Several Founders, Co-Founders, CXO Bankers, CXO Fintech professional & people who participated in the ePanel discussions:
- Mr. Anuj Khosla, Chief Operating Officer, SBI Payments
- Mr. Manish Diwaan, Managing Director, AFIN / APIX: ASEAN Financial Innovations Network
- Mr. Rana Sinha Ray, Head Technology, TimesofMoney
- Mr. Probir Roy, Co-founder, Paymate
- Mr. Anupam Varghese, Chief Tinkerer, Tinkerbee Innovations
- Mr. Salil Chugh, Head Analytics and Data Partnerships, Experian Asia Pacific
- Mr. Amarto Chakrabarty, former Principal Consultant- Global Consulting Group, Wipro Limited
- Mr. Taron Mohan, CEO & Promoter, NextGen Telesolutions Pvt Ltd
- Mr. Himanshu K, Head Corporate Legal & Advisory, VISPL
- Ms. Aishwarya Jaishankar, former SVP – Digital Products & Platforms, HSBC
- Mr. Kamonasish Aayush Mazumdar, Founder & CEO at Foodieverse
- Mr. Ravi Shankar, Co-Founder, and CEO, Active Intelligence Pte Ltd
- Mr. Ajay B Panicker, CEO & Founder, NetPay Limited
- Mr. Sandeep Todi, Co-Founder & CBO, Remitr
- Mr. Vineet Tewari, Director, Crescent Payments Private Limited
- 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 debate, “SBI Chairman Rajnish Kumar stated that SBI YONO has a worth over USD 40 billion now, the biggest start-up by any bank.” [1] Now here are the debatable questions;
Question 1: Is YONO kind of initiatives be ever called start-up?
Question 2: Do you see an urgent need to have Start-up Literacy Education Program for all the professionals who have never ever done an entrepreneurial role? As it is quite worrisome that some media house will tomorrow organize an award function and give YONO as best start-up Award
Question 3: Can a start-up program be run by a person in an organization who has never been an entrepreneur himself?.
Firstly isn’t it quite surprising that SBI YONO being called a start-up? What’s the logic?
- For many years Satyam, Jio, Phone pe, etc were in the start-up category. Isn’t a start-up that starts from scratch. If HUL or IBM spins off a company with ready-made infra, team, and funding, it won’t really be called a start-up unless they don’t give them anything.
- Clearly, YONO had a lot of unfair advantages, which a typical startup will never ever have. Almost limitless funding, the entire consumer base of SBI, and muscle power of the bank. They don’t have to chase behind CXOs, no marketing, built-up platform. Built, promoted, and given business by the bank itself. Could it stand alone on its own?
- Will you call these companies as a start-up? Do start-ups offer a 1+crore salary to their leadership teams?
- Calling YONO a startup is like calling the new S-class a new startup by Mercedes or AirPod a new startup by Apple. If the s-class brand is spawned off as a separate entity, or Airpod is separated from apple, they are also worth billions on their own now. Would they be so, on their own, without the backing of the parent company? Definitely not. So, its outright lame to make such a claim. It’s just a new product by a large entity.
- We do know you can’t access SBI without YONO? So if Payzapp or Pockets was the only source of accessing HDFC/ICICI then they would be right here. SBI YONO is just an app migration. Again there is YONO, YONO lite, and one more coming YONO merchant.
- Whilst a member puts forth this interesting insight, So you have this whole thing known as “intrapreneur”, what is it? where while working in a large organization, you come up with new ideas and thoughts and eventually build a product and a business. 3M is one of the earliest pioneers of this concept. So yes, even in an established organization we can still have startups.
Well, isn’t it time to lay some ground rules on startups, unicorns, etc? REGISTER and READ the complete discussions.