Yes Bank, a progressive Indian bank has partnered with leading names in the country’s startup ecosystem to launch a fintech and business accelerator. The accelerator program, Yes Fintech is powered by T-Hub startup engine, Anthill Ventures, and LetsTalkPayments.
The 15-week program is distributed among two facilities, one in Mumbai and another in Hyderabad. Designed for banking and fintech startups, the key focus areas of the program include Payments, Lending, Governance, Trade Finance, Capital Markets, Customer Value Added Services, Enterprise Banking Software, Forex and Treasury and Governance, Risk and Compliance.
The selected teams for Yes Fintech accelerator program will get an opportunity to create their product and service offering by utilizing the banking partner’s digital infrastructure. The startups will be offered support through API Banking and BIN partnership.
The country’s promising fintech startups, working on a variety of blockchain and other conventional platforms can test their solutions within the bank’s user group involving its customers. Yes Bank currently offers its services to over 5000 corporates, 10,000 plus SMEs, and 2 million retail customers.
Yes Bank is one of the leading institutions within the Indian banking community to adopt blockchain technology. The institution has recently implemented a multi-nodal blockchain transaction. The distributed ledger based solution is used to digitize vendor financing for one of the clients — Bajaj Electricals.
The bank’s position as one of the first movers in the country’s financial ecosystem makes it an ideal candidate to run the fintech accelerator program. The program will provide participating startups with mentorship, business model guidance, customized scale up plan and access to a global network of investors, venture capitalists, and partner organizations.
The program doesn’t take any upfront equity commitment from the teams, giving them the flexibility to pursue their idea as deemed fit under specialist guidance.
The Indian government is pushing for cashless systems to reduce the usage of currency notes. It has taken precedence in the recent days following the recent demonetization exercise that left the country cash-starved due to a sharp drop in the availability of currency notes for day-to-day transactions. The new-age startups graduating out of the Yes Fintech accelerator are expected to carve a niche for themselves in the ecosystem soon.
Ref: The Hindu | Image: Yes Fintech
