Impact of Fintech on Conventional Businesses

A revolutionary (maybe not so) topic for this discussion at the JBIMS-eConfluence. The discussion amongst us, the panelist, started earlier to than the panel time slot and we wished it continued for more time. A great mix of panelists - a very well known Investor, very senior JBIMS professor with passion for innovation, a well established payment solution tech business CEO and a Startup built on the passion and ingenuity.

We had 250+ high energy students at this eConfluence listening to this very engaging discussion - fintech, and it's impact on everyone - technology, married with payments, is turning the conventional business on its head. While in an banking industry, with full of acronyms and starched collar ideals, it’s surprisingly hard to find a banker leaving all this to be a startup. How wonderful it would be - a hardcore banker and a hardcore technologist work together. A very realistic equation Vinod Keni (75%Fin 25%tech) shared, could be the reality as we see how fast fintech ecosystem is evolving. Fintech, we all described it as the technology that can upend traditional banking by making sending and receiving money easier - while this sounds so simple, Arun Shegal shares his experience from doing international business in the 80's, with Russia and it's complications dealing with financial transactions (well! the real story was more like a plot from movie 'godfather' kinds :) ..). The banking industry, conventional business and technology has evolved so much so that we are now trying ways to simplify it and fast track it - the obscure backend processes of setting up servers and software applications for the frontend - all happened along with the growth of these conventional businesses. But technology has always proved to be the enabler and has time and again disrupted the traditional businesses, especially challenging how business interact with their customers. One such is payments service providers, Dewan Neralla talks about the evolution of his tech solution, omnichannel payments processing, mobile banking, peer-to-peer payments, high importance of payment gateway security and its investment that has evolved as his business grew. While we get to hear a lot from all those who have had a journey to talk about, what could we expect from a startup? Sanachit Mehra & Rajish Rajan, the newbies in the fintech space had a story to share as well - Sanachit had the best analogies in his startup story (left everyone in splits, sorry! I cannot mention those on this forum) his journey from rejecting a corporate job to finding a Co-Founder and Rajish shares how his naval background helped him bring the required discipline into a tech startup. This duo have built multi-nodal Blockchain solution for a retail bank in India and are making some news.

Beyond just sharing each ones journey and experience, this discussion really did bring out couple of key elements that we should consider. Today’s emerging startups and established players have the ability/capability to (be it demonetization in India or PSD2 regulation in EU) withstand any situation, stand up solutions, bring awareness, help conventional business fast track - especially in areas like payment processing, alternative lending, wealth management, robo-advisors, crypto-currency etc. I think, common agreement in the discussion was that the increased accessibility and speed is key while fintech disrupts the conventional businesses.