The India Fintech Market Map: 72 Startups Working Across Lending, Payments, Insurance, & Banking

Aggressive recent government initiatives in India, including bringing more people into a formal ID system (Aadhaar) and increased funding and tax relief for startups, have made starting a business in India much more attractive. Foreign investors have rushed to capitalize as the country’s GDP continues to grow at a steady clip.

Looking at Indian fintech specifically, funding to private companies in the sector boomed from about $175M in 2014 to a high of $2B in 2015 (buoyed by mega-rounds to Paytm) and then slid to $530M in 2016. Still, 2016’s total funding was more than 200% higher than total funding in 2014. A host of global corporations and their venture arms have entered the fray, eager to reach India’s mostly unbanked population and profit from the country’s tech-friendly regulatory environment.

However, issues persist. Most transactions — including sales of large-ticket items like cars or homes — still settle in cash. Income inequality in India has made it challenging for businesses to target significant segments of the population, as many citizens are not yet part of the formal banking system. In addition, the large number of micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) have made payments centralization efforts challenging, as evidenced by the overwhelming use of cash to settle transactions.

We used the CB Insights database to build a market map of 72 India-based private fintech companies and organized them into three categories and nine subcategories based on each company’s primary product, line of business, and/or use case. We also included 6 prominent corporate and government initiatives in the country that have been integral to building and supporting this emerging ecosystem.

Please note, while many companies on our map may operate across multiple categories, we placed them according to their primary use case.

Please click on the map to enlarge. The map is not meant to be exhaustive of companies in the space.

Category Definitions

Merchant Services

• Payments: Companies in this category help merchants (often MSMEs) process payments via electronic payments, mobile payment platforms, credit card processing kiosks, point-of-sale systems, and other methods. With the government’s support in creating the Unified Payments Interface and India Stack developer tools, this category has seen a fundamental shift toward mobile payments. Ezetap, which offers an end-to-end payment system that includes mobile point-of-sale kiosks, raised $24M in a 2015 Series C from investors including Social Capital and Helion Venture Partners.

• Lending & Banking: Companies in this category offer merchants banking solutions, financial products, and/or loans. Several companies in this sub-sector focus on supply chain loans for MSMEs to enable financial inclusion, while other companies build products exclusively for financial services clients. LendingKart provides working capital financing solutions to MSMEs and raised a $32M Series B in Q2’16.

• Insurance: Companies in this category provide merchants with business insurance solutions. SecureNow offers group health, workers’ compensation, fire insurance, and officers liability insurance, among other products, and has received $3M in early funding.

• Other: Other merchants-focused fintech companies include companies providing outsourced CFO services, or contract management services. Sirion Labs manages outsourced contracts and invoices for enterprises and raised $12M in Series B funding with participation from Sequoia Capital India.

Personal Finance

• Lending: Startups in this category provide personal loans and financial products to consumers. These include car loans, mortgages, and equated monthly installment financings (EMI) for larger-ticket purchases. Finomena provides EMI financings for purchases that range from mobile phones to refrigerators. The company raised a seed round from Matrix Partners India and a host of angel investors in Q1’16.

• Insurance: Companies in this category offer consumer insurance products that include health insurance, auto insurance, travel insurance, and home insurance, among other products. PolicyBazaar has raised $70M in total funding to provide a personal insurance product comparison platform.

• Taxes: Companies in this category assist consumers in filing taxes. Cleartax helps consumers complete their income tax returns, and has received $15.4M in five rounds of funding.

• Banking, Trading & Wealth: Companies in this category assist consumers in managing wealth, specifically wealth held in investment accounts or banks. Trading companies assist consumers in executing and settling trades of securities and other investment vehicles. Wealth (management) companies help consumers track and grow personal wealth via active and passive management into investment vehicles. Upstox is a trading platform and brokerage backed by Kalaari Capital with $4M in total funding.

Consumer Payments

• Mobile Wallets & E-Commerce: Companies in this category act as the digital bridge between consumers and merchants. In addition to allowing for mobile payments and transactions, mobile wallets often provide “digital malls,” where consumers can browse brick-and-mortar MSMEs online. Paytm is India’s most valuable fintech company and the country’s largest mobile wallet and e-commerce platform. Now subsumed under the One97 corporate umbrella, the company’s valuation stands at approximately $5.8B, with major investment from China-based Alibaba Group and its subsidiary Ant Financial.
  Of note, this category has a number of popular payment platforms that are owned or have already been acquired by financial services and corporations — including Jio Money, SBI Buddy, and ICICI Pockets. Due to corporate ownership, these companies are not displayed on this market map.

Government & Corporate Initiatives

• As mentioned, the Indian government has taken an aggressive and activist approach toward technology, promoting financial and digital inclusion. Coordinating with financial institutions and the tech community, the Indian government has effectively deployed India Stack, a set of APIs that allows developers to utilize digital identity infrastructure to create presence-less, paperless, and cashless solutions and tools. Since 2009, the country has enrolled nearly 1.2 billion individuals into its Aadhaar identification program, obtaining demographic and biometric information to help in the issuance of IDs in the most ambitious governmental project of its kind.

See the full company list below:

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