Hi fintech friends, I'm Osborne, Principal at EMVC!

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).

✨ Join us in Bangkok on 24th April, 2024

We're joining our friends at Saison Capital and Citi Ventures to host a community mixer in April along the sidelines of Money20/20 Asia.

The mixer will be hosted on a cruise on the Chao Phraya river. Join us in watching the sunset over the river, with the best views on the cruise.

Details below:
📆 Wed, 24th April, 2024
🕕 07:00pm to 09:30pm (boarding starts at 06:30pm)
📍 Chao Phraya, Bangkok.

🧐🏆 Posts of the Week

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

📈 Chart of the Week

Source: Care Ratings

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. Investment into fintech startups in India declined 66% YoY, closing FY24 (ended Mar, 2024) at $1.5bn raised by startups. Globally, fintech startups raised $7.3bn in Q1 2024, which was the lowest raised by the sector since early 2017.
2. HDFC Bank reported 55.4% YoY and 1.6% QoQ growth in gross loans for the quarter ended 31st March, 2024. Deposits grew 26.4% YoY and 7.5% QoQ.
3. Value of loans sanctioned by NBFC's for the quarter ended Dec, 2023 declined by 4.2% QoQ and 5.8% YoY to INR 4.47tn ($54bn). Consumption loans saw YoY growth but 2% QoQ decline.
4. In the April 2024, MPC meeting, the RBI deputy governor said "unbridled credit growth and any laxity in credit discipline or underwriting standards can be deleterious to the health of the financial entity concerned and if widespread, could give rise to the systemic concerns.
5. Niyogin Fintech, a small business financing startup, reported gross transaction value of INR 11,034 ($1.36bn) in Q4 FY24 (ended Mar, 2024), showing a growth of 90% YoY.
6. Trust Fintech, a core banking system company, listed on the NSE SME platform at a 42% premium to issue priceand was 100x oversubscribed.
7. Navi, Sachin Bansal's financial services company, is reportedly raising $200-300mm at a $2bn valuation.
8. WeRize, a financial product distribution startup, reported INR 68cr in annual revenue in FY23 (ended Mar, 2023), +3.5x YoY.
9. NPCI, India's retail payments body, introduced three new features for credit on UPI.
10. Probo, an events based trading platform, reported INR 86.4cr ($10.4mm) in revenue in FY23 (ended Mar, 2023), +32.5x YoY growth.
11. Bijnis, a small business financial and account SaaS startup, reported INR 52cr ($6.24mm) in revenue in FY23 (ended Mar, 2023), +2x YoY growth.

🚀 Product Launches

1. J&K Bank partnered with Paymart to launch virtual ATM facilities.
2. Zaggle partnered with Hyperface to launch co-branded card products.
3. PhonePe partnered with Star Health Insurance to launch health insurance products on PhonePe with flexible payment options.
4. CAMS launched CAMS Repository (CAMSREP) to issue insurance policies on IRDAI's new Bima Sugam platform.
5. PhonePe partnered with Mashreq Bank in UAE to launch UPI payment acceptance on NeoPay POS terminals.

📝 Regulatory Update

1. RBI (central bank): Celebrated 90 years of history. Notified allowing prepaid instruments to be accessed using UPI from third party apps. Is considering setting up a Digital India Trust Agency (DIGITA) to check illegal lending apps.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Electronica Finance, a small business financing startup, raised $48mm.
2. Infinity Fincorp, a small business financing company, raised $26mm.
3. Namdev Finvest, a financial inclusion and lending company, raised $20mm.
4. Nivara Home Finance, a housing finance company, raised $10mm.
5. M2P Fintech*, a banking and payments SaaS company, raised $4mm in debt.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. Crypto.com is reportedly launching in South Korea by April-end, two years after its acquisition of Ok-Bit, a local crypto exchange.
2. Igloo, an Indonesian insurance startup, partnered with Tokopedia to launch insurance products for Tokopedia's users and merchants.
3. UnaFinancial, a Southeast Asian lending company, launched UnaCash, a BNPL product in Philippines.
4. MAS, Singapore's central bank, launched ‘Collaborative Sharing of Money Laundering /TF Information and Cases’ (COSMIC), a centralised platform to share customer information among financial institutions.
5. BillEase, a Philippine BNPL startup, reported $57mm in revenue in CY 2023, growing 2x YoY.
6. MoneyHero, an Asian financial services company, partnered with InsureMO to launch a digital insurance product aggregation platform for Southeast Asia.
7. Salmon Group, a Philippine challenger bank, partnered with AllBank to launch a QR Ph-enabled payment product.
8. Grab will be phasing out its GrabPay Card from 1st June, 2024.
9. Rakuten Group will be merging its fintech businesses in Japan into one group.
10. Visa launched Subscription Manager, a new recurring payments product for banks and financial institutions to offer Visa cardholders an easy way to track all their subscriptions.
11. Bank for International Settlements (BIS) partnered with 7 central banks, including France, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, England and New York to launch Project Agora for tokenised cross border payments.
12. BRImo, the digital banking app by Bank BRI of Indonesia, has 31.6mm users as of Dec, 2023, growing from 2.9mm when it launched in 2019.
13. GXS Bank, a Singaporean retail bank which is a JV of Singtel and Grab, reportedly issued 100K loans in 2023.
14. OJK, Indonesia's financial services authority, notified all regulated entities to participate in the regulatory sandbox if they plan to introduce crypto products and services.
15. BitKub, Thailand's biggest crypto exchange, is planning an IPO in 2025.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. SingleInterface, a Singaporean revenue-generation SaaS startup for small businesses, raised $30mm.

ACQUISITIONS:

1. FlexM, a Singaporean payments company, was acquired by 6G Digital, Swedish firm, for $12.5mm.

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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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