Hi fintech friends, I'm Osborne, investor in early stage startups.
Please enjoy all the news and updates from the past week in today’s edition. If you feel TWIF brings you value, please share it with your friends (and maybe suggest they subscribe too).
Happy Holidays and a relaxed end of year to all our readers. We'll be off next week and resume scheduled updates from 11th Jan, 2024. See you then!
Are you considering starting up? I’d love to help. DM me here: superdm.me/osborne
🧐🏆 Posts of the Week
Getting better and better. Net NPAs of Indian banking industry decline from 0.62% in March 2024 to 0.57% in September 2024. And, gross NPAS fall from 2.7% in 2.5% in first half of FY24-25: Report on Trend and Progress of Banking in India 2023-24 of @RBI— Tamal Bandyopadhyay (@TamalBandyo) December 26, 2024
There are a few charts which explain India more than others. One is the car ownership / penetration amongst Indian HHs (just under 12% and extremely slow growing).
Car ownership is a proxy for being members of the consuming class (equiv to West's middle class), and thus ~35m… pic.twitter.com/Rg23ekpa9x— Sajith Pai (@sajithpai) December 26, 2024
Many of you have reached out to see the full list of health insurance claim ratios.
I also hear that there is pressure from the industry to remove this data.
So here it is!https://t.co/k638usYI1d pic.twitter.com/w4Yqgoso9V— Monika Halan 🇮🇳 (@monikahalan) December 22, 2024
Okta announced an authentication platform for AI agents recently called Auth for Gen AI
Aims to help developers give AI agents the least privileged access to sensitive data and secure API access to take action on behalf of users pic.twitter.com/mfPmQnyAE6— Tanay Jaipuria (@tanayj) December 23, 2024
(Note: Neither TWIF nor I endorse any views in the tweets highlighted above.)
🇮🇳 India
📰 Market Updates
Mintifigrew its revenue by 72% YoY to INR 384cr ($45M) in the year ended March, 2024.
Banks' net profit grew by 33% YoY and GNPA ratio fell to 2.7%, according to an RBI report.
IndusInd Bank is selling off INR 1,573cr ($184M) worth of microfinance loans due to asset quality issues.
The number of bank fraudsgrew to 18,461 cases and the amount involved jumped 8x to INR 21,367cr ($2.5bn) in H1 FY25 (Apr-Sep 2024), according to RBI data.
Digital lendersdisbursed 3cr (30M) loans valued at INR 37,000cr ($4.3bn) in Q2 FY25 (Jul-Sep 2024). Growth moderated to 19% YoY compared to 44% last year. Total disbursements reached INR 70,000cr ($8.2bn) in the first half. Average loan size was INR 10,891 ($130), according to a report by Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE).
🚀 Product Launches
PineLabslaunchedPine Labs Mini, a soundbox to accept QR and card payments.
📝 Regulatory Updates
RBI (central bank): Constituted a committee to develop a Framework for Responsible and Ethical Enablement of AI in the financial sector. Enabled payments to/from full KYC prepaid payment instruments using UPI.
💰 Financing Announcements
Metropolitan Stock Exchange (MSE), a stock exchange in India, raised INR 238cr ($28M) from stock brokers including Rainmatter (Zerodha), Groww, Share India Securities and Securocorp Securities.
1-min Anonymous Feedback: Your feedback helps me improve this newsletter. Click UPVOTE 👍🏽 or DOWNVOTE 👎🏽
🌏 Asia
📰 Market Updates
XTransfer, a Chinese B2B cross-border trade payment startup, and OCBC, a Southeast Asian financial services group, launched cross-border payments for SMEs.
💰 Financing Announcements
Fairbanc, a Singapore and Silicon Valley B2B finance startup, raised $3.13M.
🌏 Sponsor on TWIF
Mail us at [email protected]
If you’ve made it this far - thanks! As always, you can always reach me at [email protected]. I’d genuinely appreciate any and all feedback. If you liked what you read, please consider sharing or subscribing.
1-min Anonymous Feedback: Your feedback helps me improve this newsletter. Click UPVOTE 👍🏽 or DOWNVOTE 👎🏽
