ICICI Securities has funded Fin-tech start-ups at NS Raghavan Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) at IIM Bangalore.

India is young and growing given the strong demographic dividend where more than half of the population is under 25 years and the economy is rising rapidly due to a continual focus on digitalization, policy reforms, technological innovation and digital transformation.  While these advances have made India more competitive in the global landscape the larger challenge is on creation of employment opportunities and jobs for the young population.

India’s start-up ecosystem is looking at the threshold of the next wave of growth by leveraging new technological innovations. According to the NASSCOM report (India Tech Startup Ecosystem – Leading Tech in the 20s), India continues to reinforce its position as the third largest start-up ecosystem across the world, taking the total number of tech start-ups to over 9,000 in the last five years. About ten percent of these start-ups have been Fintech start-ups.

Start-ups have also created more than 60,000 direct jobs and about 1.8 lakh indirect employment during 2019. The growth in the financial intermediation using technology and digital inventions, Fintech has the potential to increase economic growth through greater market participation, new and improved products and services, lowering costs, improving productivity and better experience; thereby it has the potential to usher more competition, innovation and job creation in our economy.

With the immense potential of the Fintech space to be a key element in the creation of jobs and economic growth ICICI Securities has partnered with N S Raghavan Centre of Entrepreneurial Learning (NSRCEL) of the Indian Institute of Management Bangalore (IIMB) which is one of the oldest incubator cells in the country. The programme will involve a structured end-to-end approach, broadly entailing reaching out to individuals having ideas, screening of applicants, mentoring by academicians and industry experts, and incubating these ventures. IIMB has some of the brightest minds in the country and we are confident that together we will bring to market several winning ideas.

For the first time, we are partnering with a leading institution to develop ventures catering to a particular domain – finance. We are excited to onboard 25 ventures who will compete for our support over the next few months. Since many of these ventures are already up and running in their businesses, we have innovated our model of support to include several things that would help these ventures scale and grow. Depending on the quality of their progress and the milestones achieved, we plan to focus finally on 10 ventures who will graduate at the end. Given the strength of our faculty and students in this domain, we expect to integrate this program closely with the area.