The Financial Inclusion Lab, an accelerator programme at CIIE.CO’s Bharat Inclusion Initiative (BII) is supported by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, J. P. Morgan, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, MetLife Foundation, and the Omidyar Network and run in collaboration with MSC Consulting. The Lab identifies and supports startups that focus on enhancing the financial health of lower-income communities with mentoring, market research, access to networks, capital and other support to build and scale their solutions. The Lab being one of the key components of BII helps in taking the entrepreneurial ecosystem of India forward by solving financial, skill, and livelihood issues.
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Meet the 4th Cohort of Bharat Inclusion Initiative’s Financial Inclusion Lab
This year, the FI Lab announces its 4th cohort consisting of nine innovative startups that are offered customised support as per their individual needs. It aims to accelerate these early-stage startups towards product-market fit and scale up to positively impact lower and middle income underserved communities.
Credochain (Credochain Technologies Pvt. Ltd.) enables flow-based lending for MSMEs by capturing and analysing the underlying business transactions and cash flows using GST in a completely automated manner for faster and better credit decision-making.
Team: Vaibhav Anand and Shivani Sharma
Fello, a game based savings and investment platform for gen-z and millennials to save, play and earn returns more than a traditional savings bank account. Aims to merge the worlds of gaming and finance to build better financial security for the end-users.
Team: Manish Maryada and Shourya Lala
Finarkein (Finarkein Analytics Pvt. Ltd.) works with Open Digital Ecosystem including AA’s and OCEN to build plug and play pipelines for fetching and analyzing data from diverse sources with consent.
Team: Nikhil Kurhe and Dheeraj Kumar
Fundfina (Fundfina Technologies Pvt. Ltd.) provides embedded financing capability using cash flow based working capital loans to retailers of enterprise networks like payment and wallet firms, PoS providers, digital accounting firms etc.
Team: Rahul Tripathy, Nishant Bhaskar, Abhijit Naik and Bikram Bajaj
DailySalary (NSquared Systems Pvt. Ltd.) is into building an attendance-linked ‘Salary Wallet‘ which gives salaried workers immediate access to their earned salary. Every workday, the day’s salary gets credited to the worker’s Salary Wallet. Workers can withdraw up to 50% of their earned salary from their Wallet anytime they want.
Team: Shantanu Singh, Aashutosh Chaudhary and Eral Ravi
Kosh (Adhikosh Inc.) is building India’s first digital and Agentless MFI that helps borrowers to avail group-based loans and operates efficiently at scale.
Team: Aayush Goel and Sahil Bansal
myPaisaa (Finsave Technologies Pvt. Ltd.) is a digital chit fund that is registered with the Registrar of Chits. It provides an app for the entire user journey and enables industry-leading 2 hour TAT for disbursal.
Team: Veera Praveen Reddy and Ravindranath Kamma
Numer8 Analytics (Numer8 Analytics (OPC) Pvt. Ltd.) provides fisherfolks with advisory, market linkages and access to formal credit. It aims to make fisheries more sustainable and profitable.
Team: Devleena Bhattacharjee and Nandhini Karthikeyan
SureClaim (SureClaim Inc.) is a healthcare navigation platform, helping families and doctors to locate hospitals that meet the medical needs and financial constraints of the patients.
Team: Varun Kansal and Anuj Jindal
Speaking on the announcement of the 4th Cohort, Sandeep Koujalgi, VP – Bharat Inclusion Initiative, CIIE.CO “The Financial Inclusion Lab has been set up to provide timely and contextual support to startups building impactful technology solutions for Bharat. The unique offerings of the Lab, strengthened with the expertise and the ecosystem connections built over the last few years, are geared to create an orbit change in the startups we support. The impact created by the program underscores the relevance of our approach.”
Over the past three years, the Lab has supported 27 early-stage startups in three cohorts. Cumulatively, these startups have served more than 20M customers and raised over $15M in funding post their participation in the Lab.
About BII
The Bharat Inclusion Initiative, launched in 2018 by IIM Ahmedabads CIIE.CO, helps tech entrepreneurs across the pre-incubation, seed and scale-up stage to develop inclusive solutions. The Initiative includes research fellowships, sprints, incubation, accelerators, seed fund and other support programmes to create an end-to-end enabling ecosystem that brings inclusive and for-profit businesses to life.
