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).

🧐🏆 Posts of the Week

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

🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. Bankruptcy resolutions rose to 73% in FY24 (ended Mar, 2024) from 64% in FY23. Resolution in this case is the lenders accepting 73% loss of the outstanding loan value of cases registered with the National Company Law Tribunal.
2. HDFC Bank stated that it spends 6-7% of its total expenses on technology every year - 50% of that on people and the rest on hardware and software.
3. Infibeam Avenues reported operating revenue of INR 727cr ($87mm) and INR 49cr ($5.9mm) net profit in the quarter ended Mar, 2024.
4. PB Fintech, the parent company of Policybazaar, reported consolidated revenue of INR 1090cr ($131mm) and net profit of INR 60cr ($7.2mm) for the quarter ended Mar, 2024.
5. GoDigit completed its IPO process to raise $314mm (mix of fresh issue and offer for sale), which was 6.6x oversubscribed.
6. Zomato surrendered its payment aggregator license.
7. India's Finance Intelligence Unit (FIU) under the Ministry of Finance, approved the applications of Binance and Kucoin to register them as Virtual Asset Service Providers to trade in India.
8. RBI's Deputy Governor asked NBFC's to improve the governance and assurance functions to avert potential risks and vulnerabilities.

🚀 Product Launches

1. AngelOne, a stock broking company, launched Fin One, a financial literacy platform.
2. LemFi, a Canadian cross border payments startup, launched inward remittance to India for immigrants.
3. PhonePe partnered with LankaPay to launch UPI acceptance in Sri Lanka.
4. Pine Labs partnered with Emirates NBD in MENA to launch POS payment acceptance in the region.
5. Skydo, a cross border payments startup, launched Singapore payment method acceptance for its Indian users.

📝 Regulatory Update

• SEBI (securities): Approved a three-year extension for LIC to reduce the government's shareholding in the insurer, to grow the public shareholding to 10%.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. GoDigit, a general insurance company, raised $141mm in pre-IPO funding.
2. Fusion Microfinance, an MFI, raised $25mm.
3. Rupeek, a gold-backed finance startup, raised $6mm.
4. OTPLess, an authentication and access management startup, raised $3.5mm.
5. BimaPay, an unsecured loan distribution unit of Hindcon Mercantile Ltd., raised $2mm.
6. Propelld, an education finance company, raised $25mm in debt.

ACQUISITION

1. Niyogin Fintech acquired SuperScan, an AI powered document imaging startup.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. Grab's digibank platforms across Singapore and Malaysia reported $479mm in user deposits in the quarter ended Mar, 2024, growing 1,235% YoY and 28% QoQ.
2. Thailand's regulator called for comments on the capital requirements of companies operating crypto derivatives and exchanges.
3. Singlife launched an insurance product for dementia and mental health issues.
4. Gan Kim Yong will be the new chairman of Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) Board of Directors from 15th May, 2024. He was the deputy chairman of MAS and will succeed Lawrence Wong, Singapore's soon to be ex-finance minister.
5. XREX, a cross border payments company, received MAS approval to operate as a crypto payments company.
6. Mastercard partnered with Standard Chartered to pilot a tokenised deposit and tokenised carbon credits flow in Hong Kong.
7. Deutsche Bank joined MAS's Project Guardian initiative to explore asset tokentisation applications.
8. Wise launched its service in Philippines with an account and a prepaid card.
9. Atome, a BNPL company, partnered with Taobao Singapore to launch BNPL payment option for its users in Singapore.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Osome, a Singaporean digital accounting startup, raised $17mm.
2. Chainstack, a web3 infrastructure startup, raised $6mm.
3. Zeta Markets, a Solana exchange startup, raised $5mm.

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