UK challenger Monument to tap Britain's mass affluent - FinTech Futures

#fintech #neobanks #challengerbanks #digitalbanks #affluence #afluent #startups #startupstrategy

Monument Corporation, a new UK fintech challenger, is looking to tap Britain’s mass affluent population. Co-operative Bank’s former chief executive, @Niall Brooker, is chairing the venture. Mintoo Bhandari, a former managing director at Apollo Global Management – one of the world’s largest alternative investment manager firms, is leading the venture alongside Brooker.

The start-up reckons around 3.5 million consumers fall into this bracket, which it defines as people with a net worth between £250,000 and £5 million.

Through the last 18 months of the building process, Monument has interviewed roughly 1,800 mass affluent consumers. It says 93% of these respondents “expressed dissatisfaction” with their current banking provider. “Increasingly, private banking is focused on the ultra-high net worth and lags when it comes to embracing modern technology,” says Bhandari.

The start-up also says it is the first bank to offer an entirely digital lending journey for buy-to-let and property investment lending of up to £2 million. The bank will offer live chat, video and co-browsing features.

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UK challenger Monument to tap Britain's mass affluent - FinTech Futures

Monument, a new UK fintech challenger, is looking to tap Britain's 3.5 million mass affluent population with savings and lending products.

Matrix Moments: Asish Mohapatra's journey from being an investor to building a fintech startup at scale

#buildtolast #buildtosuit #startups #strategy #fintechstartups

In this episode of Matrix Moments, Asish Mohapatra talks with Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Matrix Partners India, about his journey of building OfBusiness, and his transition from being an investor at Matrix Partners India to the founder of a fintech startup.

Key takeaways for building big #FinTech startups:-

1. Every commerce company, once it attempts to scale, essentially has to solve for financing. Even Amazon and other big players are realising the potential of installment economy.

2. To be able to make a financing transaction, you need to have different capabilities. And those should be around debt raising (because debt is cheaper than equity), underwriting, and collections.

3. People at the top have to have to speak the exact same language as the customers' requirements.

4. You have to force people to consciously develop a risk mindset, which not many of us do because fundamentally, we are empiricist in nature.

5. Being customer-centric is necessary but it is never sufficient.

6. You need to have technology in your businesses because without that you won't have access or low-cost access.

7. To scale a company, it is also important to have a strong team and a set of founders.

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[Matrix Moments] Asish Mohapatra's journey from being an investor to building a fintech startup at scale

In this episode of Matrix Moments, Asish Mohapatra talks with Vikram Vaidyanathan, Managing Director, Matrix Partners India, about his journey of building OfBusiness, and his transition from being an investor at Matrix Partners India to the founder of a fintech startup.

How A Tech Entrepreneur Broke Records With A $189M Valuation Pre-Launch On The Road To $1B

#fintech #banks #neobanks #challengerbanks #digitalbanks #startups #startupstrategy

Fintech is forecast to achieve a #CAGR of 25% through 2022, reaching a market value of $309B. Traditional banks’ legacy approach to IT holds them back from being more customer-centric. And in a recently published World Retail Banking Report, 2020 by Capgemini and Efma, 78% of financial services leaders said cybersecurity is the biggest obstacle to collaborating and becoming more customer-centric.

Fintech startups excel at #analytics, #AI and #machinelearning to see how they can become more empathetic and helpful to customers. Fintech startups are also succeeding today because their design provides customers the freedom to interact with them as they want and treat cybersecurity as a part of customer experience. There’s been a 667% increase in spear-fishing email attacks related to Covid-19 since February alone, further underscoring the need for designing in cybersecurity to the platform level.

Fintech startup leaders are delivering excellent user experiences with apps based on adaptive design today. They’re also able to scale how many credit cards can be on a single account and integrated into a single card using polymorphic technology that thwarts fraud attempts.

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How A Tech Entrepreneur Broke Records With A $189M Valuation Pre-Launch On The Road To $1B

Bottom Line: Traditional banks aren't innovating fast enough to improve credit card fraud, endpoint cybersecurity, AI-powered end-to-end identity verification and more intuitive user experiences creating new opportunities for startups. Fintech is forecast to achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 25% through 2022, reaching a market value of $309B.

Drone startup TropoGo collaborates with Avianco Technologies - CRN - India

#drones #startupindia #aatmanirbharbharat #insurtech #startupstrategy #deeptech

TropoGo, founded by Sandipan Sen, a Deep-Tech drone start-up has partnered with Avianco Technologies Pvt Ltd to offer integrated Risk & Insurance services to Avianco Customers.

Drones are Digital 4.0 technologies and the adoption has greatly increased primarily because of the perceived benefits across multiple sectors like Agriculture, Survey, Security and Healthcare to start with. Recent permission by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) & multiple State Governments to conduct Beyond Visual Line of Sight #BVLOS) drone delivery experiments has opened up new possibilities.

Understating the importance of technology, Shravan V., Founder & CEO, Avianco Technologies says, “TropoGo and Avianco will bring seamless integration and superior user experience to Indian Drone Pilots.”

He further added, with detailed access of flight path, drone health, traffic congestion and various other parameters TropoGo can Co-innovate along with their Insurance partners to come up with comprehensive Risk & Fit for purpose Insurance Products of future.

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Drone startup TropoGo collaborates with Avianco Technologies - CRN - India

Read Article TropoGo, a Deep-Tech drone start-up has partnered with Avianco Technologies to offer integrated Risk & Insurance services to Avianco Customers. Drones are Digital 4.0 technologies and the adoption has greatly increased primarily because of the perceived benefits across multiple sectors like Agriculture, Survey, Security and Healthcare to start with.

Startup Funding Alert: Former NewMotion CEO invests in Mumbai-based EV charging company BrightBlu

#Startups #fundingalert #startupfunding #ev #electricvehicle #startupstrategy

Mumbai-headquartered electric vehicle charging solution company BrightBlu, co-founded by Wybren van der Vaart, Santosh Ram Somasundaram and Saket Anandkrishnan, has announced that the former CEO of EV charge point operator NewMotion, Sytse Zuidema, has become a new shareholder in the company. BrightBlu was formed in 2019, after the merger of Asia Electric, an EV charging solutions company and DrivAmp LLP, a smart charging technology provider.

With this announcement, Zuidema is now an active shareholder and director on the board of the company, BrightBlu. He has acted as the CEO of NewMotion from 2015 until April 2020 and led the company from scale-up stage to being the leading charge point operator in the European market. He provided shareholders of NewMotion with an exit in 2017 when NewMotion was acquired by Royal Dutch Shell.

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Former NewMotion CEO invests in Mumbai-based EV charging company BrightBlu

Mumbai-headquartered electric vehicle charging solution company BrightBlu has announced that the former CEO of EV charge point operator NewMotion, Sytse Zuidema, has become a new shareholder in the company. BrightBlu was formed in 2019, after the merger of Asia Electric, an EV charging solutions company and DrivAMP, a smart charging technology provider.

How data analytics startup Near went from adtech to become a SaaS company

#martech #adtech #startups #startegy #startupstories

The Singapore and Bengaluru-based startup Near, which was initially called AdNear, used location data to serve customer-relevant ads. Eight years on, Near, founded by Anil Mathews in 2012, has emerged as a #SaaS (software-as-a-service) startup, which collects real-life data about consumers and merges it with online data to create their profile. Near has raised over $134 million from marquee investors like Sequoia Capital.

Near gathers data from a diverse set of data partners such as data aggregators, app partners, Wi-Fi partners, public hotspots, census data sets, and regional data partners across markets. It then takes the raw, unfiltered, and unstructured data signals and puts it into context by adding a layer of data science on it. Near’s customers can then understand the behaviour of users not just based on the places they are visiting, but the behaviour they exhibit in the real world. At present, Near has clients like Mastercard, WeWork, and Boston Consulting Group (BCG). It has taken the startup close to seven years to expand globally to reach the $1.6 billion scale.

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How data analytics startup Near went from adtech to become a SaaS company

In today's digital era, marketers are collecting massive amounts of data from consumers through the internet. Platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Google have a lot of data about people, and companies are on a constant chase to capture user data to promote their products. However, not many companies have the data from the physical world.

The wealth-tech startup Winvesta helps Indians invest in Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other US stocks

#wealthmanagement #fintech #startupstrategy #LRS #overseasinvestment #India

Winvesta, co-founded by Swastik Nigam and Prateek Jain, allows Indians to invest in overseas stocks and buy fractional shares of highly-valued firms like Facebook, Google, Amazon and others on the S&P 500 index.

The entire registration and #KYC process on Winvesta is paperless, and can be completed on the app. The startup is authorised and regulated by the UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Its local office is situated in Mumbai, but Winvesta runs a team spread across four countries.

Users can create a US stock brokerage account or an international multi-currency bank account within 15 minutes. It has no significant upfront costs, annual tie-ins, or minimum thresholds. It also promises zero-commission trading. It not only allows fractional trading, but also lets Indians buy international real estate, and pay for foreign education through borderless bank accounts.

Winvesta is creating market differentiation by blending commission-free stock-trading with multi-currency banking on a clean and user-friendly interface. Under the liberalised remittance scheme, Indians can invest upto $250,000 per year overseas under Liberalised Remittance Scheme (LRS).

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This wealth-tech startup helps Indians invest in Google, Amazon, Facebook, and other US stocks

Winvesta had a start like no other. Incorporated in London in August 2019, the cross- border investment platform went live in India in March 2020, two days after the nationwide lockdown. "It was as good a time as any," Founder and CEO Swastik Nigam tells YourStory.

Indian Startup Stories: With partners like Delhivery and Shadowfax, Delhi-based startup Pickrr is simplifying logistics

#startups #startupindia #logistics #aggregators #startupstories #startegy #covid19 #founders #ai #ml #artificialintelligence #machinelearning

The logistics sector earned infrastructure status in 2017 when its market size was estimated at $160 billion. According to IBEF, the Indian logistics market was expected to reach $215 billion by 2020, logging a 10.5 percent CAGR over 2017.

Founded by IIT graduates Rhitiman Majumder, Gaurav Mangla, and Ankit Kaushik in August 2015, Pickrr aggregates various logistics players in the country, delivering to more than 26,000 pincodes and adding more every day.

Pickrr uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), specialising in air express, surface express, fulfilment and warehousing, and reverse logistics. Some of Pickrr’s clients include Bosch Household Appliances, Snapdeal, DenSnapdeal, 1mg, Bombay Shaving Company, Shopify, and Archies, among others. On the logistics side, it has partnered with Delhivery, Xpressbees (BusyBees Logistics Solutions Pvt. Ltd.), BlueDart, DTDC, Ecom Express Private Limited, FedEx, and Shadowfax, among others.

Currently, the logistics startup processes more than 50,000 orders per day; they are managed by a team of 24 employees.

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With partners like Delhivery and Shadowfax, Delhi-based startup Pickrr is simplifying logistics

The logistics sector earned infrastructure status in 2017 when its market size was estimated at $160 billion. According to IBEF, the Indian logistics market was expected to reach $215 billion by 2020, logging a 10.5 percent CAGR over 2017. However, the sector continues to remain highly fragmented and unorganised.

Startup Strategy: New Hope Fertility Centre Provides 2x Faster Customer Support with Hiver

#collaborationtools #collaborationsolutions #onlinecollaboration #emailcollabiration #gsuite #gmail #startups #strategy

New Hope Fertility Center (NHFC), a global leader in human reproductive medicine in the US, implemented Hiver, a customer service solution for teams, to improve patient interaction and internal collaboration between teams. With Hiver, NHFC now provides 2x faster service over email and saves over 600 hours a month.

At NHFC, email serves as an important communication channel between the various teams and the patients. The nursing lab and billing departments interact with patients primarily via email – be it for providing medical instructions, giving the lab results, sending invoices, or answering billing-related queries.

With Hiver, all departments across the center have been able to collaborate more efficiently and provide better service to their patients. All team members now have a holistic view of all the patient emails and also have visibility into the status of every email. They can easily see whether an email has been resolved or is being worked on and can ensure no duplicate responses are sent out to patients. This does not require any manual work and can be accessed easily within Gmail.

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New Hope Fertility Centre Provides 2x Faster Customer Support with Hiver

(Eds: Disclaimer: The following press release comes to you under an arrangement with NewsVoir. PTI takes no editorial responsibility for the same.)

Inc42: Shared Mobility Startup Royal Brothers Adds Long-Term Subscriptions To Hourly Rentals

#sharedmobility #micromobility #ridesharing #subscriptionmodel #intercity #bikerental #startupindia #startupstrategy #postcovidworld

The shared mobility space which finally resumed its operations recently is going through a complete overhaul. Considering that consumers will be wary of sharing vehicles with others, in recent weeks, many bike rental and two-wheeler ride-sharing platforms have pivoted their offerings. Bengaluru-based Royal Brothers, a two-wheeler rental startup, revised its hourly rental model to add monthly subscriptions.

Co-founded by the professor-student duo of Manjunath T N and Abhishek Chandrashekar in July 2015, Royal Brothers claims to be South India's first RTO authorised self-ride bike rental platform. It has since established presence across eight states and 25 cities and claims to be the first player in the category to start the subscription model. The new monthly subscription model is meant to counter the health risks posed by public transports, while also helping the customers practise social distancing. The subscription model has been adopted by a slew of bike-sharing companies as the market adapts to the new reality post the lockdown.

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Shared Mobility Startup Royal Brothers Adds Long-Term Subscriptions To Hourly Rentals

From airlines to trains, to even local transportation — everything came to a standstill as India tried to flatten the coronavirus infection curve. But economies have to function and this would need people to step out of their homes, and so with the third phase of the lockdown in early May, the Indian government allowed mobility startups to resume operations with extra protection and safety measures.

Startup Strategy: Lanistar partners with Jumio ahead of "polymorphic" debit card launch

#fintech #kyc #videokyc #video #neobanks #challengerbanks #digitalbanks #strategy #startupstrategy

Lanistar, a UK-based fintech set to launch a “polymorphic debit card” later this year, has partnered with Jumio for its onboarding.

California-based mobile payments and identity verification firm Jumio will help Lanistar verify users remotely.

Customers will submit a picture of their government-issued ID and a corroborating selfie with certified liveness detection. Jumio can also verify secondary documents, should a user need to submit them.

Jumio’s customers to date include Monzo, Middle East-based Bank ABC, Airbnb and easyJet.

The US fintech cites Signicat data, which suggests nearly 40% of potential new accounts go down the drain due to clunky onboarding.

Key takeaway:

Neobanks should be able to adopt remote KYC methods such as video KYC so that prospective customers are not frustrated while onboarding, which is very crucial that may impact the customer base.

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Lanistar partners with Jumio ahead of "polymorphic" debit card launch - FinTech Futures

Lanistar landed a $2.5 million seed investment in March.

Startup Strategy: The opportunity for startups in India & ASEAN to write a new M&A playbook

#manda #mergers #mergersandacquisitions #startups #startupindia #strategy #startupstrategy #buildtolast

Please read what Piyush Gupta, MD - Strategic Development at Sequoia Capital has to say on how M&A can make you big, provided executed properly.

M&A will become an increasingly important tool for startups that want to scale, enter adjacent businesses and enhance their financial profile. This will require a change in mindset among founders in India and ASEAN.

M&A has been drastically under-utilized as a growth tool by startups in this region. That’s partly because many founders on both sides of the fence feel a natural sense of anxiety about , loss of control and the impact on culture, customers and employees. It’s also because M&A, as a tool, has a bad reputation.

Startups Sequoia worked with on M&A have been able to achieve their objectives by structuring their deals with these principles in mind:

• Create an ownership mindset with stock-weighted acquisitions.
• Change your organizational structure to make a home for the acquired team
• Add on incentive for successful integration and performance
• Bring some cash to the acquisition if you can
• Simplify cap table liquidation preferences

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The opportunity for startups in India & ASEAN to write a new M&A playbook

By Piyush Gupta Even before COVID, public and private investors assessing late-stage startups were looking much more closely at their path to significant scale and sustained profitability. That focus is here to stay, and many companies will need to expand their toolkit.

Startup Strategy: Santander's Asto offers loans to SMEs on Funding Options

#MSME #SME #lendingsolutions #lending #credit #fintech #startups #startupstrategy

Santander’s invoice and expenses app, Asto, has partnered with alternative UK lender, Funding Options, to offer business capital loans to early-stage start-ups and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Funding Option’s CEO, Simon Cureton, calls Asto “one of a new breed of ambitious and innovative lenders laser-focused on providing truly flexible finance solutions for businesses”.

Key takeaway:

Partnering with e-commerce giants would give lending company a better access to financial strength of the sellers on these platforms.

The above fintech venture broke into lending last year when it partnered with eBay to off loans to the 200,000 UK SMEs which sell their products through the ecommerce giant’s platform.

The app connects to eBay’s data to measure sales and cash flow to identify prospective customers and shape its credit decisioning process.

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Santander's Asto offers loans to SMEs on Funding Options - FinTech Futures

Asto, Santander's fintech app, has partnered with alternative UK lender Funding Options to offer business capital loans to early-stage start-ups and SMEs.

Startup Success Stories: Only the adaptable survive (and thrive) - Dailyhunt

#vernacular #content #startupstories #startupstrategy

The startups betting on consumption by vernacular customers will benefit a lot, as the language is only the barrier for outsiders to garner this huge market. Today 64% of India’s 510 million internet users speak primarily in their local language, while 36% are English users; by 2025, the number of internet users is expected to hit 906 million, 77% of those will be vernacular-first, according to a report by Google and KPMG.

Please read the success story of Dailyhunt harping on vernacular content.

Only the Adaptable survive (and thrive)

By Mohit Bhatnagar As the Covid-led recession sets in, I've started to reflect on a company metric that I had never spent much time thinking through before: Adaptability. How does one even measure that in a company? What makes one company more adaptable than the other? Speed of execution? Intellect