Category: Banking & Finance

Neeraj Chopra, Olympic gold medalist signs first brand endorsement with Tata AIA Life

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Tata AIA Life Insurance on Wednesday announced the signing of a multi-year brand partnership with Indian athlete and Olympic gold medallist Neeraj Chopra, as its brand ambassador. This association also marks the very first brand partnership to be signed with the champion javelin thrower, post his historic win at the recent Tokyo Olympics.

Commenting on the partnership, Venky Iyer, Executive Vice President and Chief Distribution Officer, Tata AIA Life Insurance, said in a statement, “As a VSM awardee in the Army and a National Icon today, Neeraj symbolises incredible passion for excellence and a great commitment to serving the nation. For us at Tata AIA, his sports journey echoes greatly with our vision of enabling dreams and inspiring healthier and happier lives. And quite like we observe in Neeraj’s journey, Passion for Excellence, and an Obsession to do the best for our consumers, the people of India, are among the core values at Tata AIA. We are delighted to partner with Neeraj and welcome him warmly into the Tata AIA family.”

Neeraj Chopra, said, “Joining the Tata AIA family was a logical step for me. I firmly believe that there is a need to educate Indians, especially the youth, about the need for life insurance and to help them plan for their financial goals, at the right time. Further, the pandemic has made us realise the key need to pursue physical and emotional wellbeing in our day to day life. Tata AIA’s protection and health and wellness solutions offer distinct and significant benefits to consumers. I am happy be a part of the brand’s vision and look forward exciting times ahead.”

Embodying the vision

Neeraj Chopra closely embodies Tata AIA’s vision of enabling dreams and inspiring healthier and happier lives and its core value of passion for excellence. He has consistently set high benchmarks and pioneered change through dedication to his sport. Over the next few years, Neeraj will support Tata AIA’s efforts in offering solutions to its consumers across the country.

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic has also underlined the need for life and health insurance, more emphatically than ever. With a premium-to-GDP penetration of less than 3.5 per cent in India, there is a clear and urgent need to fast-track the insurance journey in the country.

Neeraj’s association with Tata AIA stems from his own experience and understanding of the need for adequate life and health cover and timely planning for one’s key life milestones. It is his firm belief that life insurance helps individuals plan for their protection related needs as well as cater to their health, wellness and wealth creation needs. This forms the basis of his choosing to partner with Tata AIA.

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Fisdom forays into tech-led HNI wealth space

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Wealth-tech startup Fisdom on Wednesday announced the launch of its new venture — Fisdom Private Wealth — which will cater to the investment needs of high networth individuals (HNIs).

It has roped in wealth management industry veteran, Abhijit Bhave, as the chief executive officer to head Fisdom Private Wealth, the company said in a statement.

Over two-and-a-half decades across the financial services industry in India, UAE and Vietnam, Bhave has held leadership roles in large global organisations like Deutsche Bank and HSBC.

He has also had stints with Karvy Private Wealth, ICICI Bank and Unit Trust of India in various roles and functions across diverse verticals such as asset management, cash management, corporate and retail banking.

Catering to HNIs

Fisdom said it has entered the technology-led wealth management space to cater to the investment needs of HNIs.

Fisdom Private Wealth will be offering differentiated investment products to its clients — mutual funds, portfolio management schemes (PMS), alternative investment funds (AIFs), unlisted private equity, bonds, FDs, structured products, Insurance as well as international products.

This new arm of Fisdom also plans to launch various other proprietary products in the due course.

Fisdom Private Wealth aims to bridge the gap of underserved HNI markets in the country with a robust tech-platform augmented with dedicated support by experienced wealth managers.

The start-up company has pioneered a unique bank partnership-led wealth management model that provides access to high quality services to customers in tier 2 and tier 3 locations.

Fisdom Private Wealth has started-off its business with 50 people at 10 locations such as Mumbai, Delhi NCR, Lucknow, Chandīgarh, Kolkata, Bangalore, Surat, Pune, Baroda and Bhopal, with an objective of widening its reach to serve HNIs across the country and even overseas.

“With Fisdom Private Wealth, which is one of our major strategic initiatives, we aim to transform the way HNIs experience their wealth management journey. Through our robust and secure technology infrastructure, we endeavour to provide best-in-class wealth management solutions backed by comprehensive research and capabilities,” Subramanya SV, Co-Founder and CEO, Fisdom said.

Bhave said that India is a relatively under-penetrated market for the private wealth segment, especially in tier 2 and 3 cities.

He further said that this scenario gives an opportunity to expand the reach of its technology-led products and services, thereby making Fisdom Private Wealth accessible to the Indian affluent class not only in the untapped domestic markets but also internationally.

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Amazon Pay also set to help users book deposits, even as GPay service under RBI watch

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Amazon Pay India, the American e-commerce major’s payments app, is also set to offer deposit booking services for its customers, even as rival Google Pay’s similar facility has invited regulatory attention within days of its launch.

Amazon Pay India on Wednesday announced a tie-up with investment platform Kuvera.in through which the former’s customers will be able to invest in mutual funds and fixed deposits, a statement said.

“Kuvera will provide its services, products and technology know-how to create an exclusive experience for Amazon Pay’s users to facilitate investments into mutual funds, fixed deposits, and more over time,” it said.

Google Pay has tied up with Equitas Small Finance Bank for allowing its users to book deposits. Details surrounding the banks where Amazon Pay customers’ deposits will be made were not immediately known.

Following Google Pay’s announcement, there have been reports that the deal between the big tech company and the bank is under RBI’s watch for its implication on the broader financial landscape.

RBI’s stance

In the past, the RBI has made it clear that it is wary of ‘Big Tech’ firms like Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, and flagged it as among the risk factors for financial stability in the half-yearly Financial Stability Report released in July.

“At Amazon Pay, our vision is to simplify lives and fulfil aspirations by solving payment and financial needs of every Indian. For our most engaged customers, growing their wealth and investments is a large need, here is where, we think Kuvera can help our customers with their unique offering,” Amazon Pay India’s director Vikas Bansal was quoted as saying in the statement.

The statement said only 30-40 million of the 600 million internet users in India have access to quality investment products.

“Through this arrangement with Amazon Pay India, we seek to add value to the investors’ journey. Our goal is to accelerate the democratisation of investing and wealth management in India,” Kuvera’s founder and chief executive Gaurav Rastogi said.

Kuvera has more than 10 lakh users and ₹28,000 crore in assets under advice since starting in 2017.

Alokik Advani, the managing partner of Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, an early investor in Kuvera, said the tie-up will bring “best in class saving and investing products to a much wider base of users across the country.”

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CollegeDekho raises $26.5 million funding from Winter Capital, ETS, Man Capital

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CollegeDekho, a college admissions and education services platform, on Wednesday said it has raised $26.5 million (about ₹200 crore) in an ongoing funding round, led by Winter Capital Partners, ETS Strategic Capital and Calega. Existing investors, Man Capital and Rajeev Chaba also participated in the series B round, a statement said.

The company had last raised $8 million in May 2019.

ETS Strategic Capital is the private equity investment arm of ETS, creator of TOEFL and GRE tests.

Fund deployment

The company plans to use the proceeds of the funding to further improve its offerings for students and colleges, increase its investment in product and technology, expand internationally and “grow new verticals like Ed-Fin-Tech and Student Accommodation”, the statement said.

CollegeDekho operates a Common Application Form (CAF) platform that enables students to apply to multiple colleges with a single click.

For studying abroad, CollegeDekho offers a range of services across profile building, test preparation, application assistance, university selection and visa assistance.

“The tremendous response we are seeing from students, parents and colleges continues to energise us to build world class products and services for them. All of this would not have been possible without the passion and commitment of the CollegeDekho family,” Ruchir Arora, Founder and CEO of CollegeDekho, said.

He added that with this fund raise, the company plans to invest in making “its products and services even more lovable for our students and colleges, as well as expand into new geographies and business verticals”.

This series B funding round has been advised by IBIS Capital and Cilix Capital.

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Former YES Bank chief ignored warnings of investment decisions from officials, chargesheet reveals, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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Former YES Bank managing director and chief executive officer Rana Kapoor ignored warnings fromt the treasury and risk management teams, which led to huge losses, the latest charge sheet by the Central Bureau of Investigation showed.

The charge sheet was made public last week, and was reviewed by The Hindustan Times. “Investigation revealed that Rana Kapoor had shown undue personal interest in aforesaid investment and took premeditated decision of investment without discussing the matter with concerned officials, who were having adverse view against such investments,” said the supplementary charge sheet filed by CBI on July 13.

The CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) are investigating the loans issued by YES Bank when Kapoor was its MD and CEO (till January 2019).

Furthermore, Kapoor had misled the board through a false declaration on May 17, 2018, to enhance the exposure limit of DHFL from Rs 2,100 crore to Rs 4,000 crore, the chargesheet said. As a result, the board approved investment of Rs 2,000 crores and Rs 700 crore in a public issue of non-convertible debentures of DHFL. This was despite the investment team advising against the issue.

According to the CBI, Kapoors were paid huge bribes by Dewan Housing Finance Corp (DHFL) in lieu of favours extended by the bank. It alleged that a total of Rs 600 crore was paid in the form of investment.

The ED has alleged that loans worth around Rs 30,000 crore, when Rana Kapoor headed the bank, have turned into bad loans and Rs 20,000 crore have become non-performing assets.

So far, the ED has attached assets worth Rs 2,400 crore in the case, which include Rs 900 crore from Kapoors and Rs 1,411 crore from DHFL’s Kapil and Dheeraj Wadhawan.



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Harsha Bangari takes charge as Exim Bank chief

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Harsha Bangari on Wednesday took charge as the Managing Director of Export-Import Bank of India (India Exim Bank).

The top position in the bank was vacant ever since David Rasquniha completed his three-year tenure as MD in May 2021.

Prior to her elevation as MD, Bangari was the Deputy Managing Director (DMD) of the bank, which is the national export credit agency. She joined Exim Bank in 1995.

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RBI approves re-appointment of Vaidyanathan as IDFC FIRST Bank chief

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The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has granted its approval for the re-appointment of V. Vaidyanathan as the Managing Director & Chief Executive Officer of IDFC FIRST Bank.

The Bank, in a regulatory filing, said Vaidyanathan’s re-appointment as MD & CEO is for three years, effective from December 19, 2021.

Further, the aforesaid re-appointment is subject to shareholders’ approval at the ensuing Annual General Meeting of the Bank scheduled to be held on September 15, 2021.

Vaidyanathan took over as the MD & CEO of IDFC FIRST Bank in December 2018 after Capital First and IDFC Bank merger.

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NPCI and Fiserv launch ‘nFiNi’ programme

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The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) and Nasdaq-listed Fiserv Inc. entered into an understanding that will enable the launch of plug-and-play RuPay credit card stack, ‘nFiNi’.

This BaaS (banking-as-a-service) programme provides a ready stack of services required for fintechs and banks to issue RuPay credit cards, NPCI said in a statement.

Fintechs will now be able to co-create new credit card programmes sponsored by banks on nFiNi. The programme will empower fintechs to swiftly and effectively launch new credit cards for retail as well as corporate customers, NPCI said.

“This will bring in significant efficiencies for banking and fintech institutions at various levels in terms of operations and customer management. The programme will further enable these institutions to expand their market base to new-to-credit customer,” the statement said.

NPCI is an umbrella organisation for operating retail payments and settlement systems in India. Fiserv Inc. is a global payments and financial technology company.

“Once on-boarded, the fintechs, which largely cater to the new-to-bank-and-credit customer, will be able to issue credit to this segment through the nFiNi platform,” NPCI said.

Powering RuPay cards

The nFiNi platform will power RuPay cards (including National Common Mobility Card) by offering access to needed services through the NPCI network combined with FirstVisionTM cloud-based open API integrations from Fiserv.

Nalin Bansal, Chief of Corporate Relationships & Fintechs, NPCI said, “We believe this will accelerate the penetration of RuPay cards in the country as well as lead to increased penetration of credit in the market in both urban and rural space.

“It is important to provide a robust tech stack of services to these institutions which will not only help them in seamless integration of products and services but also allow them to reach out to a greater number of customers more effectively.”

Rishi Chhabra, General Manager – India & Sri Lanka, Fiserv said the service-oriented architecture and open APIs of locally-hosted FirstVision facilitate rapid application development to enable new capabilities to be brought to market more quickly, while at the same time, facilitating regulatory compliance.

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Gigforce raises $3 million in pre-Series A from Endiya Partners, Unitus Ventures

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Gigforce, an on-demand staffing platform providing gig workers to various enterprises, raised $3 million in pre-Series A funding led by Endiya Partners. Existing investor Unitus Ventures and key angel investors also participated in the round.

Gigforce offers curated and pre-trained gig staff on a task, hourly, weekly, or monthly basis. It connects available gig workers to short gigs in their locality spanning from a day up to a few months. Gigforce also ensures gig workers get proper training, documentation, and payouts.

Commenting on the fundraise, Chirag Mittal, Co-founder and CEO, Gigforce, said, “The market is underserved today because of the lack of suitable technology to manage scale. India’s top five staffing companies together just about manage a workforce of one million. This is set to change with strong tailwinds, including the proliferation of inexpensive smartphones, ubiquitous internet access for blue and grey collar workers, maturing technology platforms, simplification of labor codes, and the huge growth trajectory India will witness in the next ten years.”

Fund usage

With this fundraise, the company plans to strengthen its team and technology and rapidly scale pan-India in the next few quarters. Within a short span of twelve months, Gigforce has achieved an annual run-rate (ARR) of ₹25 crore. The company is growing 2-fold on a quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) basis. With a huge demand surge since post-Covid recovery, Gigforce is set to grow at a rapid rate to cross ₹100 crore ARR soon.

“Gigforce, well beyond the product-market fit, is clearly emerging as a category leader in tech-driven staffing for gig workers. While there are players focusing on recruitment (discovery), fulfillment or adjacent services, there’s no market leader for on-demand, B2B, platform-driven staffing. With a potential to service up to 90 million jobs in India and contribute an incremental 1.25 per cent to India’s GDP over 8 to 10 years, there exists a huge opportunity waiting to be tapped,” said Abhishek Srivastava, Director, Endiya Partners.

Surya Mantha, Senior Partner, Unitus Ventures, said, “Gigforce is disrupting the over $10 billion staffing industry by architecting the “future of work”. Over the last few years, Indian businesses have experienced the need for and recognized the potential of gig work. The speed at which Gigforce has catered to the rapid and diverse demand created during the pandemic shows their future-ready approach and scalability. And this is only the beginning.”

Gigforce differentiates itself in the market on its data and tech-driven approach to allocate skilled gig workers to the right gigs, while also managing rewards, recognition, behavior, payouts, and benefits. The platform can manage the complete lifecycle of a gig, from sourcing, onboarding, e-KYC, rostering, tracking, and payouts, on the single platform.

Gigforce follows a vertical-specific strategy and currently focuses on the logistics sector. It already has more than 20 enterprise clients in this category across e-commerce, food, and grocery deliveries. It serves aggregators, marketplaces as well as direct-to-consumer brands. Delhivery, Flipkart, BigBasket, FreshToHome, and Grab are among its many clients.

Gigforce also focuses on specialised and fast-growing categories like electric vehicle (EV), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and operators. Zyngo, MoEVing, ETO Motors and Zypp Electric are a few of their clients in this category. The company aims to scale up its platform and business to manage the full lifecycle of over one million gigers by 2025 and is targeting a flow of over $1 billion on the platform.

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EU supervisors call for implementation of global banking rules, BFSI News, ET BFSI

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A group of bank supervisors from across the European Union called on Tuesday for the bloc to implement global banking rules agreed to prevent a repeat of the global financial crisis.

In an open letter to the European Commission, nearly two dozens central banks and regulators defended the Basel III rules, which have been the object of intense lobbying from a banking industry keen to reduce its capital requirements.

“We, as prudential supervisors and central banks in the EU, very much support a full, timely and consistent implementation of all aspects of this framework,” the signatories said.

“The pandemic shows that more resilient banks are better able to support the real economy, even during times of crisis.”

The signatories came out in defence of the “output floor”, which limits banks’ discretion in setting their own capital requirements and of a standardised approach to credit risk, while adding that EU-specific deviations should be minimised.

Signatories included institutions from all large EU countries with the exception of France. (Reporting By Francesco Canepa Editing by Balazs Koranyi)



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