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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✨ See you at the Mumbai Fintech Happy Hour on 28th Aug

🚀 Who? founders, investors, senior executives, product managers and you
📆 When? Wed, 28th Aug, 2024, 6pm to 9pm
📍 Where? BKC, Mumbai

Big thanks to our sponsors and supporters: AWS, Lex Consult, CockroachDB and MarsShot VC.

We're excited to bring the entire community together very soon.

🧐🏆 Posts of the Week

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

📈 Chart of the Week

India's PE ratio soars to 21x, outpacing emerging markets at 10x and global markets at 14.5x. Source: Manish Singh.

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. Juspay expanded its payment orchestration platform to companies in Southeast Asia and Middle East.
2. PhonePe and Google Pay accounted for an 85%+ share of India's 14.4B UPI transactions in July 2024.
3. Axis Bank now has the largest number of offline POS terminals in circulation.
4. SEBI categorised INR 76,293cr (+4% YoY, $9.1bn) in dues as Difficult to Recover, majority of which are cases pending before court-appointed committees.
5. Public companies in India saw net profits shrink by 3.1% in Q1 FY25 (ended Jun, 2024), compared to +31% QoQ in the previous quarter.
6. Mobikwik reported INR 875cr ($104M) in revenue and INR 14cr ($1.7M) in profit for the year ended Mar, 2024.

🚀 Product Launches

1. Zerodha launched Privacy Mode to hide portfolio values in the dashboard.
2. PaisaBazaar launched secured loan products on its marketplace.
3. PayU partnered with Amazon Pay Later to launch a BNPL option to users at checkout.
4. BharatPe launched two-wheeler loans and loans against mutual funds for its merchant partners.
5. HDFC Securities launched Brokerage-as-a-Service for any platform to launch a HDFC-powered stock trading feature.
6. PhonePe enabled credit line on UPI for its users.
7. CloudBankIn launched a feature for banks to report loan sanctions daily to credit bureaus.
8. Juspay launched HyperCredit, a credit orchestration engine.

📝 Regulatory Updates

1. RBI (central bank): Invited applications for Self Regulatory Organisations.
2. SEBI (securities): Released guidelines allowing alternate investment funds of Category 1 and 2 to borrow capital to meet with drawdown shortfalls.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. DMI Finance, a digital lending company, raised $334M.
2. Axio, a digital lending startup, raised $20M.
3. Even, a healthcare and insurance startup, raised $20M.
4. InvestorAI, an equity investment platform, raised $10M.
5. TrnsBank, a transaction banking startup, raised $4M.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. DBS Bank in Singapore partnered with Enterprise Singapore and Singapore Fintech Association to launch a pilot for programmable grant disbursements.
2. DBS Bank launched DBS Business Advance+ Card (BAC+), a multi currency commercial debit card.
3. SentBe, a South Korean remittances startup, launched cross border remittances and transfers for South Korean small businesses.
4. Bank of Thailand, Thailand's central bank, announced a joint initiative with eight Thai banks to create financial products for smaller companies to become more sustainable.
5. Igloo, a Southeast Asian insurance startup, partnered with TrueMoney, a Thai e-payment provider, to launch embedded health insurance products for Thai users.
6. PayMongo, a Philippine payments company, launched PayMongo Wallet, a digital wallet offering for its SMB users in the country.
7. OCBC Bank in Singapore partnered with the country's police to freeze and seize 300 scam accounts and over SGD 1.8M.
8. Thai and regional business groups including SeaMoney, KakaoBank, WeBank and others have applied to operate the first digital banks in Thailand.
9. MSIG Insurance in Singapore partnered with Embed Global to launch insurance purchasing for small businesses on WhatsApp.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Finture, an Indonesian consumer finance startup, raised $30M.
2. Efficient Capital Labs, a Singaporean revenue based finance startup, raised $11M.
3. PostEx, a Pakistani revenue based finance startup, raised $7.3M.
4. FinKnight, a Malaysian financial advisory for small business startup, raised an undisclosed amount.

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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.

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