Vantage Point by EMVC - Jun 7 2024
Updates to keep up with the latest in fintech from our vantage point.
Welcome back,
This week RBI announced a framework for fintech Self-Regulatory Organizations. India grew its GDP by 8.2% in FY 2024. Zurich Insurance is acquiring a 70% stake in Kotak General Insurance. Consumer credit platform Fibe raised $90mm. There is also an insightful weekend read from the New York Times.
From the team at Emphasis Ventures.
If you’re a fintech startup or thinking about starting up, we’d like to meet you. At Emphasis Ventures, we’ve worked with founders of Slice, M2P, Khatabook, Bureau and many others from their early days.
India grew its Gross Domestic Product at 7.8% over the last quarter bringing its overall economic growth to 8.2% for the 2023-24 financial year. The growth rate surpassed most economic forecasts and was driven by the recent recovery in government spending and the continued growth in private expenditure. In a related development, the Monetary Policy Committee kept the key interest rate (repo rate) unchanged at 6.5% and made an upward revision to its annual GDP growth forecast for FY2025 to 7.2%.
Late last week, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced its final framework for the formation of fintech Self Regulatory Organizations. Notable among guidelines was its objective to 'provide early-stage entities with necessary handholding, guiding, and keeping them abreast with the dynamic nature of financial technology and the regulatory environment'. The RBI also emphasized that the SRO will have an important role in "establishing and enforcing regulatory standards, promoting ethical conduct, ensuring market integrity, resolving disputes, and fostering transparency and accountability among its members."
Zurich Insurance received RBIs approval to acquire 70% stake in Kotak General Insurance for $670mm. This will likely be the largest investment by a global strategic insurer in an Indian general insurance company. It will also mark the entry of Zurich in the Indian insurance market which is projected to be the sixth largest globally at $222Bn by 2026.
Consumer credit platform Fibe raised $90mm led by TR Capital, TPG Rise Fund, Norwest Venture Partners and others. The company offers short-duration personal loans, co-branded credit cards and loans related to healthcare and education. It claims to have disbursed 6mm+ loans worth $2.4Bn since inception.
Weekend read by The New York Times: Wall Street Lands on India, Looking for Profits It Can’t Find in China. " ...North American pension managers, sovereign wealth funds from the Persian Gulf and Singapore, Japanese banks and private equity firms are clamoring for a piece of India’s growth... India’s economic growth rate, which hovered around 7 percent for the past couple of years, has compared favorably with a world average of 3.2 percent. Growth in the most recent quarter was even higher than economists expected, giving the past fiscal year an official rate of 8.2 percent."
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