New CoE for Fintech Software Industry 'FinBlue' Opens in Chennai

Chennai, Aug 20 (PTI): Cashing in on the growth of the financial technology software industry, Software Technology
Parks of India set up by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology inaugurated a Centre of Excellence
'FinBlue' here on Tuesday.

The centre located at the existing office of the STPI here would provide resource in terms of mentoring, technology
support and funding to startups in financial technology, STPI director-general Omkar Rai said.

The move was to augment the existing ecosystem focusing on accelerating nascent startups in the financial technology
into full-fledged companies, he said.

"This is a collaborative effort between STPI, government of Tamil Nadu. This is to promote financial technology. This
whole exercise is gaining ground," he told reporters here.

Polaris founder and the Intellect Design Arena managing director Arun Jain would be chief mentor for the startup
under the Centre of Excellence. It is being set up with an investment of Rs 23 crore. That includes contribution from government of India, government of Tamil Nadu, investors, he said.

Rai said the domestic financial technology software industry was expected to touch USD 2.4 billion by 2020 from current USD 1.2 billion.

Noting that there were over 560 million people employed in over 2,000 financial technology firms in the country, he said
it was offering a huge potential for the sector.

The objective of the FinTech Centre of Excellence was to provide resource in terms of mentoring, technology support and
funding for FinTech startups.

The Centre of Excellence was also to reach financial technology volume of USD 73 billion in 2020, he said. PTI VIJ
NVG

Chennai Soon To Have Fintech Startup Incubator with Govt Support

Chennai is growing and is often overlooked in evaluating India's startup economy, where prominent positions are taken by Bangalore, Delhi-Ncr and Mumbai.

Already home to PayPal incubator and famous IIT-Madras incubation cell, which had spun off startups like Ather Energy and Uniphore, Chennai will now also be home to one of its kind government-aided incubator for financial technology (Fintech) startups.

The incubator will be named as Centre of Excellence (CoE) for Financial Technology and is expected to launch before the end of this year. The facility, with 100 seats, will be housed within the Software Technology Parks of India (STPI).

For infrastructure and ecosystem development of the incubator, the centre government has allocated ₹20 core while ₹23 crore will be contributed by state government of Tamil Nadu and few private investors.

"A total of 500 companies have contributed ₹34,000 crore worth exports from the state of Tamil Nadu-...Chennai and Tamil Nadu 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, on the sidelines of a recent conference on cross-border investments in fintech companies, organised by the British Deputy High Commission and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), Chennai Chapter.

The incubator will also be signing a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) for guidance and technical assistance. UIDAI/Aadhaar and India Stack will also provide support and tools to build and test products in a secured environment.

The above development was first reported in ETTech.

Other New & Upcoming Startup Incubators

This february, former CEO and co-founder of Infosys, Shibulal, has launched EduMentum -- an incubator for early-stage startups working in the space of offline education transformation. In December last year, Paytm too had announced the launch of startup incubator called 'Build For India' initiative.

In January, Ratan Tata, in his ₹900 million plan, had also announced that Tata Trusts will be setting up number of lab-style startup incubators across India.

In the same month, Haryana state government has also announced the plan to set up an startup incubator called ‘Global Start-up Village’, which will be India’s biggest startup hub and will be located in Gurugram in next couple of years.
Prior to that, Kejriwal govt in Delhi has also announced to launch startup incubator in lines of T-Hub.

Last October, Union Minister of Science and Technology recently launched women Bio-tech Incubator at Chennai's Golden Jubilee Biotech Park during the International Science Congress, 2017 in Chennai.

Prior to that, India’s first United Nations Technology Innovation Lab for startups was set up in Kerala, in May 2017.