Hi fintech friends, I'm Osborne, investor in early stage startups.

Please enjoy all the news and updates from the past week in today’s edition. If you feel TWIF brings you value, please share it with your friends (and maybe suggest they subscribe too).

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🧐🏆 Posts of the Week

(Note: Neither TWIF nor I endorse any views in the tweets highlighted above.)

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. Jupiter, a neobanking startup, is reportedly in talks to buy a minority stake in SBM Bank India.
2. Zerodha reported INR 8,370cr in revenue and INR 4,700cr in profit in FY24. The founders estimate that the introduction of the new "True to Label" regulation will impact Zerodha's revenue by 10% and the index derivatives regulations could impact the revenues by 30-50%.
3. Credit card defaults grew from 1.7% in Jan, 2024 to 1.8% in Jun, 2024.
4. Mobikwik received SEBI approval to raise INR 700cr ($84M) via public issue.
5. Assets under Management at Asset Reconstruction Companies (ARC's) dropped 2% QoQ to INR 1.37tn ($16Bn) in Q2 2024.
6. Digital lending startups in India disbursed 26.4M loans totalling INR 37,676cr ($4.5Bn) in Q1 FY25 (ended June, 2024).
7. Stenn, a UK-based small business invoice financing platform, launched Bharat Exporters Trade Association (BETA) Hub for Indian expeorters.
8. Open, a small business neobanking startup, reported INR 25cr ($3M in revenue in FY24 (ended Mar, 2024).
9. ICICI Bank reported gross credit losses of 4.4% in FY24 in its credit card portfolio.
10. Spends and loan growth in credit card segment dropped to 13% YoY in Aug, 2024 compared to 19% YoY in Jul, 2024.
11. Central Depository Services India Limited (CDSL) announced introducing a uniform tariff of INR 3.5 per debit transaction effective from 1st Oct, 2024. The same is introduced to comply with SEBI's True to Label regulation.
12. Spandana Sphoorty Financial, a micro finance firm. sold stressed loans of INR 304.4cr ($36.4M) for INR 16.7cr ($2M).

🚀 Product Launches

1. BharatPe, a payments company, launched food ordering and delivery via integration with Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC).
2. Bandhan Life Insurance began operations and launched new life insurance products.

📝 Regulatory Updates

1. SEBI (securities): Reduced the timeline to list debt securities from six days to three days from public issue. Released a report showing between FY22 and FY24, 93% retail traders in F&O have lost money.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Care.fi, a health payments and financing startup, raised $1M in debt.

ACQUISITION:

1. PayMate, a B2B payments platform, signed a term sheet to acquire DigiAsia Bios, an Indonesian fintech infra startup, for $400M.
2. Naspers acquired a 10% stake in Vastu Housing Finance for $100M.
3. Zaggle, a prepaid payments platform, acquired a 26% stake in Mobileware Technologies, a payments infra company, for $1.8M.
4. IDFC Ltd. will merge with IDFC First Bank effective 1st Oct, 2024.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. The delinquency rate of South Korean banks' won-denominated loans stood at 0.47% in July, 2024, rising from 0.42% in June, 2024.
2. Sleek, a Singaporean professional services startup, announced it achieved profitability in Q2 2024.
3. PayMongo in Philippines partnered with Brankas to add new payment options to its payment platform.
4. MoneyHero, a Singaporean financial services firm, reported $21M in revenue in Q2 2024 (+24% YoY).
5. PayPal launched PayPal Complete Payments in China, a solution to streamline cross border payment and receivables processes for businesses.
6. Commonwealth Bank of Australia divested 5% of its stake in Vietnam International Commercial Joint Venture Bank (VIB).
7. MAS, Singapore's central bank, established Cyber and Technology Resilience Experts (CTREX) Panel to advise MAS on emerging tech risks and threats.
8. GoPay launched Dira, an AI voice assistant.
9. Digital fraud attacks increased 17% YoY in financial services sector in 2023, as per a report by LexisNexis.
10. Retail banks in Singapore are progressively implementing Singpass Face Verification (SFV) for user authentication.
11. AliPay+ partnered with Himalayan Bank in Nepal to launch payment acceptance in the country.
12. HKMA, Hong Kong's central bank, launched the second phase of the Hong Kong dollar pilot study.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. BlackPanda, a Singaporean cybersecurity and insurance startup, raised $6.7M.
2. QistBazaar, a Pakistani BNPL startup, raised $3.2M.
3. Sleek, a Singaporean professional services startup, raised $5M in debt.
4. Qupital, a Southeast Asian supply chain finance startup, raised an undisclosed amount in debt.

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