Can LOCAL Fintech Ever Become GLOBAL?

Several Founders, Co-Founders, CXO Bankers, CXO Fintech professional & people who participated in the ePanel discussions:

• Mr. Ravi Shankar, Co-Founder, and CEO, Active Intelligence Pte Ltd
• Mr. Salil Chugh, Head Analytics and Data Partnerships, Experian Asia Pacific
• Mr. Sandeep Todi, Co-Founder & CBO, Remitr
• Mr. Shashank Chowdhury, Former Managing Director -India, Infinite Zero
• Mr. Ishan Vaish, India Partnership Manager- Worldwide Developer Relations, Apple
• Mr. Kamonasish Aayush Mazumdar, Founder & CEO at Foodieverse
• Mr. Ajay B Panicker, CEO & Founder, NetPay Limited
• Mr. Riaz Maniyar, Founder & CEO at easy2lend.com
• Mr. Shashank Kumar, Co-Founder at Razorpay
• Mr. Prasad Likhite, Director Sales, ACI Worldwide
• Mr. Probir Roy, Co-founder, Paymate
• Mr. Vikas R Panditrao, Co-Founder, Forum of Industry and Academic Knowledge Sharing (FIAKS)
• Many other CEO/CXO Bankers & Fintech professionals on FIAKS Forum requested to remain anonymous

FIAKS Community thought leader who wrote an article in the launch edition of FIAKS e-Bulletin raised a question;

Can LOCAL FINTECH company ever become GLOBAL?

• To support his argument he says, “the strongest banks in the world get most of their business from their home country. They have a global presence in a measured manner and limited global revenue.”
• The Fintech story seems to be following the same path. Strongest Fintechs get most of their revenue from the home country. Neo/Digital banks get most of their revenue from one country.
• Visa and MasterCard solved that well through great partnerships with banks across the world. That’s a model that seemed to have worked. Today, given the Nationalism challenges, even that model is threatened.

Will there be any scope for global financial players? What is the successful Model going forward?

Now here are some viewpoints put forth by a member on founder-led fintech:

• Founder led Fintech (not Infosys type companies) will find it difficult to be a global organization. They have baniya (local tradesman) approach which may have worked well in the home country.
• A founder needs to have a very important ingredient called “Patience”. The gestation period in these markets is too long.
• Member shares his personal experience, “I have worked with Indian, Nepalese, and Bangladeshi founders who were settled in the US and Singapore. These Fintech founders are visionary only on PowerPoint presentations. They don’t want to understand the difference between expense and investment. They want to make quick money leaving half-baked products/projects. Rarely you will find a fintech founder working for success stories in these global markets. The top of his mind is always money. Try raising the voice with local Singaporean or Vietnamese. They will quit the job the next day. Can you ever imagine the staff taking a nap post-lunch? It’s a cultural shock to these founders. They are used to treating their employees as slaves with glorified titles. I would prefer working for European or Brit or Canadian founders as they talk dollars. My experience is that Indian or Nepalese or Bangladeshi founder will keep calculating in home currency and will always be in a state of shock.”
• Founders just want to show that they are the global companies to the world with a couple of sign-ups. No serious intent to serve the overseas market. They look at it more from a valuations perspective and better exit for PE/VC.
• Most founders are looking for partnerships with large tech organizations with an international presence as they offer partnerships free. The results of such partnerships are known.

While the above-mentioned views seem to be extremely provincial, let’s not forget the fact that founders (without naming anyone in specific) are able to do so much with so little support in India is amazing:

• Entrepreneurship in any field in India, at a large set-up level, is a very new phenomenon. We have a long way ahead of us to win games we want to win
• A member remarks, “Today, I am fairly certain India is the worst market for Fintech companies who have any intention to make a profit without burning investor money!” How can local fintech go global when the local markets are creating new challenges like zero MDR. Responding to this community member says 0- MDR is the future of global payments, just wait and watch. There is a clear global trend for all mass-consumed products and services – The trend towards 0 transaction costs. This is food delivery, your cab ride, your social network, your video network, your articles, your video app for your meetings – everything which has a large consumer base will go towards 0 transaction costs and get mass distributed. MDR is just an extension of the same thought.0-MDR is pretty much killing an industry. In the EU, rates are controlled, but you cannot make money from side business due to strict laws like GDPR which won’t allow companies to use data or users to monetize in other ways. Difficult to see this happening in the next 10 years. Another member said most probably the government will bring back MDR. REGISTER and READ the complete discussions