India Post Payments Bank launches ‘Fincluvation’

India Post Payments Bank recently launched Fincluvation, a platform to promote innovative solutions in collaboration with fintech startups to accelerate financial inclusion among the underserved and unserved population.

What is Fincluvation?

• The first-of-its-kind industry initiative, Fincluvation would create a powerful platform to mobilize the start-up community towards building meaningful financial products aimed at financial inclusion.
• The country has made rapid strides in FINTECH space in Global Tech world leading innovations like UPI, Aadhaar. 
  • The combination of IPPB’s banking stack, DoP’s trustworthy doorstep service network and the techno-functional acumen of start-ups can deliver unmatched value to the citizens of the country.
• Fincluvation will be a permanent platform of IPPB to co-create inclusive financial solutions with participating start-ups.
• IPPB and DoP collectively serve close to 430 million customers through neighbourhood post office.
• Further, it is one of the largest and trusted postal networks in the world with over 400,000 post office employees and Gramin Dak Sevaks. 
• India Post will invite startups to co-create solutions on the platform. The government will offer up to ?3 crore to support the entire journey from the proof-of-concept stage to the final product.
• Startups are encouraged to develop solutions aligned with any of the following tracks-
  • Creditization - Develop Innovative & Inclusive credit products aligned with the use cases of target customers and take them to their doorsteps through Postal network.
  • Digitization - Bring convenience through convergence of traditional services with Digital Payment Technologies such as making the traditional Money Order service as Interoperable Banking service.
  • Any Market-led solutions that can help solve any other problem relevant to IPPB and/or DoP in serving the target customers

Benefits

• Fincluvation will engage startups to participate, ideate, develop and market intuitive and tailored products and services for the customers.
  • It also encourages startups to develop solutions relating to creditization, digitization & more.  
• Further, fincluvation can help in meeting the varied and complex needs of the consumers through thoughtful, empathetic product design, and rapid prototyping among users.
  • With Fincluvation would also help develop technology-led financial solutions for India. 
• Fincluvation will also allow the start-ups to work with IPPB and DoP experts to develop solutions and conduct pilots using the postal network and IPPB’s technology stack. 
• Fincluvation mentors will work closely with startups to tweak products to customer needs and align the go-to-market strategies with operating models of India Post.
• Startups will also be able to use the physical infrastructure that the department of posts has across the country.