Hi fintech friends,

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).

Don’t forget to share with fellow fintech friends!

🦉🏆 Tweets of the Week

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. Udaan Capital, the fintech arm of B2B commerce platform Udaan, claimed to have disbursed INR 4,000+crs ($487mm) in loans to 2,500+ small businesses over the past 24 months.
2. Vayana, a B2B supply chain finance startup, launched operations in Indonesia.
3. RBI informed that as part of the Digital Lending Guidelines, lenders need to convey details of the collections agencies before the agencies contact the borrower.
4. HDFC Bank is testing digital payments execution in offline mode.
5. The Indian government is reportedly working on framework for regulated digital credit.
6. PB Fintech, the listed parent company of Policybazaar (insurance marketplace) and Paisabazaar (credit marketplace) reported $36.3mm (INR 298cr) in revenue for the quarter ended 31st Dec, 2022.

🚀 Product Launches

1. Yubi, a wholesale credit marketplace, launched YubiBERT, an open source, fintech focused large language model, based on Google's BERT.
2. Velocity, a revenue based finance startup, launched a ChatGPT-powered AI assistant.
3. Paytm launched UPI lite feature to make UPI payments offline.

📝 Regulatory Updates

• RBI (central bank): Released FAQ's on its recent Digital Lending guidelines. Released the current status of applicants for Payment Aggregator license. Cancelled the NBFC license of Kudos Finance and Credit Gate.

💰 Financing Announcement

1. InsuranceDekho, an insurance product aggregator, raised $150mm.
2. PhonePe, Walmart-owned payments company, raised $100mm.
3. Stable Money, a wealth management and education startup, raised $4.5mm.
4. Loan Kuber, a mortgage finance startup, raised $2mm.
5. Lorien Finance, an education financing startup, raised $1.8mm.

ACQUISITIONS

1. Kotak Mahindra Bank acquired Sonata, micro finance company, for INR 537cr ($66mm).
2. Roadzen, an Insurance as a SaaS startup, was acquired by Vahanna, a SPAC, and is expected to list on the NASDAQ at a valuation of $965mm.
3. InCred acquired Rain, a earned wage access startup.

1-min Anonymous Feedback: Your feedback helps me improve this newsletter. Click UPVOTE 👍🏽 or DOWNVOTE 👎🏽

🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. PPRO, a global payment switch operator, launched in South Korea.
2. DBS Bank applied for a crypto licence in Hong Kong.
3. Brankas, a Singaporean fintech infrastructure startup, partnered with Arab Financial Services (AFS), a digital payment solutions provider, to launch in MENA and Africa.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Aspire, a Singapore and Indonesia-based small business banking startup, raised $100mm.
2. AdalFi, a Pakistani lending startup, raised $7.5mm.
3. Aura Network, a Vietnamese NFT platform, raised $4mm.
4. GIMO, a Vietnamese earned wage access startup, raised $5.1mm.

🌏 International

Please find our global coverage and consider subscribing.

• US and Global, written by Nik Milanovic.
• Europe and UK, written by Michael Jenkins.
• Latin America, written by Christine Chang.
• Africa, written by Emeka Ajene.
• China written by Ning Ye.
• Policy written by Mohammad Hamdy.

And of course, our podcast series - Beyond Two Percent and Hey Fintech Friends.

If you’ve made it this far - thanks! As always, you can always reach me at osborne@thisweekinfintech.com. I’d genuinely appreciate any and all feedback. If you liked what you read, please consider sharing or subscribing.

1-min Anonymous Feedback: Your feedback helps me improve this newsletter. Click UPVOTE 👍🏽 or DOWNVOTE 👎🏽

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn.