Fintech valley launches startup challenge

The Andhra Government has launched ‘Fintech startup challenge’ in partnership with some leading banking and financial institutions. This challenge seeks solutions for five key problems across capital markets, insurance and banking sectors launched with key partners:

1. Real-time social profiling of new and existing customers (launched in partnership with Angel Broking)
2. Fraudulent behaviour detection in partnership (with Bharti AXA)
3. IOT solutions to forecast, detect and monitor risks in real-time and make calculated interventions in logistics, inventory management and property (with ICICI Lombard)
4. Innovative solutions around Payments and Remittances (with ICICI Bank)
5. Automated signature and photo verification (with HDFC Life)

The challenge is part of Chandrababu Naidu’s quest to power Visakapatnam into a national and global hub for Fintech. We had reported earlier on how the region, with the 30,000 sq ft Millenium towers, an IT park at Kappulaguda, and the promise of various discounts and subsidies, plans to set itself up as the Fintech Valley. There are plans to also set up blockchain centres of excellence.
It appears that the journey is well underway with several Fintech startups like PayTM, Blocktrust, Knolskape, Transaction Analyst, GMS and ValueLabs having already commenced operations in Vizag.
The government is planning to host a ‘Spring conference’ on May 9–10, 2017 targeted at bringing the financial community together to talk about Fintech and related aspects like blockchain, cyber security and A.I. The startups with the best solution to the above problems get to showcase it to the Indian financial industry leaders at this conference. They also stand to win INR 5 lakh prize money (for each solution) but upto a maximum of 15 lakhs in total.
While the prize money is not huge, it appears that the Andhra government is looking for early stage innovators and entrepreneurs and promises the winners 6 months of free office space in the Fintech tower in Vizag as well as wild card entry to future challenges.
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