Business

India FinTech Awards 2018: Here are the Top 20 Startups

Updated : November 12, 2018 05:24 PM IST

The India FinTech Awards (IFTA) is a platform to celebrate and recognise the best innovations from FinTech companies.

The India FinTech Forum aims to position the FinTech community in India as a global leader in innovation and entrepreneurship through awards.

The India FinTech Awards (IFTA) is an initiative by the India FinTech Forum (IFF) to recognise the best emerging FinTech innovations in the thriving Indian ecosystem. The award, in its third edition, provides a prestigious platform for FinTech firms to showcase their disruptive products, combine it with a sales pitch and engage a curated audience of investors, bankers, entrepreneurs, media, and corporate leaders.

The India FinTech Awards (IFTA) is a platform to celebrate and recognise the best innovations from FinTech companies. The India FinTech Forum aims to position the FinTech community in India as a global leader in innovation and entrepreneurship through awards. After 20 product demos by leading FinTech firms from all across the globe, one startup will be selected as the FinTech startup of the Year at the India FinTech Awards 2018. The winning startup will get an opportunity to demo at LendIt FinTech 2019 in San Francisco, USA.

The IFTA is the premium FinTech event in India bringing numerous prestigious partners like EY, Royal Bank of Scotland, Bombay Stock Exchange, S P Jain School of Global Management and CNBCTV18.com, among others to support it. The Maharashtra government is the Chief Strategic Partner to the latest edition of IFTA.

After careful evaluation, Strategic Partner MEDICI has narrowed down the top 20 FinTech startups that will be pitching on November 30, 2018, at the BSE International Convention Hall in Mumbai.

Here’s the list of the top 20 startups that made the cut to feature at IFTA 2018:

Hydrogen: Hydrogen is a decentralized ecosystem for financial services that combines artificial intelligence, record keeping, authentication, payments, and identity services. Hydrogen has built a modular financial API platform that allows developers from across the world to build their own FinTech applications. The company offers APIs for Core Digital Infrastructures like authentication, client onboarding, data & document storage, client support, marketing, etc.

Streak: It provides a platform for algo-traders to create, backtest, and deploy algos. The solution works as an extension to Kite’s trading platform and allows users to use technical indicators or price-based signals to create algos. It helps stockbrokers to create algorithms for trading, without having to know how to code.

iProov: It provides an identity verification platform for users online; it helps in spoof prevention by using advanced deep learning technologies. The company’s core product is Verifier, a patented Flashmark technology that uses controlled illumination to detect presentation attacks. It determines liveness and mitigates against even highly sophisticated replica and replay attacks.

FlexiLoans: It is an online platform that provides unsecured loans to small and medium-scale firms in India. The company aims to solve the problem that SMEs face in accessing quick, flexible, and adequate funds for growing their businesses.

Ezetap: It is a SaaS-based platform that provides seamless payment facility and integration services for businesses. It helps enterprises to grow sales by streamlining the payment process and helps to increase efficiency. The company offers Ezetap device, a lightweight card reader that can be plugged into any smart device or feature phone used by a retailer.

Everledger: The company provides an immutable ledger for diamond identification and transaction verification for various stakeholders, from insurance companies to claimants and law enforcement agencies. It uses bitcoin blockchain technology to store information like item authenticity, existence, and ownership details. It also offers protection from hackers that tamper information and create counterfeit diamonds.

Doreming: It develops a real-time, cloud-based HR & payroll system to provide affordable financial services for middle-income groups and refugees. The platform is backed by blockchain technology and integrated with existing banking infrastructure & payment ecosystems.

Cube Wealth: It is an automated wealth tech app that works on the concept of disciplined long-term wealth creation. Cube Wealth helps in managing investment portfolios and provides investment advice from registered advisers.

CASHe: It is a mobile-based lending platform that provides short-term personal loans for salaried professionals by using a social behavior-based alternative credit rating system. It uses a proprietary algorithm and offers loans ranging from Rs. 5,000 to 1,00,000, payable over 15/30/90 days for young professionals based on their social profile, merit, and earning potential.

CreditVidya: It has developed a mobile application called TrustScore, which determines a person's creditworthiness based on social media presence. The company uses non-traditional data sources such as the mobile phone recharge pattern of an individual, utility bill payments, e-commerce purchase behavior, etc., to provide a credit score for individuals that do not have a traditional credit score.

HelloTax: It is an online/mobile-based platform that allows individuals to file tax returns in a quick, simple, and easy manner. By using the app, users can update the data and can see other details like quick income tax refund status, income tax transaction history, tax calculator, PAN card details, Form 16 Storage, etc. The company helps to reduce the time taken to file returns, increase efficiency & effectiveness of the filing process, and facilitate the same at minimum price.

I Know First: It is an algorithm-based stock information platform for large financial institutions, banks, hedge funds, and private investors. I Know First provides daily securities, commodities, and currencies forecasts based on an advanced self-learning algorithm.

Notifyvisitors: It is an AI-powered customer engagement and conversion optimization software for enterprises to increase web traffic and customer engagement. Product features include browser push notifications, mobile app push notifications, in-app popups, and website popups. Notifyvisitors helps in automating notifications on websites and mobile applications based on visitor behavior.

Ocrolus: It is a SaaS-based platform that analyzes financial documents like bank statements, loan applications, tax documents, pay stubs, etc., for organizations. The company’s product ‘PerfectAudit’ uses artificial intelligence to automate cash-flow analysis and other financial processes, increasing efficiency in various types of audits.

Smallcase: The company is building products and tools for smarter and efficient investing in the Indian equity markets. Smallcase is an online platform which provides users a professionally built basket of stocks called "smallcases" based on a theme. Themes are market trends, announcements, events or market models.

Oz Forensics: It is a KYC platform that provides digital document and image authenticity recognition, biometric identification, and protection against digital fraud. The startup has received awards from Skolkovo Cybersecurity Challenge 2016, Finopolis 2016, Finance&Banking Technologies, SWIFT Сhallenge 2017, and SLUSH Singapore 2017.

Appnomic Systems: Appnomic Systems develops the AppsOne system which monitors operational data, analyze anomalies, and proactively raise alerts and auto-remediate incidents by leveraging proprietary machine learning algorithms and patented application behavior learning technologies.

James Finance: It is a credit scoring platform which uses machine learning to prevent bad loans. It helps risk officers in banks to manage risk better, reduce default rates, and improve origination practices.

Ariadne: The company develops financial simulation software engine for banks, insurances, and large non-financial enterprises. The analysis covers the entire range from basic analysis to the most advanced risk analysis.

Avail Finance: It is an online/mobile app-based platform for personal loans to the blue-collar workforce in India. Applicants need to fill out an online application form and upload a few documents. The loan amount is directly deposited to the bank account if the loan is approved. The company offers loans from a range of Rs. 5,000 to 60,000 for an average tenure of eight months.