What Will It Take For Mumbai To Become A Global Fintech Hub

MUMBAI HAS THE ADVANTAGE of close proximity to all elements that comprise a global fintech hub - financial institutions, regulators, fintech companies, talent pool, etc. Suniti Nanda, Chief Fintech Officer, Maharashtra speaks about the requirement of the right alignment between these stakeholders to make Mumbai an international fintech capital

- Abhishek Raval

Mumbai has a natural leverage as a city to become the world’s global fintech hub. It is the financial capital of India. The top financial institutions (FIs), regulatory bodies like SEBI, RBI and the talent pool are based in the city. These elements have to be aligned in the right manner to convert Mumbai into a global fintech hub.

Each of these elements and each entity inside these elements have a role to play. For example, there are many FIs and they are of many types. Each FI has developed a relationship with fintech in their own way. “They need to be more open. In the sense that they should open up their data sets when required by an innovative fintech, which has developed a solution, which will fail to prove its mettle until its is tested over a particular dataset. Subsequently, the solution can be scaled up. The faster this cycle becomes, the faster the innovation cycle to become the best. Otherwise, by the time, the fintech tests the solution, pitches to an investor, it is already a year and the idea becomes old and a few other firms have already developed similar solutions,” informs Suniti Nanda, Chief Fintech Officer, Maharashtra. A few organisations are doing it in an open way and there are certain FIs which are hesitant but still doing it in a closed manner and sharing their APIs with the fintechs. Open APIs is not a mandate but the FIs are opening up in their own ways.