing phenomenally well then you have your you know credit market credit where different players you any any person can get a loan right now uh either in rural or semi rural maybe the micro finance companies maybe it's your you know your players like early salvi and in terms of the future we are looking at in short tech and you know wealth tech is something uh I would say is still in the very early stages where there are not many players and we need some innovation on the wealth tech and you know in short tech space thank you Anish and uh I want to ask my first question from Anish only since he is working in rural area so there are a lot of problems in the society and there are a lot of intersectional and cross cutting problems and so how do you think fintech solutions can be applied and deployed in healthcare or education sector or livelihood see in terms of fintech solutions when you talk about you know education uh any any services any financial services uh that you want to sell in the rural spaces the first and foremost thing is financial education and digital education right so every every every step you need to have financial education as as a curriculum or as a as a pain point that you need to address and you know education and providing financial services goes hand in hand when talking to a rural market in terms of healthcare uh I would say even healthcare is very very you know in in a very early stages where insurance selling insurance to rural audience is is very difficult where they don't understand the long-term benefits of insurance so they want to see instant results here right so they want to see the claim either you have a health insurance so we so I'll give you an example of health insurance so we have a product which is called hospice cash you know which is very well received in rural audiences we have sold over 10 000 policies and what it does is it gives them medical insurance uh at at a very cheap price which is piece 300 rupees a month right but for for for us to make them understand to get a life insurance which is long-term is very difficult so it's a it's a major awareness is needed and that is what fintechs are fintechs are trying to do uh to separate fintechs trying to do where they're a varying people where you know they they're making them understand the importance of either savings or importance of low cost debt or importance of your insurance thank you Anish for like explaining us beautifully the financial inclusion part and so next I would like to move towards the consumer side so so Shridhar sir according to you what can be the evolution of consumer fintech in the near future um I think broad I mean um you you're seeing early trends um obviously the loan mechanism and its repercussions are very interesting but uh you're seeing peer-to-peer lending you know scale and also go bust both has happened um but in terms of uh in terms of what we see coming up uh it is this it is this concept that is not yet in the market I mean this new bank concept is is still you know yet to roll out effectively to consumers so I still have a hard time dealing with uh whether it's public sector banks or private banks um you know the lack of tech in some of them even the new private banks you know I have had lots of recent experiences as a consumer where it's still challenging to utilize their application their user experience is pretty poor on the scale of 1 to 10 and some of the features and functionality are pretty poor in terms of market opportunity I see you know huge potential for the this buy now pay later concept you know it's still it's still something from a consumer standpoint that's you know enables goods to be sold for vendors for manufacturers for sellers and for other platforms digital or otherwise and then there's this EMI concept in India which is now become buy now pay later on the on the fintech platforms um with you know instant loans if you will for any anything from white goods to you know education to what have you so I see a huge potential there for growth I see I see um a future where from a consumer standpoint housing loans are still not competitive in India they're very competitive in in the US and other advanced countries I see a future where instead of your at the at the bottom of the cycle right now we are about 6.85 percent across most providers but I see a point differential making a huge difference in in lending so you you want to see marketplaces that compete for your business and you're going to see you know a few paisa difference or penny difference in in loans and you know that's another potential for growth at this point in time pretty much you get you know the same structure and the same offering from all banks so from a consumer point you know those are a couple of things but you know there's there's a lot more just the banking experience itself needs to take a leap and you know slowly and steadily as as new banks mature you will see so that sir uh matlab in relation to this only I just wanted to ask you like do you think this fintech will be a social problem solving tool or a profit making tool in near future you could look at it both ways I mean one is you know as as Anish pointed out and he's got ground level experience you know I think he's is well positioned to talk about it and he's seen some in roads but it is a challenge the reality is you know there's apart from all the glitz and glamour of headlines and startups and you know the buzzwords and all that the reality is penetrating the bottom of the pyramid is not that easy so in terms of pure social impact on the ground whether it is to take the education aspect the reach aspect so I have myself participated in a lot of them where funding to rural women groups self-help groups you know the legit proper example right I mean and and people who are beauticians who are working for urban you know service providers these are all areas where the bottom of the pyramid has been impacted and I've seen that firsthand and that is thanks to fintech and applications that are sitting on top of you know lending or or other you know service provision from a banking standpoint but its social impact is going to be limited in the sense of you know reach and access and as broadband penetrates rural areas and as mobile penetrates the rural areas you will see a lot more adoption as well as this change in behavior change in you know knowledge which is the first step to starting to utilize these so that's my thought on that and you think that profit will flow like if we target the masses through this the profit will flow um again you'll have to divide you know these startups or these for businesses will have to divide I mean it's like it's this age old classic I don't know if Bobby can relate to this but what we we think of from an if I wear my investor hat what we are expecting from startups is that the MAU and DAU the monthly average use age and the daily average use age and the scale will come from a from a location like India right I mean from the bottom of the pyramid but your your profit margins and your if you will revenue growth will come from probably urban areas or probably out of India so it really depends on your business so not all you know you can't put one blanket framework for all of them they'll have to really determine whether they're going to achieve scale and then you know achieve the revenue and margins profit margins or you know vice versa so there are a couple of players I don't want to mention names but you know you can think of great examples within India you know sorry Bobby if you're not familiar with some of these but a lot of them have been funded very well you know but again profitability is a long shot they're making you know one of them is a competitor vice a book and there are a few of them actually and they've they made a lot of indoors they raised a lot of capital but there's no question of profitability at all it's at some future stage you know they will own all of the transaction is the hope so that's where they answer to your question on profitability you know gets kicked out the door if you will but at the same time the social and this doesn't kind of go together so people have to come up with strategies that are individual that are very focused on what problem it is that they are solving and based on that they have to build a business around it and thank you so and Bobby I would like to have your inputs on this on with respect to Indonesia because you would like to hear what's going on in Indonesia okay thank you so much for the question actually I would say I would like to have some perspective with Mr. Sridhar I think FinTech showed me people facing and has like a social mission like in Indonesia we have maybe you know about Amartha Amartha some of they actually they have a some of business like growing mean bank in Bangladesh that's right yeah I think FinTech can micro financing yes I mean FinTech like Amartha or something like that can have like a social mission that's why Mr. Sridhar say it about maybe in the future some of FinTech has social mission like growing mean bank I think this is like rightly or or wrongly traditional banks actually they have like reputation for ignoring the needs of customer of being slow to adopt a new service based on changing demands but I think FinTech is completely upside about that FinTech can like accept some of people the poor people which is they actually unbreakable that's why I think FinTech will be like some of the answer about the poor people to have like some loan or to make it their life will be better in the future that's why I actually agree the perspective from Sridhar about the FinTech will be have a social mission in the future and so I follow up on this like I would like to ask you do you think this digital world has imposed like as a consultant would you do you feel that some of the industries or some of the businesses are getting impacted because of FinTech or digital burden which has been imposed yeah I think some of like some of Aurea will be impacted will be also impacted for for this some some of them like we have like a digitalization in healthcare I think when we when we when we have like the fastest increasing increasing increasing in the FinTech I think like some of the Aurea will be also impacted like healthcare FinTech and also educational FinTech will be also increased when we have like a social impact for the people I think some of the some of the Aurea will will also increase thank you very much and I have a question for Anish now so Anish I just wanted to ask you like what is the role of government in supporting the FinTech and do you think there's more initiative which is required from the government to support the FinTech so government has done you know a lot when you talk about interventions in FinTech like you know the the NPCI which has the EPS payment system it's all you know government based and that that works phenomenally well in rural sector as I mentioned earlier and in terms of you know opening up opening up various various aspects of FinTech industry where they can you know easy collaboration is possible where banks can easily collaborate with your FinTech players you know there is not much restriction there and yes I think government has done a lot and but there is something which would also help is like for example Janden accounts right so Janden accounts were opened to bring the unbank to the banking sector but what we see in the Janden account is most of them are not operable and most of the people do not use Janden accounts they only they have maybe they have some subsidies coming in and they then use it but there is no operation on Janden account there is and now government has started charging will start start start charging the Janden accounts if they have low maintenance balances and the government solves kind of some problems with regard to you know payments infrastructure or maybe the lending infrastructure where they came up with you know emudra loan for the rural masses where a local you know entrepreneur village level entrepreneurs can get you know easy access to credit but government needs to do more when it comes to you know saving their investment for the rural masses there are there are no products specifically for the rural masses even your Indian post office which is a government undertaking does not just doesn't have that you know tech capacity or doesn't have that you know product suited for the rural masses that it serves and similarly with insurance government needs to do more with the pushing insurance into the rural ecosystem so I would say it does well on payments and lending but doesn't do very well in the you know wealth tech or in short tech thank you thank you Anish and I have a same question for Shridhar sir like what are your thoughts about it I think over the last 10 years we have really you know thanks to a couple of visionaries you know rightfully in their own you know achievements as a country we have really leapt you know we've taken some major strides so UPI is an innovation we can talk about all day though it has a few glitches and pitfalls you know in my own personal view but it's definitely something a model that for example Brazil and a couple of the South American countries and others around the world are now going to adapt and they've come to study it to see how we built the rails if you will the world was digital was pretty much limited to two major card service providers for for decades right I mean everybody's digital payment was running on two rails you you know the names you know the pretty global and you know the only two major ones so when you build a parallel rail for a country and you know not not limited if you will more democratized more open then you know you create some pretty massive opportunity so so the adoption of UPI is something to be proud of and to write home about but then you have the stack right I mean thanks to the investments made you have the stack and he's talked about a PS but I would expand that more to the jam stack which enables fintechs to work and build applications and solutions around it and then and now we have you know a complete banking stack stack built for the same purpose as well for you know for whether you want to do EKYC to all the way to provisioning an account and multiple other transaction supports on the account are now enabled through these tech solutions and these are I wouldn't say purely government but I would say they're quasi government because there's there are entities npci is basically a consortium of banks and so there are entities that are involved government is obviously you know helping and pushing it rbi is actively rbi is reserve bank of India sorry Bobby which is actively engaged in ensuring safety and measures around it so there is there's involvement and they have there's an active participation and now we have a more of a collaborative environment over the last 10 15 years in bringing these technologies to market and in bringing infrastructure to market that only the size and scale of a government backed entity can and now you have a whole number of startups hundreds and thousands of startups feeding off of that and creating that environment and that community if you will to build solutions and solve problems and and this there's a number of them I mean we can talk ad nauseam about it so so yeah they've done this they're doing their part they've done their part and we continue to learn and improve and that's that's very rare we've never been a culture of you know learning from our mistakes so one example is there's a threshold on UPI transactions that everybody's complaining about so that one doesn't hog all the all the infrastructure if you will so but then that has to be sorted out over time that's one example but we are learning right and we're making mistakes we're seeing errors in UPI transactions I don't know how many of you know the error rates and things like that but I've recently faced quite a lot of issues and I've opened up a number of tickets on that from a consumer standpoint and I've struggled with it over the last couple of weeks frankly so those are you know teaching issues that we will sort through but again we have become a learning society willing to make changes willing to adapt willing to be open a little bit so that's it's all positive so and and there is an influence of the government in respect to who's in power yeah thank you so I have similar question for Bobby like do you have something to add from Indonesian perspective in this regard thank you so much for the question I think it's hard to talk about uh in the inter-collegulation especially for Indonesia we have like five until seven years later five until seven years the past the past five years we have like we we just we just established some of fintech I think it's hard to talk about fintech regulation as per now for Indonesia I think better to break down high-level approach like for risk management and the product base and uh complete them with specific with the specific regulation like anti-money laundering but if I can say if it will it will it will be better if the financial regulator have like four main main dates actually for for the fintechs like financial stability the provincial regulation conduct and fairness competition and development uh four of main dates four of these main dates I think will make our fintech financial technology will run smoothly in the future I also have a question related to all of the situation so do you think in the fintech space there is something called cartel system like how are the regulations like how is government supporting something like if uh things and what are the regulations related to if some they are major players in fintech we have google like a major player so how are the regulations supporting the other small players in fintech actually uh in Indonesia uh fintech just established like uh five uh for the five five for the past five years I think um we uh like our ojk or financial uh financial authority uh uh was not uh already uh ready uh to make some the regulation the more detail about uh the the regulation about fintech but uh uh actually in Indonesia uh we have like uh uh just uh have like uh consultative paper about about the fintech but uh it's not already published but if I can say uh like uh four main dates uh that I will mean that I mentioned before is like the best way uh to make our fintech individual but uh in Indonesia we specific mention we don't uh we don't have a specific mention about uh to to uh have one regulation specific uh in fintech we don't have uh we don't have any specific regulation to uh regulate our fintech that's why I think uh in Indonesia we have like uh uh the new market the new wider market uh in uh fintech because uh we have uh we don't have like uh we don't have like uh any uh specific regulation to regulate our fintech but we have like uh the largest one of the largest population in the world but uh in other ways we have like uh some of the poor people uh they uh actually they uh they uh unbankable and also uh they they uh they don't they don't have like mobile phone that's why I think uh fintech uh will be growing uh faster in Indonesia uh but I think I believe uh like two uh until three years later uh Indonesia will uh have like uh specific regulation about our fintech but for now uh we don't have it so Anish and Sridhar sir I want to ask similar question to you like we have a major player like Google in India so what do you think uh like is there any regulatory help we are getting or is there any cartel system or something like how are we managing this competition in fintech NPCI has said yeah go ahead Anish go ahead so NPCI NPCI has said UPI limit market share limits on these companies so like I think uh right now phone pay or or or Google have more than you know 80 percent of the market share in terms of UPI limits and they have been told by the NPCI to bring it down to about 25 or 30 percent so that's that's how you know a government is doing in in order to regulate uh the bigger players because cartel is cartel is not formed okay and Sridhar sir and Anish I also have a follow-up question so do we see a lot of mergers and acquisition in fintech world in the near future because like everyone is growing and they have to compete with these industries do you foresee any mergers consolidation in fintech um it's kind of early I mean I think we are still in the very very nascent days of growth as opportunities present themselves like I said peer-to-peer lending has already gone through a boom and bust cycle particularly China was a great example of to reflect on you will see you know similar consolidation you're seeing acquisition pay you announced an acquisition a couple of days ago from a Southeast Asian firm of a Southeast Asian firm and again that Southeast Asian firm provided wallet and loyalty offerings which pay you had a huge gap pay you was purely a payment gateway offering so when it added that you know it enables pay you to provide a more comprehensive offering to to the consumer right so so again you will see that kind of gap filling very strategic acquisitions and a lot of them are here to stay lot of payment gateways are trying to become new banks so again this notion of new bank is is yet to be proven out and and really be you know rolled out in the market so you'll see some shake out there not a lot of them can sustain themselves for a long period of time um underlying all this is is an age old banking system and technology infrastructure so that is not going away anytime soon and the partnerships and the and the opportunities that each one you know knocks on will be depending on their strength to sustain for a long period of time there's still lots of problems to solve and lots of opportunities and hence you will see you know new ones emerging but at the same time strategic acquisitions happening you know time to time we've already had another grab I think announced something today grab is from Southeast Asia so there was there was a there's some activity but you won't see you know complete roll up into one or two players that's not going to happen anytime soon you'll see thousands of players but strategic acquisitions to fill you know gaps in their portfolio happen over a period of time in my view thank you Sridhar thank you Bobby thank you Anish like it was very insightful like I have like I am a founder of a career consultancy and I have a question from my learners like if a student or a college graduates one wants to be a part of fintech he can be from commerce background or technology background like how can that person be part of fintech what are the ways to enter fintech should I take a stab at it and Bobby or Anish they're on mute okay my my view is to get the basics and the fundamentals first right I mean that's always a challenge don't get carried away by these buzz verticals in our terms fintech doesn't mean anything unless you solve problems within the financial domain so unless you use tech to solve problems within the financial domain so being part of fintech doesn't mean anything unless you have you know a comprehensive grasp of either deep insights into technology and experience in technology or deep insights into the financial domain and you know experience in the financial domain so either or or both and then if you're if you have both you're in a sweet spot and and any in any domain that is true today so unless you have that level of technology insights and knowledge for you to have a sustainable growth path in your career is going to be hard whether you talk about ed tech fintech health tech you know and you can add tech to everything so it just the list just goes on so my my two sense would be to focus on the basics get your get your degree diploma education in in fundamentally sound domain that you're interested in and in in this case if it is finance and be finance in in case you're interested in the engineering aspects of it get your education in engineering or get get specialization in engineering after whatever basic education you have completed and then look for opportunities that you know bridge these two whether you want to work a few years in startup or you want to work in a corporate that is focused in this area so you'll have to just chart your course find opportunities that are aligned with your goals and first fall discover the first few years if you really like this domain if you like the subject if you if it thrills you to solve problems in this space so that's what I would leave people with thank you thank you Shridhar and for Bobby I have a question like a follow up to this only so what do you think like you are in consultancy so what what are the skills which are highly in demand and which a company is looking for right now sorry sorry so what are the skills like which are highly in demand like a like a consultant what are the skills a company is looking for in a consultant right now for the fintech for fintech okay I think for now actually for consultancy we are looking for we actually we are looking for the fintech I think for Indonesia for now we have like more attention to the fintech like P2P P2P landing I think some of the some of our consultancy and our investor in Indonesia have like more attention to get their money and their like have some consultancy in fintech especially in P2P landing that's why in Indonesia fintech especially P2P is one of the largest fintech in Indonesia between like educational fintech like Tuang Guru if you if you know it because in Indonesia we have like some of millennials people in the white amount that's why educational educational if I if I rank the fintech number one is P2P landing and then number two educational fintech number three if you have like healthcare fintech like our doctor or our doctor that's why I think in Indonesia we have like the three of us like P2P landing and then educational fintech and also healthcare fintech thank you thank you Bobby and Anish I have a question for you like a follow-up thing only so what do you think like you are working in financial inclusion so what do you think are the resource mismatch at the ground level and what skills you can add or what skills do you like future skills you want should be there so that there's a there's a resource mismatch is solved I think the biggest challenge in this would be to have a mixture like a kind of like a person should be you know inclined towards social impact and have a basic financial ecosystem knowledge you know so I meet people you know either they are very socially inclined but have no clue about basics of financial ecosystem or people who are who know the financial ecosystem but are not socially inclined so that's a skill mismatch you know I encounter every time okay thank you thank you Anish and so over to you Anupam if we have any questions from the attendees we can definitely so what an extraordinary panel discussion going on and to the panelists please go through the chat section too there are questions for you so Pulkit Agrawal has asked the question is for Shridharji and Anish how has COVID-19 impacted your business positively or negatively and how are you addressing some of the challenges so Anish would you like to take it sure so the COVID-19 has you know both you know positively and negatively impacted some aspects of our system so I would talk about you know savings and insurance so the positive thing is you know people because of COVID people are more aware you know why should they save you know why the need of saving is there or you know why you should have insurance so that's a very positive impact the first level of education or first level of awareness is is already done during the COVID because people have struggled so so that's a one positive the second would be the negative would be now the intention is there to save but they lack the money because of their you know businesses being not growing or not sustainable so the intention is there but you know the money in their pockets is is less which is improving over month on month over the past couple of months which we are seeing that that has been you know positively impacted and negatively impacted in terms of lending business lending business it generally hasn't been impacted a very very severely and we had couple of months where the collection was a bit difficult but now the collections are back to normal and the disbursements are back to normal as usual. Shreeda ji please go ahead. I think early on it was fairly significantly negative to start off with in the initial dip one of the hats I wear is we do a lot of M&A services for you know strategic acquisitions and one of the areas we were focused on was healthcare analytics and you know the buyouts conversations pretty much just dried up no business was held in that domain for quite some time in lending personally I saw a lot of impact I was experimenting with a lot of platforms myself as a consumer not as part of our business but you know looking looking at these platforms to learn and see where I should focus on in some of the ventures we when we roll them out so the timing was kind of interesting so I had negative returns on most of my investments in that in that domain so that was kind of a setback most of the conversations kind of came to a halt in terms of deal making you know any any time there was a potential for a sale or an early state sale in particularly the enterprise space there was a lot of slowdown for at least about five to six months still you know everything cleared into august september time frame and then people decided what to do October November December the last quarter was an interesting one and then you know again now this quarter is going to be pretty negative going forward in my view and finally I would say that the positive aspects where we were able to roll out new businesses so we created something called imnu.in for contactless dining in the in the hospitality space and and a number of other solutions that we were able to roll out and achieve some degree of scale interaction that we couldn't have had this not happen so we rolled out new products and new solutions that were more you know for this environment going forward in the in terms of volatility the uncertainty and the needs of contactless business if you will yeah so yes i can say that covid has impacted a lot of business covid has impacted a lot of people but yes no doubt fintech is growing so uh let's see yeah also like i and tomy were discussing in the chat section so we were wondering if fintech is a noun or a word burby i would like to hear from you you're on mute yeah yeah would you do it again yeah so uh i and tomy were uh actually discussing in the chat section this thing that uh we are thinking that we are wondering basically fintech is a noun or a verb uh it's a trick question yeah it's a bit noun but can we also i think but uh as i know uh fintech is a noun any comments on that like how how or anyone of you would like to take it out i agree with bobby because fintech is a noun because it's making so much hassle so only a noun a proper noun can make so much hassle in the life of people so it's a proper noun okay great sridha ji please no comment it's a buzzword that's all yeah it's it's a con it's a conjoined twin yeah i can say anish would you like to say anything yeah i think it's it's a noun okay great great so any of you uh any of the attendees would like to comment on something or if they want to ask any questions so there is uh in the chat tomy has a question yeah tomy unmute yourself and ask yeah please tomy hi there you go yeah just just a quick introduction about tomy uh actually we i got to know about bobby g bobby sir uh from tomy itself so tomy is leading this initiative actually so this is uh one of our initiative for like we are trying to create a regional community of misfits so this is a southeast station community and we have organized this panel discussion with the help of tomy so kudos to tomy and please go ahead tomy thank you very much it's great to hear this discussion because fintech is a very broad topic to be discussed it's not only for one hour and i believe that this is the start and then it will be a very big topic that we can cover in the next and my questions to all the panelists is like currently we know the fintech is going down at this moment and then from your perspective like uh what type of fintech that will get a better head start when the covid is going to end like it's not called the covid end completely but it's start to getting better and better what do you think the type of fintech will get a better head start thank you let bobby go first okay uh thank you tomy for your question i think um the most uh the most uh fallible fintech uh in this uh pandemic uh pandemic situation is like healthcare uh fintech that's why i think uh when pandemic uh already end uh healthcare fintech i think uh will be one of the most uh fintech uh that will grow uh faster than the others i think uh i will choose uh healthcare uh fintech one uh to be one of the top fintech uh will be run faster after uh pandemic already at the end because they have uh they actually already have uh infrastructure uh when uh end uh survive uh in the in this pandemic situation and after the pandemic end i think uh healthcare uh fintech will be one of the most uh the top fintech thank you i think we we basically have a year's worth of data folks already so um i mean if you haven't noticed and you know i would be surprised if none of you have noticed but e-commerce has really exploded uh not just in in india or elsewhere but it's in it's exploded in western france like the u.s and europe and south america um in terms of a 10x minimum 10x growth we're talking 40x in some cases but it's kind of crazy if you look at the hockey stick over the last 12 months march to march we already have data and it's just surprising how much adoption there has been um and i don't know bob if you're familiar we had a we had an event in 2016 called demonetization in india where we got rid of all the currency overnight and uh we printed new currencies and that was an event uh an inflection point if you will uh and a lot of there was a lot of talk around digitization because of that so we got rid of all the paper currency that existed and printed new ones new denominations and new currencies but over the last 12 months i think this has had a much larger impact in you know pushing things digital uh so in terms of what we get the better head start i think e-commerce already has uh you know has has gone from a 2 percent to a 6 percent volume of retail and then you know looking at a 14 percent volume of retail which is still nothing in the in terms of trillions of dollars that flow through uh retail transactions so it's already happened it's here and just visualize if this is this is the kind of graph that you see in the last 12 months and it's still just you know scratching the surface of what is what is possible just see what the potential is in the coming you know in the coming years so i think the next five years the digitization trend will continue uh the ratio and proportions will grow um like just on my street i was the only guy and all my neighbors were probably wondering why does this guy keep getting brown boxes all the time right i mean i was the only guy you know i lived in the u.s for for the longest of times i was very used to paying by by digital currency or card and i was very used to transacting online for for decades and then when i come here nobody's buying online so you know just in the last couple of years um from being the only guy who's to shop online and get brown boxes now i have the entire street about you know 80 percent of them getting their groceries delivered i can see that you know visibly and i can see the impact on the on the ground so commerce i think will continue to hold forth uh rest of them you know you know they'll have they have their own space and there's opportunity everywhere lending is the second one very quickly following commerce that will will see all kinds of lending i mean not just uh you know home loans or personal loans but you'll see all kinds of lending happening by now pay later will continue to have its effect so definitely so yes at the end of the day customers centric fintech solutions are going to win no doubt so yes so i yeah so we have something in the chat section too it's totally agree with shreeder g e-commerce enjoys huge push during covid-19 indonesia is going to have tocopedia e-commerce unicorn okay and go jack right hailing unicorn both is on the brink of merging into one entity right and with this unicorn thing so i like well i was so glad nobody mentioned unicorn all the whole are nobody said unicorn i was so happy definitely my other favorite other favorite pee was ecosystem somebody says ecosystem i'm going to hang up sorry definitely the people say that uh like i think and there are people there are uh industry experts who think that unicorn is a mythical animal i don't know if it really exists or not but uh like i saw this on twitter that uh do you want to be an unicorn or a cockroach because cockroach is a survivor right and unicorn is a mythical animal like you cannot start something just to be a be a be an unicorn oh i love this you just started something so um you know my comment on that is uh it is a mythical animal and uh they will continue to be mythical for most of us who are not unicorns so the moment you get to the other side you call yourself a you know a cockroach because you've achieved the unicorn status right so cockroach became famous because of this theory and and sundar apichai you know once you know promoted that conversation so it's got a lot of uh viral um effect thanks to uh the teeny meanies in our world uh adapting and reading that stuff but um you know um so the idea is you need to be a cockroach first to get to being a horse and then being a unicorn of some of some caliber so uh you have to in the early days of a startup you you need to think and work um to survive um and once you achieve some traction and scale uh you can you know depending on the opportunity and the problem you're solving uh i think you can get to some degree of size and scale and you know those numbers don't you know those are just headlines and we are getting all carried away by it but uh we are into the age of decacons i mean unicorns don't matter anymore frankly uh decacons are are it because of the size and scale of the market opportunity right i mean that's really what is determining the valuation although they may be insane or they may look insane in some cases and that's all part of the you know you get the baby the bathwater all all mixed up and you know the market will sort itself out but we are definitely into the age of decacons definitely definitely so Bobby and Anish do you want to comment something on that part by the way i heard this cockroach uh part from uh a book and uh i guess the founder and CEO of uh book my show dot com he commented this like uh let's be cockroach let's not be unicorn so something like yeah Bobby please go ahead uh actually i think uh uh when you uh build uh something uh you should start from uh the zero i think uh that's why uh when you uh when when the future uh you uh you already uh like uh unicorn but uh in the past of for now you start from cockroach that's why i think uh when you to pursue or uh reach something like unicorn level but for now you should start from uh cockroach that's why uh but uh actually uh uh some of our uh being cockroach uh i believe cockroach uh will survive uh in any uh situation something like that uh especially uh when you when you resilience or survive uh in pandemic uh situation like uh like uh this uh this year i believe uh some of uh the startup that uh survive uh in this year will be maybe uh like be unique or uh summaries definitely so let's be survivors yeah yes so anish anything from your side any closing thought on it no a lot has a lot has been covered uh for cockroach and for unicorns i think i leave it at that yeah sure so uh with this like uh in the interest of time also this was indeed uh an extraordinary and an exceptional panel discussion so this unicorn and cockroach part will go on forever i guess so but yes i would like to share a token of thanks to all the attendees including our dear panelists uh shridhar ji from billion cart uh and then bobby from frostbeth solutions thank you for coming and joining in anish from pink capital so i got to know about shridhar ji from lingdon uh he is one of my connections and i'm grateful that i found him and then i got connected with bobby from tommy so thank you tommy thank you bobby ji and then anish so i got connected with you from costa costa is uh one of your organization's part so thanks to costa here yeah yes and thanks ankita and thanks anupam and by the way ankita i'm really jealous you're the only one you know where time stands still you know at 235 or whatever that is you know i'm like how the heck is that possible which part of the world is that right i'm like at 235 i'm like here's seven it's almost dinner time so we are like no i was just thinking that somewhere in the world it will be 235 so well the whole hour it's been 235 so she has stopped time i guess yeah yeah so great and yes dear audience thank you for making it interactive for your questions also so we'll be organizing such panel discussions such workshops community meetups ecosystem networking event uh under misfits 2021 in the upcoming days in the upcoming weeks so guys stay tuned and keep in touch uh let's do something together again uh let's be let's get partner for something related to fintech something related to finance or anything right so stay tuned and do follow us on our social media handles to your audience so that you get to know about the the upcoming events uh by the way and also it would be great uh okay so he has left so param param has some questions okay cool no no issues so on a good note uh i would like to end this discussion here and once again thank you so much uh shreedar ji bobby anish and to all the dear audience and especially through the dear moderator thank you for the moderation part you did it so well thank you so much thank you thank you so much thank you thank you bye bye yeah 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