YES FINTECH wins ‘Accelerator of the Year’ Award at the India Fintech Awards 2017

YES BANK’s flagship accelerator, YES FINTECH, has won the ‘Accelerator of the Year’ award at the India Fintech Awards (IFTA) 2017. The award, presented at a ceremony which took place in Mumbai on November 22, 2017, was jointly shared by YES FINTECH and the Kickstart Accelerator from Switzerland.

Organised by the India Fintech Forum, the IFTA is a platform that celebrates and recognises the best innovations from fintech firms, and allows the companies to showcase their products to an audience consisting of investors, bankers, entrepreneurs, media and corporate leaders. 

YES FINTECH was the only Indian accelerator to receive the award in this category. Fintech Valley Vizag and SuperCharger from Hong Kong were among the other major global accelerators that were nominated for the award.

Ernst & Young and Let’s Talk Payments managed the evaluation and judging process at IFTA 2017. The jury consisted of senior officials from global fintech ecosystems and apex financial regulatory bodies like R Gandhi, Former Deputy Governor at RBI, Fabian Vandenreydt, Executive Chairman at B-Hive Europe, Ananta Barua, Executive Director at SEBI, Mavila N Nair, Chairman at CIBIL, N K Prasad, Group CEO at CAMS, and Srinivas Jain, Executive Director & CMO, at SBI Mutual Funds

YES FINTECH assists fintech startups to co-create financial solutions for the bank’s customers, apart from offering them support in various other aspects such as product-market-fit guidance, a wide access to global audience and accelerated joint go to-markets. Mentorship is also one of the key aspects of the programme. Amit Shah, Senior President and Country Head of Strategy at YES BANK, says, “As part of the 15-week programme, a comprehensive mentor matchmaking exercise is conducted by the team. On the basis of the core technology that their solution is based on and their defined use case, YES BANK not only matches them with internal technology and business leaders, but also with domain experts from around the world, who can guide them in their scaling up process.”

YES FINTECH has created a network of 20-plus global startup ecosystems, expanding its network across strategic fintech markets such as the US, UK, Europe, South East Asia, and the Middle East, including Israel.

The summer cohort of YES FINTECH which concluded in July had 10 graduating fintech startups, including two global startups from Israel and Singapore. Five of them are already integrating their solutions with the bank, while the rest are completing their Proof-of-Concepts (PoCs). The autumn cohort, which recently closed its applications, primarily focuses on lending solutions including alternative lending, digital payments, real time data analytics, cyber security, big data and analytics, process automation, digital banking, wealthtech and investtech. Only 35 startups selected from the 495 applicants will present their ideas to the YES FINTECH team, early next week.

Recently, YES BANK also announced the launch of the India Fintech Opportunities Review, the first ever comprehensive survey spanning the fintech startup ecosystem in India and in key markets all over the world. The survey aims at mapping various elements that comprise successful development of a major global fintech hub.

“The survey, which involves an online form as well as in-person discussions, has already received responses from more than over fintech companies and over 100 ecosystem players including financial institutions, investors, and academia among others. We have also constituted an Advisory board comprising of global fintech influencers and experts like Chris Skinner, David Brear, Devie Mohan, Lawrence Wintermeyer, Chris Gledhill, Julie Lake, Mali Marafini and Oliver Hall among others,” Shah adds.