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

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🇮🇳 India

📰 Market Updates

1. Perfios grew revenue from operations by 37% YoY to INR 558cr ($66M) in FY24.
2. Zoho's Finance Suite grew revenue by 50% YoY after it introduced invoice management and GST integration its accounting software Zoho Books.
3. Varthana, an education financing startup, raised $15M in debt.
4. Annapurna micro finance raised $109M in debt facilities.
5. Aye Finance, a small business lending startup, received board approval to list its shares in the public markets to raise INR 1,450cr ($171M).
6. Dezerv, a wealth management startup, crossed INR 10,000cr ($1.2bn) in AUM.
7. Gross non-performing assets (GNPAs) of public sector banks (PSBs) declined to a decade low of 3.12% at the end of Sep 2024 from a peak of 15% in March 2018.
8. India's Ministry of Finance asked public sector banks (PSBs) to conduct annual hackathons in association with the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), universities and science institutions to strengthen cybersecurity.
9. Bajaj Finance released its 5 year strategy to improve its technology and offering with AI first approach.
10. Bajaj Finance shut down its payment gateway business after spending $100M on the vertical.
11. Warburg Pincus invested INR 1,200cr ($141M) in Shriram Housing Finance, which it acquired for INR 4,630cr ($546M).
12. ToneTag, a sound based payments startup, grew revenues by 112% YoY to INR 48cr ($5.6M) and profit of INR 21cr ($2.5M).
13. Scripbox, a wealth distribution startup, grew revenues by 44% YoY to INR 84cr ($10M).
14. Mobikwik's public offering was oversubscribed by 120x.
15. Groww grew to 13M active traders, accounting for 26.4% market share.
16. Cashe, a personal finance startup, grew revenue by 16% YoY to INR 651 cr ($77M) in FY24.

🚀 Product Launches

1. M2P partnered with HDFC Bank to launch Recon360, a debt reconciliation platform.
2. Jupiter partnered with Volt Money to launch loans against financial securities.
3. Cafe.Fi, a healthcare financing startup, launched RevNow, a revenue cycle management platform for hospitals to manage claims revenue.

📝 Regulatory Updates

1. RBI (central bank): Mr. Shaktikanta Das concluded his six-year term as India's central bank governor. Mr. Sanjay Malhotra, Secretary of the Department of Revenue, in the Ministry of Finance, succeeded Mr. Das as Governor of the central bank.
2. SEBI (securities): Proposed leveraging DigiLocker, a government-backed digital document storage platform, to streamline processes and minimize unclaimed assets in the securities market. Plans to allow retail investors access to algo-based trading.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. Snapmint, a BNPL startup, raised $18M.
2. Infinity, a business banking startup, raised $1.9M.
3. Navanc, a property credit scoring startup, raised $1M.

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🌏 Asia

📰 Market Updates

1. JCB partnered with AEON Credit Service Indonesia, and Biznet to launched the AEON Biznet Precious Card in Indonesia.
2. The State Bank of Pakistan, Pakistan's central bank, launched InvestPak, a retail platform to invest in GSecs.
3. AwanTunai, a small business finance startup, raised $60M in debt.
4. Industrial lending in South Korea increased by $12bn in Q3 2024.
5. CIMB Bank Philippines cancelled its digital banking license from the BSP, Philippines' central bank, opting instead to enhance its digital banking capabilities using its existing commercial banking license.
6. PayerMax, a Singaporean cross border payments company, partnered with Standard Chartered to launch cross-border payment solutions for the banks global merchants.
7. IDA, a Hong Kong-based fintech startup, partnered with The Bank of East Asia to explore the use of a 1:1 HKD-pegged stablecoin.
8. Kasikornbank and SCBX in Thailand partnered with GU Group in Japan to launch stablecoin-based remittance services to target migrant worker payments between Thailand and other countries like Japan.
9. Revolut Singapore partnered with 1Global to launch eSIM with global data plans.
10. Julo, an Indonesian personal loan startup, launched 10-min instant disbursement credit product.
11. OCBC and CIMB submitted non-binding offers to acquire a stake in Bank Pan Indonesia (Panin Bank).
12. Cake Digital Bank, Vietnam's first digital-only bank, achieved profitability in just 3.5 years since launch and grew revenue per user by 3x YoY to $12.
13. The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) and the National Bank of Cambodia (NBC) implemented cross-border QR payment between the two countries.
14. Swift, the global financial messaging service provider, partnered with Google Cloud to integrate anti-fraud technologies in its messaging systems.
15. Airwallex, a cross border payments startup, grew revenues by 83% YoY and transaction value by 49% and surpassed $100bn in annualised transaction value and $500M in annualised revenue.
16. M-DAQ Global received a Capital Markets Services (CMS) licence by the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS).
17. Triple-A, a Singaporean crypto payments startup, integrated Coinbase as a payment option for merchants to accept crypto assets in Coinbase as payment instruments.
18. Ant International joined Swift's "Network Interoperability Reference Implementation" programme, a pre-pilot initiative designed to improve cross-border payment experiences.
19. Visa and FPT Corporation, a Vietnamese technology firm, signed a MOU to launch payment acceptance within the government sector.

💰 Financing Announcements

1. CarDekho SEA, the SEA subsidiary of Indian CarDekho Group, raised $60M.
2. KAST, a stablecoin-based cross border payments startup, raised $10M.
3. Razorpay launched "Buyer Protection" which provides a comprehensive fulfillment guarantee program.

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