Indian private bank YES BANK announced that it has established a fintech focused business accelerator program ‘YES FINTECH’, which is a platform for the bank and fintech startups to partner and co-create innovative solutions.
The fintech accelerator is powered by T-Hub, one of India's fastest-growing startup engine and Anthill, along with Let’s Talk Payments (LTP) as Knowledge Partner. The accelerator is a unique program having a keen focus on building solutions relevant to use-cases that are identified by YES BANK and offers fintech startups, the access to millions of YES BANK customer base.
The program will be for the duration of 15 weeks in four phases with three weeks of on-site interventions and 11 weeks off-site interventions. It will also have each stage focusing on creating a market-ready product and a sustainable business model.
The focus areas include payments, governance and risk compliance, lending, trade finance, forex and treasury, capital markets, big data, blockchain, IoT, AI, analytics and machine learning, among others. The application phase is open for fintech startups from 9 January until 3 February 2017. The selected startups will then be asked to pitch to the YES FINTECH board on Feb 15 and 16, followed by a mentor-matchmaking on March 1. The cohort launch will take place on March 13 followed by the Demo Day on 21 and 22 June, 2017.
Successful applicants for the accelerator will receive digital infrastructure support like API banking, BIN sponsorship; access to funding through YES BANK and its network of investors, including private equity and venture capital firms; advisory on go-to-market strategies and market penetration; mentorship by internal and external industry experts; and co-working space in key cities across India.
The chief mentor will be Rana Kapoor, CEO and Managing Director at YES BANK along with expert mentors Devie Mohan, fintech market strategist; Alok Mittal, co-founder and CEO of Indifi and Sasha Mirchandani, managing director and founder of Kae Capital. The YES FINTECH locations will be in two major Indian cities of Mumbai and Hyderabad.
