The Digital Fifth Top 30 Fintech Influencers in India

Industries of the future would come out of amalgamation of current industries, which were essentially built in Analog world. All success stories of Financial world have been about re-imagining of the current practices by Fintech influencers. Each of these Fintech Influencer have a different approach to transform the environment and work in diverse areas including Banks, Startups, Regulatory Authorities, Government and Media.

With the advent of Fintechs, there has been dramatic increase in the availability of content for the community. To remove the clutter, we have curated the list of India’s Top 30 Fintech Influencers to follow across media (social or otherwise). This list is based on the real impact of these individuals on the Fintech world and is not linked to their social media scores.

Ajay Ramasubramaniam — Director (India) at Zone Startups

During 2017, Ajay launched Fintegrate Zone, an annual 3-day FinTech conclave, bringing together the various stakeholders of India’s FinTech ecosystem under a multi-format program. Under his leadership, Zone startups is rapidly changing the fintech environment in Mumbai.

Amit Goel — Founder & CIO at LTP + MEDICI

Amit has built LetsTalkPayments.com, which is considered the global #1 site for FinTech insights. Amit and the LTP team have also built an industry leading FinTech research/market network called MEDICI. It has profiles of 7000 FinTech startups from all over the world segmented into 45+ categories and some great research reports and value chains.

Arvind Gupta — Cofounder & Head at Digital India Foundation

Arvind has over 22 years of experience in leadership, policy & entrepreneurial roles, both in Silicon Valley & in India. He is an Eisenhower fellow for Innovation and an active member of Industry Forums NASSCOM, TiE and Founding Member of ISPiRT (Indian Software Products Industry Round table). He also mentors many start-ups and is a Guest Speaker at Global B-Schools and CxO events.

Babu Nair — Founder at Finbizness : Worlds first BFSI video platform

Babu has launched FinBizness, which is the First Global B2B Video platform for the BFSI sector. This platform comprises of short and insightful videos on various important business and functional areas of BFSI business and Fintech. Each video is cherry picked and crafted to Drive Business Decisions in this sector. Finbizness is designed to be a potent tool for market to the BFSI sector or to acquire encapsulated insights and share inputs with the industry.

Bala Parthasarthy — CEO & Co-founder, MoneyTap

Bala has setup MoneyTap, India’s first app-based credit services provider. It has tied up with banks to offer money on demand with zero collateral and without guarantors. During the year, MoneyTap received funding of $12.3 million, which makes it one of the most valued lending fintech. Unlike other fintechs, which are venturing into NBFC business, MoneyTap has remained a pure technology platform.

Bhavin Turakhia — CEO and Co-founder, Zeta

Bhavin is the Founder & CEO of Directi, Ringo, Flock, Radix, & Media.net. These businesses have revenues over $200 million, a net worth of over $500 million and multiple category leading global brands across business areas as diverse as web presence, online advertising and communication & collaboration. Zeta has partnered with IDFC Bank, Kotak Bank etc for corporate payments. Zeta has also partnered with Sodexo for digitising the meal voucher and employee gifting business.

Deepak Sharma — Chief Digital Officer at Kotak Mahindra Bank

Deepak heads digital initiatives at Kotak Mahindra Bank where he is responsible for digital strategy & transformation across bank along with building digital led business. In his current role, his area of focus is around growth initiatives, transformation project, innovation, fintech & ecosystem partnerships, digital channels & platform. He also looks at design & development around lending, payments, investments, Institutional, SME & consumer segment. Under his leadership, India’s best digital onboarding platform Kotak 811 was lauched in 2017.

Dilip Asbe — Chief Operating Officer at NPCI

Dilip is the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) since 2013. He has played a pivotal role in designing, building, operationalisation and management of large scale payment processing platforms like Unified Payments Interface (UPI), Bharat Interface for Money (BHIM), Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) and India’s home grown card network RuPay. World’s most innovative payment platform UPI has already cross IMPS in volume terms and is poised to become Top Retail Payment System in the country.

Gaurav Hinduja — Co-Founder at Capital Float

Gaurav runs Capital Float, which is an online lending platform serving small businesses in India. Capital Float provide fast, flexible, and transparent working capital finance to Small & Medium Enterprises (SMEs) looking to grow their customer orders, purchase inventory, or optimize cash cycles.

Capital Float is leading SME digital lending revolution in India and has co-lending partnerships with multiple banks and NBFCs.

Gaurav Zutshi — Chief Digital Officer — Aditya Birla Capital

Gaurav has the mandate to build digital business to offer financial solutions from broad-based offerings from within the group including Mutual Funds or Equities, protection via Life Insurance, Health Insurance and General Insurance and financing.

He has defined the digital product roadmap, channel strategy and digital operations/service models. In addition, he also runs MyUniverse “India’s largest PFM platform,” where customers can aggregate financial holdings, based on which the platform provides advice and enables purchase of broad-based financial products (Mutual Funds, Loans, Equity, Insurance).

J A Chowdary — Special Chief Secretary & IT Advisor to the Chief Minister — Govt. of AP

The prime focus of J.A. Chowdary, IT Advisor to the Government of Andhra Pradesh, is to mobilise investments, create IT ecosystem, and provide more jobs. Under his leadership, Fintech Valley Vizag has been set up to bring together industry, academia and investors to innovate, co-create & build the fintech ecosystem. Fintech Valley Vizag has charted out an ambitious plan as the fintech hub expands into a fully operational facility with innovation programs executed in the Valley.

Jitendra Gupta — Founder Citrus Pay & MD PayU India

Jitendra led Citrus till the largest ever M&A in Fintech space with PayU for $130 Mn. Jitendra now leads PayU India and is driving rapid growth in business. PayU has now launched innovate pay later product called Lazypay, which is its first initiative in lending business.

Lizzie Chapman — Co-Founder & CEO at ZestMoney

Lizzie is co-founder and CEO of ZestMoney, the digital consumer lending company that is revolutionising the way Indian consumers transact online. Lizzie is a prolific speaker and is playing active role in creating fintech environment in the country.

Mahin Gupta — Cofounder Zebpay

Mahin runs technology for India’s largest bitcoin wallet, with nearly 70% share of the market. Zebpay has raised close to $1 million in a Series A round. Zebpay has 7 lakh users and is adding a lakh every month. The startup is now looking to expand to Southeast Asia.

Naveen Surya — Ex-MD ItzCash Card & Fintech founder

Naveen led ItzCash for 12 years till the acquistion of its stakes by Ebix. He left ItzCash in Aug 2017 to start his Fintech venture. He is also Chairman of Payments Council of India.

Nitin Chugh — Country Head Digital Banking and Personal Liabilities Products at HDFC Bank

Nitin is responsible for driving innovative solution in HDFC Bank including Digital Command Centre, Ira (interactive humanoid), Eva (AI powered chatbot), omnichannel banking, 10 seconds loan, instant loan in ATM, missed call recharge, Lite App, PayZapp etc. Digital channel usage in HDFC Bank leads nearest competitors by miles. HDFC Bank has partnered with many Fintechs and Technology companies for enhancing its digital capabilities.

Prajit Nanu — Co-Founder and CEO at Instarem

Prajit runs one of most successful and well funded remittance startup Instarem. During 2017, Instarem raised $13 Million in funding to build out global infrastructure.

Rajat Gandhi — Founder & CEO, Faircent

Rajat is the cofounder of India’s largest P2P lending platform Faircent. With the release of RBI regulations, Faircent is expected to consolidate its leadership in P2P lending business. In addition, they have raised 4 million dollars to enhance its financial product offerings, strengthen its technology platform, and to market and promote P2P lending.

Rajeev Ahuja — Head of Strategy at RBL Bank Ltd.

Rajeev has been an integral part of the RBL’s transformation journey and is responsible for building the overall strategy of the Bank while managing the Retail Banking, Transaction Banking and Financial Inclusion businesses of the Bank. Under his leadership, RBL bank has become “Partners ka Bank” and has created symbiotic relationships with multiple Fintechs.

Rajiv Anand — Executive Director : Retail Banking at Axis Bank

Rajiv has driven digital journey for Axis bank including launch & scaling up of self-service kiosks, Aadhaar-based customer services, and automation — all aimed at increasing the momentum of its digital transformation journey. The bank has installed digital self-service kiosks, which it has christened “speed banking” services, at over 1,000 branches, in addition to deployment of 25,000 biometric readers across its network. Axis bank is currently deploying technologies like RPA, machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). With the acquisition of Freecharge, Axis Bank has shown the intent of competing hard in the fintech arena.

Rakesh Bhat — COO at Bajaj Finserv

Rakesh is responsible for leading a large portfolio of critical functions in Bajaj Finserv namely Technology, Operations, Customer Experience and Quality. Rakesh is the person behind the host of technology innovations at the firm, harnessing the power of technology to create sustainable competitive advantage. During the year, Bajaj Finserv launched, India’s first digital wallet with a credit facility in partnership with Mobikwik. With Bajaj Finserv taking leadership position in consumer durable business, we are eagerly watching their progress in Digital space.

Ritesh Pai — Chief Digital Officer at Yes Bank

Ritesh Pai has been credited with establishing Yes Bank as partner of choice for Fintechs. Yes Bank has partnered with PhonePe, Meru Cabs, Motilal Oswal, Reliance Securities, FundsIndia, Capital Float, Trupay etc for UPI payments. Yes Bank also has taken industry leading initiatives like Yes Fintech, a business accelerator program.

Sameer Nigam — Founder & CEO, PhonePe

With continuous innovation, Sameer has taken Phonepe to a leadership position in payments business across online and offline segment. The payments player is now manufacturing one million calculator-based point of sale (POS) devices, which will be deployed at physical stores across the country by July 2018.

Sampad Swain — Co-founder and CEO of Instamojo

Sampad runs Instamojo, which turned profitable in Sept this year, a rate feat for Payments Fintechs. Instamojo provides On-demand online payments and commerce platform for micro, small and medium enterprises. In Aug this year, it had announced a pre-Series B investment from Japanese payment firm AnyPay, and is close to raising Series B round.

Sanjay Swamy —Managing Partner at Prime Venture Partners

Sanjay co-founded Prime Venture Partners, an early stage investment firm that looks to invest in category-creating technology-driven startups. His portfolio companies include successful Fintech startups like Happay, Kredx, Ezetap and Niyopay. He is one of most active investor and he is regularly quoted in news media.

Shiv Kumar Bhasin — CTO at SBI

Shiv has led technology transformation of SBI and has brought it closer to fintech community. He is credited with initiatives like YONO (single app for account opening, investment and servicing), SBI Intouch, SBI Buddy etc. SBI is partnering with Fintechs across business segments.

Sudarshan Sen — Executive Director & Head of Working Group on Fin Tech and Digital Banking : Reserve Bank of India

Mr Sen has been leading Fintech and Digital working committee of one of the most progressive central banks in India. The year saw continuous guidance from RBI in Fintech areas like P2P regulations, MDR charges, Blockchain, Cryptocurrency etc.

Sujith Narayanan — Country Business Head : TeZ by Google

Sujith leads Google Tez, whose massive impact is visible on Indian Payment Business and specifically on UPI payments. Within 4 months of launch, it has become the most popular application ahead of stellar competitors like Phonepe and Bhim. With new use cases getting added on Tez continuously, industry is watching Sujith closely for the way ahead.

Varun Dua — Founder & CEO at Acko General Insurance

Varun was the cofounder of Coverfox, which has transformed insurance brokerage business. Now, everyone is eagerly waiting for his disruptions in General Insurance space.

Vijay Shekhar Sharma — Founder & CEO, PayTM

Vijay runs India’s most famous and well funded Fintech startup PayTM. Everyone is eagerly following the progress of PayTM Payments Banklaunched in Aug 2017. Paytm recently announced new chat services Inbox with paytm wallet app users can chat with each other and send and request money within the application Paytm. It has also started partnering ICICI Bank for offering short term loan.

www.thedigitalfifth.com