Fintech Startup Ambak Raises $7 Mn in Funding Led by Peak XV Partners

• Founders are ex-leadership from Policybazaar, Paisabazaar, CarDekho, Freecharge by Axis Bank, HDFC Life and ZestMoney
• In just 12 months, Ambak has served 15,000+ home buyers and signed an official partnership with Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to serve 35,000+ customers

Ambak, a technology-driven marketplace streamlining the home loan process, announces $7 million in funding through a combination of Seed and Pre-Series A funding. Leading investors include Peak XV’s Surge in the seed round, with Peak XV Partners doubling down for Pre-Series A, Advantedge VC, DeVC, and angel investors, who have significantly increased their stake in the company.

The founders, leaders from PB Fintech, Freecharge, CarDekho Group and ZestMoney who have built scaled platforms in insurance, car loans and unsecured lending, launched Ambak in January 2024, to improve customer and home seller experience in a fragmented, opaque and large ($160 Bn / annum) home finance market. Despite favourable government policies like the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), the home loan process in India remains cumbersome, often confusing customers with over 150 financiers offering loans. Ambak simplifies this by providing a transparent, three-step process for selecting the right financier, supported by Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) and bank rule engines.

Within the first 12 months, Ambak has built their marketplace integrating with 50+ lenders, expanded distribution in 6 states and automated credit processes to serve the needs of 15,000+ customers and 3,000+ intermediaries including builders and brokers. They also signed an industry-first official partnership with Delhi Development Authority (DDA) to serve 35,000+ customers over the next 12 months. This growth prompted their existing investors with Peak XV as the lead to infuse a further $3.7 Million in January 2025 to co-create new products, build AI tools and expand distribution to all major hubs in India.

"For a majority of Indians, buying a home is the biggest financial decision they will ever make, but access and affordability continue to be a significant hurdle. Despite 160+ lenders serving all types of customers & properties, customers find it hard to find the right lender and handle the process. Ambak’s mission is to distribute $20 billion in home finance annually in the next five years, while leading the charge to provide transparency and predictability to the home-buying experience," shared Raghuveer Malik, CEO of Ambak.

 

Ashish Agrawal, Managing Director, Peak XV shared, “Mortgages represent the largest market for credit in India. The founding team at Ambak come with strong relevant experience and we are impressed with their early execution. We believe they can leverage technology effectively to solve for various needs of borrowers, intermediaries and banks in the mortgage market.”

Ambak, which has quietly been building its presence and launched its app 12 months ago, has been making waves in the industry. The startup uses technology and integrations with Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) services to serve both the customer & their lending partners offering a simple and assisted process for getting a home loan.

“We felt that the distribution of the secured retail lending space, in which home loans is the largest component, was riddled with lack of innovation despite lenders having made monumental upgrades in the last 5 years” said Rameshwar Gupta, CTO of Ambak who previously served as the CTO of Freecharge (By Axis Bank).

Ambak's Expansion and Innovation Goals

The newly raised funds will enable Ambak to expand its operations across 35 cities and serve 100,000+ customers, crossing $1 Billion in disbursements in FY26. To ensure it stays customer-obsessed, Ambak is strengthening its Loan Comparison tools, developing Vernacular AI bots for better customer outreach, and improving its AI/ML-based loan processing engine. The company is also co-creating products with financiers to expand options and deepen financial penetration across the country.

Leveraging Technology to Drive Change

Ambak’s platform integrates real-time data from lenders and employs AI-driven processes to reduce turnaround times and minimize customer confusion. By streamlining operations, Ambak aims to drive the adoption of customer-centric practices that promote transparency and affordability, ensuring a significant boost to the home finance sector by FY32.

Ambak is a fintech startup revolutionizing the home financing industry. By combining advanced technology with a customer-centric approach, AMBAK simplifies the mortgage process and helps individuals achieve their dream of homeownership. The platform leverages data analytics, AI-driven recommendations, and robust customer support to provide a transparent, efficient, and empowering experience. For more information, visit https://www.ambak.com/

Fintech Startup Sqrrl is on ‘Mission 200’ for the Betterment ofUnderprivileged Children

 

Sqrrl, a savings and investment startup, has partnered with GiveIndia, India’s largest online donation platform, to help 200 underprivileged children get access to education and mid-day meals across 19 states in India. Named ‘Mission 200’, this campaign allows Sqrrl users to contribute to the welfare of these children, simply by transacting on the app. Each time you use the Sqrrl app, the Sqrrl team will sponsor the education and mid-day meals of 1 child. 

The Founder of Sqrrl, Samant Sikka, says “As we turn the year and look forward to the new year with hopes and aspirations, we thought it best to use this opportunity and share our abundance with people who need them. We invite you to join this Mission 200 and take a small step to spread Big Smiles”.



The team at Sqrrl also says that sharing and caring is in the fabric of the app itself. It is India’s 1st personal finance app where users can invest their money directly into tax-saver donation funds, powered by GiveIndia. 

Co-founded by Samant Sikka, Sanjeev Sharma, and Dhananjay Singh, the Sqrrl app was launched in the year 2017 and has more than 3,50,000 users across India. The app is available in 9 local languages – Hindi, English, Tamil, Telugu, Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Kannada and Malayalam. It has a unique feature, Sqrrl Away, to round up a user’s spends to the nearest Rs. 100 or Rs. 500. This feature is designed to especially make saving money easier for the youngsters. 


About Sqrrl

Launched in March 2017, Sqrrl is an investment and wealth management platform aimed at helping young Indians develop the habit of savings and investments. 

This app has taken on the challenge of making savings truly micro by automating and simplifying the process of investing in mutual funds. The users can do goal-based investments in mutual funds. Users can save for specific purposes such as tax savings.  The intelligent algorithms allow uses to create an investment portfolio customised for their risk appetite. Users can also start SIPs or make lumpsum investments. 

At present, the Sqrrl app has more than 350,000 downloads across Android and iOS platforms. Over 76% of Sqrrl users are under the age of 35, and 51% of its user base are beyond the top 30 cities.

Fintech Startup Khatabook to Raise $20 Mn in Funding from DST Partners, Ribbit Capital and Sequoia

Mumbai-based Kyte Technologies, which owns and operates digital accounts ledger app KhataBook, is set to raise $20-$25 million (Rs 138-Rs 172 crore) in series-A financing round, which will lead by DST Partners, a personal investing vehicle for the partners at Israeli-Russian billionaire Yuri Milner's DST Global.

Ribbit Capital, Sequoia Capital and a couple of Chinese funds will also contribute to the round, reported Times of India.

Besides, more than 20 angel investors including prominent investor Gokul Rajaram, Jitendra Gupta, the founder of Citrus Pay, and Kunal Shah, CEO of Cred, are also likely to participate in the round, said the report.

Expected to be finalised in the coming weeks, the Khatabook funding would be one of the largest series-A funding rounds for a homegrown startup this year.

Founded in 2018, by IIT-Bombay alumni Ravish Naresh, Jaideep Poonia, Dhanesh Kumar and Ashish Sonone, Khatabook replaces traditional udhaar bahi-khata (accounts book/ledger) by its digital app, which shop owners can use to record credit and debit transactions for their trusted customers and can maintain their customers'​ accounts securely. The app is claimed to be free and comes with features such as SMS updates to customers on every transaction, Automatic Backup, WhtasApp payment reminder to customers and download of customers' PDF Report among others.

While Ravish was one of the Co-founders and COO at Housing.com, a property listing websites. Jaideep Poonia, Dhanesh Kumar and Ashish Sonone, were co-founders of Knit Messenger, a messaging application that made it easy for teachers to connect with parents and students.

Part of Y Combinator and Sequoia Capital's Surge, Khatabook has so far raised just over $3 million from Y Combinator, Sequoia and InfoEdge, the parent of naukri.com and 99acres.com. The startup also counts Citrus Pay founders - Amrish Rau and Jitendra Gupta, and Square's Gokul Rajaram as its angel investors.

Khatabook services SMBs that operate in both metropolitan and non-metropolitan cities and is available in a wide variety of Indian languages, including the popular Hinglish dialect. The app recently crossed 120,000+ weekly active merchants and is growing at 40% MoM.

UAE Based OMA Emirates Group Launches $3 Mn Fintech Fund

UAE-based OMA Emirates Group has launched a fintech Fund. the newly launched fund will focus on emerging and potential financial technology companies and startups in India.

According to ET reports, OMA Emirates will invest a corpus of $3 million towards fintech startups that have been in operation for 12 months or less. Apart from this, the firm also plans to invest $20 million across other fintech verticals and towards innovation of existing products and services depending on the national and international presence of the company.

Commenting on the development, Niranj Sangal, Group CEO, OMA Emirates Group said, “The payments space, particularly in India, has evolved with several remarkable innovations. Globally, India has been viewed as a growing market for startups and SMEs and has been an active player in the FinTech segment."

Not only this, OMA Emirates will provide support to tech startups in terms of technology, R&D, practices and GTM strategy. The firm is focused on growing and developing fintechs in addition to providing capital support.

“With the OMA Emirates FinTech Fund, we aim to aid such FinTech startups which we believe will be a credible asset to OMA Emirates. We are looking beyond simply providing financial support and will explore strategic partnerships with all the companies we engage,” added Sangal.The OMA Emirates fintech Fund further aims to provide growth with adequate mentoring and scalability to potential companies within the sector.

The OMA Emirates fintech Fund further aims to provide growth with adequate mentoring and scalability to potential companies within the sector.

Fintech Startup Capital Float In Talks To Raise Rs 300 crore

Capital Float, a digital lending startup is reportedly is in advanced talks to raise around Rs 300 crore in a new funding round.

According to the media reports, Ribbit Capital, the US-based finance technology focused venture capital is in talks to lead the fresh round of funding. It is believed that existing investors SAIF Capital and Sequoia Capital will also participate in the latest round so that their stake in the company is maintained. The company plans to utilise the fresh funds for expanding its lending portfolio to consumer financing and for financing kirana stores as well. After this round, the company is expected to be valued at around Rs 1,300 crore.

Founded in 2013, the startup is based in Bengaluru with offices in New Delhi and Mumbai. The fintech startup is an online platform that provides working capital finance to SMEs in India. The company offers flexible, short-term loans that can be used to purchase inventory, service new orders or optimize cash cycles. With the help of this platform, borrowers can apply online in minutes, select desired repayment terms and receive funds in their bank accounts in 3 days with minimal hassle.

Capital Float is the trade name of Zen Lefin Pvt. Ltd., a non-banking finance company (NBFC) registered with the RBI. Talking about their management team, it consists of experienced professionals with prior careers in blue-chip companies such as McKinsey & Company, Gokaldas Exports, Oracle, Citibank, Capital First, and Wipro. They also hold advanced degrees from leading universities around the world such as Stanford University, Princeton University, IIT Mumbai, The London School of Economics and Delhi University.

Earlier in 2017, the startup had raised debt capital from several investors. It raised Rs 15 crore from Mahindra & Mahindra Financial Services by allotting non-convertible debentures (NCDs) and Rs 17 crore from IFMR Capital Finance through NCDs in December 2016. Not only this, Capital Float has recently partnered with Amazon India to enable e-commerce sellers to manage their dynamic working capital requirements.

Talking about Ribbit Capital, it has been investing in India since 2014. The firm has invested in companies like Policybazaar.com, a Gurgaon-based fintech startup, consumer lending startup ZestMoney to name few.

Bahrain Invites India's Fintech Startups To Relocate Offices

Indian Fintech industry has caught Bahrain's attention. During a recent visit to the Indian subcontinent, Simon Galpin, Managing Director, Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) revealed the kingdom's plan to set up a Fintech Centre by next year.

The Centre, which is expected to go live by February/March 2018, will be providing accelerators and co-working spaces for fintech companies. In addition to this, it will also be providing networking opportunities to startups and financial institutions interested in the making it big in the fintech industry.

EDB's Galpin was in the country last week as part of his country's efforts in pursuing Indian fintech startups and manufacturing companies in pharmaceuticals and food processing industries who are looking for opportunities to expand to locate to Bahrain and make use of the liberal environment that the country has to offer.

According to him, the country isn't necessarily looking at early stage companies, it is in fact more in the favour of firms that have already established a name for themselves in their own home country and are now looking for ways to spread their ground.

Galpin has been always appreciative of India's fintech industry, especially of the mobile payments space. He believes that the companies can have a brighter future on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) market. According to him, since a majority of foreign workers in Bahrain are here without local bank accounts, mobile payments can be of big help in the country.

In addition to the Fintech centre plans, Bahrain had recently launched a regulatory sandbox that allows startups and fintech companies to test and experiment their banking ideas and solutions.

The regulatory sandbox provides a great opportunity for fintech businesses around the globe to expand and thrive in the Gulf and puts Bahrain in a strong position as a fintech and financial services hub in the GCC.

Bengaluru Based Fintech Startup Open Secures $250k From PayU India CEO and MD

Fintech startup Open has bagged $250k in a seed funding round led by PayU India CEO Amrish Rau and managing director Jitendra Gupta. The firm plans to utilise freshly infused funds for branding and expansion of the 12-member team.cp_two_third]text[/cp_two_third]

Set to launch in August 2017, Open is co-founded by Anish Achuthan and his wife, Mabel Chacko in May 2017.Open is all set to offer digital banking, bookkeeping, invoicing and other services to micro-entrepreneurs. Earlier in 2015, Achuthan and Chacko had founded Zwitch, a payment startup which was acquired by Citrus Pay.Commenting on the development, Amrish Rau told ET, "Small businesses and entrepreneurs have started moving to app-based banking, and Open offers a whole range of services.

Commenting on the development, Amrish Rau told ET, "Small businesses and entrepreneurs have started moving to app-based banking, and Open offers a whole range of services.The company is tying up with a private bank for backend account

The company is tying up with a private bank for backend account servicing and has also partnered with a GST Suvidha provider (GSP) to offer small businesses help in filing invoices under the new GST regime. The company will also tie up with an NBFC to offer lending products to these businesses.

"We want to provide a complete solution for micro-entrepreneurs, freelancers and startups with only a handful of employees to manage their business banking and also offer analytics. We aim to reach about 10,000 such small entrepreneurs in six months," concludes Achuthan.

Ex-Rubique Executives Launches Fintech Startup To Bring Banking Services To Borrower's Doorstep

In the entrepreneurial world, Cashcow is refer to steady income or profit. When alumnus of IIT Delhi, Gaurav Goyal decided to take a plunge and founded B2C fintech platform that brings banking services to borrower's doorstep, this name fit the bill perfectly.

In this digital world, where everything is available at a click of a button, then how can banking lack behind. Cashcow.ai is revolutionizing the fintech space by bringing banking to customer’s doorstep. Their certified advisors are available to help their customers for any of their financial needs. Cashcow having tie-ups with over 50 banks & NBFCs has proven capability to offer best in market product spectrum and fit-to-suit solutions to fulfill varied consumer needs i.e. home loans, personal loans, credit cards, balance transfer and top-up loans.

Within a short span of 4 months Cashcow has been able to spread their wings to Mumbai, Delhi (NCR), Hyderabad, Chennai, Ahmadabad, Nagpur and served 1000+ customers, disbursed 80+ Cr worth of loans and set up 1000+ credit cards.

“I believe that problems bring opportunities and opportunities bring purpose, and that purpose in a big way ignited the entrepreneurs within us. Apart from aspiring to build a profitable venture and disrupt the way people do banking today, the larger vision is to nurture and empower entrepreneurship to masses as Cashcow advisors and what more if this comes without any investment,” says Gaurav Goyal, Founder, Cashcow.ai.

Apart from this, Cashcow is empowering entrepreneurship among the masses. Without any investment, you can become an advisor on Cashcow app. Post installation Cashcow ap, you can start referring leads and start earning. Once you become a certified advisor, post clearing their certifications for various products, you can start getting business from the company.

“Our Advisor can be a housewife, a retired professional, an LIC agent, a chartered accountant, a real estate agent or any other section of society, who is keen to become an entrepreneur. We are able to empower entrepreneurship to 150+ Advisors which comes from various backgrounds,” says Goyal.

Meet the Brains Behind it

Cashcow was founded by four members coming from diverse backgrounds with years of professional experience at large conglomerates. Goyal brings technology and product experience to the forefront of Cashcow business operations; Manish Aggarwal an MBA from IMT Gaziabad, is the banking brain with rich industry experience; Sarfraz Nawaz who holds a M.Com, from Mumbai University is an astute sales and distribution expert from financial domain and born Out-Of-Home business entrepreneur whereas Mustafa Patanwala compliments as cashow’s ‘A’ Team.

Founders had been kindling with this idea for some time as to how the invent of successful aggregation platforms are transforming industry value chains. These disruptions are redefining consumer experience along with value creation for those associated with it and for Goyal and his team it was the Ahhh moment for them. It was quick thereafter as they huddled to successfully deliver an integrated aggregation platform that offers end-to-end banking solutions at customer’s doorstep. they charted on this journey early this year and began their commercial operations in February 2017.

As it says, success never come with ease and for Goyal and his team one of the biggest challenge they faced was finding, acquiring and retaining good talent, which is the most challenging part of today's competitive world. According to Goyal, they invested good amount of time on training their advisors hence it took some time to overcome this challenge.

“We are a passionate 40+ member team and will be rapidly expanding our operations nationally. We have plans to hire good talent in our technology, business and data science team. Initially it was difficult to identify and retain good talent, however with our comprehensive training and development program we have not only retained but kept our teams motivated,” says Goyal.

All About it's Technology

Their technology solution is completely cloud based, where data protection and safety is one of our biggest priority. They claim to use latest da'ta science tools to analyse cross sell opportunities for our advisors and end consumer. “We are using android based mobile application with real time statistics to empower every advisor connected with us feel transparent on our business dealings. We want to enable every end user with hassle free sign up procedure,” informs Goyal.

Cashcow application enables their partners to view real time product wise with expected income for referred cases. Their user friendly application enables stage wise status of each product like home loan whether it is sanctioned and ready for disbursement. Every status change is intimated via notification, SMS and email. All payment received from bank and payout given to our advisor gets captured on real time basis.

“We are working towards aggregating all platforms required for consumer from instant loan like small ticket Personal loan to high ticket housing loans,” says Goyal.

They generate their revenues from banks and NBFCs on loans and cards fulfilled through their platform. “Our commissions varies from product to product & from financial institution to NBFCs. Typically commissions are in the range of 1% - 3% of the amount of loan disbursed,” informs Goyal.

Way Forward

Founded with the initial investment of $150k which has been arranged internally amongst co-founders, team is now looking to raise $2 million as seed fund, which would help them to fuel their expansion plans in terms of market reach, product portfolio, technology and people.

If we talk about the number of repetitive customers they have, Goyal says, today their customers categorize to home loans (70%), personal loans (17%) and credit cards (13%).

Despite competing with the traditional DSAs, who have been in the market for long time, Cashcow’s mission to empower entrepreneurship enables them to stand strong in the market. “Our training about product knowledge, certifications for advisors and unique processes around lead fulfilment allows us to proudly say that we are a game changer in this space,” says Goyal.

Goyal wants to include more banking products in their kitty which includes insurance, mutual funds etc. along with a pan India footprint across all major cities including 2/3 tier towns.” Our vision is to bring convenience and empower entrepreneurship to Indian masses,” concludes Goyal.

Huge Opportunity

In the coming 2 to 3 years we envisage a huge opportunity in fintech space, riding on massive technology explosion. As per NASSCOM the global fintech technology and services sector is expected to boom as a $45 billion opportunity by 2020, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 7.1 percent. With a dynamic and evolving fintech ecosystem coupled with huge market opportunity that India offers, we believe it's just at the cusp of a revolution.

Fintech Startup Rubique Secures $3 Mn In A Bridge Round Of Funding

In yet another game-changing round of finance, Rubique, the fintech company empowering individuals and SMEs by providing easy and smooth access to finance and financial products has raised a bridge round of funding of $3 million. The money has been invested by existing investor Kalaari Capital and Udayan Goyal, managing partner at Apis Partners, a financial services-oriented private equity firm focused on Africa and South Asia.

The recent bridge round of funding came after the company's announcement mid last year that it intends to raise $10-15 million in a Series-B round. The company had raised $3 million in Series A from Kalaari Capital, YourNest Angel Fund, Globevestor and Dexter Angel Circle in April last year.

Commenting on making the fund raising a discreet affair, Manavjeet Singh, CEO, Rubique said, “We delayed our Series B round since the company was already generating revenue worth Rs 2 crore a month for the last six months without spending any money on marketing. In fact we didn't need money for survival. However, we decided to go with the new round of funds as there was immense inbound interest. We’ll be leveraging these funds to make even greater inroads across India, strengthen technology product with rich data science methodologies like AI-MLP and explore new product territories in Insurance & Mutual Funds”

Based out of India's financial capital Mumbai, Rubique was incorporated by Manavjeet Singh along with his partner Sandeep Nambiar on October 2014, to bring every borrower and lender on a common platform. The duo introduced a tech-led lending solution which is unique in terms of its matchmaking algorithm and direct integration with financial institutions’ lending underwriting systems. Rubique’s marketplace platform has been integrated with financial institutions’ systems for real time processing and for providing online approvals to the customer. The advance technology solution not only reduces the processing time significantly but the data analytics done on hundreds of data points helps to bring predictability & assess creditworthiness offering best deal to their customer.

With this technology solution, the model is focused on disbursement rather than mere lead generation allowing the customer to get the best deal in the quickest possible time while lowering the cost for customer acquisition for the financial institutions. With a unique technology-driven model, it aims to tap all customer segments be it the digital savvy or the traditional Indian customer.

Rubique has been truly metamorphosing the traditional lending process through technological interventions in an unprecedented fashion. It has just localised its Rubique Associate app. The interactive app now live in Hindi, Marathi and Bengali language will now enable more number of potential business associates to register with Rubique and earn a commission for every reference search for Loans or Credit Cards. The interface for all the three language apps is an exact replica of the English version, making all the user-friendly features available to speakers of Hindi, Marathi and Bengali.

Its recently launched Rubique Advantage feature, new lending solution TAB and the freshly added insurance products to its portfolio has enabled the platform to disburse more than Rs 1,500 crore worth of loans across 27 cities till date. Of this, Rs 250 crore was disbursed in the last two months alone. Rubique is now looking to expand its team of data scientists as well.

Fintech Startup Rubique Makes It To Abu Dhabi Global Market’s Fintech Regulatory Laboratory

Fintech startup, Rubique has been selected by Abu Dhabi Global Market (ADGM), the International Financial Centre in Abu Dhabi, to be a part of the first batch of its fintech Regulatory Laboratory (RegLab) programme. Comprising 5 successful local and international fintech startups with various innovation offerings, Rubique is one of the only two Indian fintech companies selected among the 11 applications. The platform will now develop and test its fintech innovations further as part of the programme.

The ADGM RegLab is the fintech regulatory sandbox and framework in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. It is a tailored regulatory regime for fintech participants designed to foster innovation within the UAE financial services market for both new market entrants and existing financial institutions.

Commenting on the recent development, Wai Lum Kwok, Executive Director of Capital Markets of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority, ADGM said, “As an International Financial Centre, it is important that we value and embrace innovations that support the development and growth of our financial markets. What better way than to get up close to guide the RegLab firms through the develop-test-and-implement journey and assist them in better understanding the regulatory environment to realise their innovations."

The newly announced members are offering a range of innovations from data analytics for credit risk assessments, robo-advisory, artificial intelligence in digital ID, to solutions that can promote financial inclusion among the unbanked, and digital services that enhance operational risk management. As a member, Rubique along with all its fellow participants will receive regulatory guidance from a dedicated ADGM fintech team, and support from ADGM fintech ecosystem partners.

“It is a moment of pride for Rubique to be selected for such a prestigious programme and share the platform with some of the top fintech platforms of UAE, the USA and another one from India. We will leverage this opportunity to further enhance our innovation by elevating the wave of technology and putting India’s fintech segment on the global map. Our aims are to share and enhance our advanced and ground-breaking technology in transforming the global fintech ecosystem,” said Manavjeet Singh, CEO and Founder, Rubique.

Rubique has rapidly established itself as the fintech player in India, disrupting the landscape of financial products driven by its innovative and robust tech infrastructure. Through its various technological applications such as the Rubique Advantage feature, it enables users to quickly process loans through tools such as e-KYC. It expedites the process of in-principle approval of credit card applications and also ensures a hassle-free lending process.

World’s Largest Fintech Hub LATTICE80 Expands Into India

World’s largest FinTech Hub, LATTICE80 has set its eyes on the burgeoning startup ecosystem in India. Marvelstone Group, which is the private investment group behind LATTICE80, has recently entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Andhra Pradesh government to open the first LATTICE80 office outside of Singapore.

Singapore-based Marvelstone is a renowned private investment group that specialises in developing investment strategies and invests in businesses that have a potential of becoming big in the future. While the group might have finance at its core, but it also boosts of having diversified investments in hospitality, media, real estate, trading and technology.

According to the MoU locked between the two parties, LATTICE80 Vizag will be located in Fintech Valley Vizag’s Fintech Tower. For the uninitiated, Vizag, which is the largest city in the state of Andhra Pradesh, is famous for housing some of India’s most innovative startups in the Fintech space.

LATTICE80 will also be taking on the responsibility of organising programs to train 1,000 Indian Information and Communication Technology (ICT) professionals every year. The main goal behind the association is to provide a platform for the community in Singapore and India to come together and drive co-innovation in new technologies such as Big Data, flexible platforms (API), digital and mobile payments, blockchain and distributed ledgers, and many more.

LATTICE80 is known for creating an ecosystem for FinTech startups to collaborate, connect and co-create. The mission of the independent not for profit hub is to offer FinTech companies the opportunity to tap on the rich network and resources to develop smart technologies and springboard to international success. It boasts an impressive technological infrastructure that corporate members can leverage and lay a foundation to create a truly unique world-class community.

Speaking at the Spring Conference 2017 in Andhra Pradesh, Gina Heng, CEO, Marvelstone Group, said, “Less than four months ago, in November last year, we set up LATTICE80 in Singapore to fully support the government’s smart nation vision to transform into a smart financial center. Now, we are happy to be part of the new Vizag-MAS partnership to support Fintech Valley Vizag and the Government of Andhra Pradesh in India. The goal is to bring together industry, academia, and investors to innovate, co-create and build the fintech ecosystem."

According to the Singapore-based fintech hub, India’s Fintech market is forecast to be worth US$2.4 billion by the year 2020, a figure which is a two-fold increase on the market size in 2016.

Commenting on the MoU, Joe Seunghyun Cho, Chairman, Marvelstone Group said, “We see opportunities in Vizag to contribute in various ways. We are delighted to collaborate and launch LATTICE80 Vizag to benefit the fintech sector in India. By launching LATTICE80 Vizag, we want to facilitate knowledge sharing and establish partnerships between universities based in and affiliated to Singapore and Andhra Pradesh."

According to J A Chowdary, special adviser to the Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister on IT, the MoU signed with Marvelstone Group isn't an effort towards just promoting Fintech ecosystem in the country, but a step towards encouraging and developing a whole Fintech culture of its own.

The hub in India is expected to open in Q3 this year.