It's A Yes For Fintech Start-Ups

The country’s fifth largest private sector bank, YES Bank, is among the first-of-its-kind ‘companies offering banking-as-a-service’, as it positions itself as a technology company in the business of banking. In its digital-first banking strategy, based on its Alliances, Relationships & Technology (ART) approach, the bank’s fintech accelerator – YES Fintech, launched in January this year, is letting it take its customer services to a new level while being the gateway for start-ups to the financial ecosystem. Entrepreneur spoke to the man himself - Rana Kapoor, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, YES Bank; and Chairman, YES Global Institute, for the low-down.

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Why there was a need in the first place to set up an accelerator program?

Since inception, YES Bank has been at the forefront of technology innovations. However, we realize that all innovation cannot come only from within the Bank. YES Bank has its strengths of professional entrepreneurship, core platforms and systems, regulatory understanding, and above all a large and robust customer base. The bank has therefore adopted the ART approach to digital banking to co-create innovations with fintech start-ups. To formalize and fasttrack the ART approach we have put together a cross-functional team to launch the YES Fintech accelerator.

Are you missing on benefitting from startups’ future growth by not taking equity into them?

Not really, for our first cohort in March this year, we had received 753 applications from more than 18 countries across all five continents. The reason for getting so many applications is that we don’t take equity in our portfolio start-ups unlike other accelerators that take around eight-10 per cent equity. There is no fee involved as well. We don’t seek equity or fee because our intent is not to make capital gains. It is to create a differentiation in how we serve our customers using unique solutions created by these start-ups and also to acquire new customers. This also provides startups an opportunity to take their product to our over 2.5 million customer base.

So what’s the value infusion into the start-ups?