Afthonia Labs to focus on start-ups in insurtech, credit-risk, fraud-management
By Priyanka Pani
Afthonia Lab, an incubator dedicated to early-stage fintech start-ups, feels that the COVID19 triggered pandemic has accelerated the growth of FinTechs globally and that India is likely to witness a spurt in different sub-segments from within the sector. The incubator also said that it will be incubating at least eight to ten start-ups would graduate from the lab by 2021.
Tanul Mishra, CEO, and Founder of Afthonia Lab told IBS Intelligence that FinTech has played an important role during the COVID19 crisis even as it falls under essential services. “Banking, financial services, lending platforms to digital payments, every segment has fared so well during the last three months. Besides, FinTech still remains a big enabler for start-ups and companies in other sectors and this segment can’t survive in isolation. We are pretty optimistic about the future of FinTechs in the country,” Mishra said.
Afthonia’s 12-month long incubation program, which started in July last year, would see around 4-5 start-ups graduate this year. This year, the incubator is in search of start-ups coming up in the insurance, credit risk and fraud management segment even as a large number of loans are likely to turn bad during the Corona crisis, Mishra said adding that banks and other FinTech lenders would rely on credit risk start-ups for better underwriting.
“We expect the insurance sector to farewell post-COVID as more people are likely to take pandemic-focussed health covers,” Mishra said adding that companies in blockchain, crypto-trading would also gain a lot of traction in the coming months.
Talking about the lab’s one year journey, Mishra added that the incubator has got a lot closer to the goal of nurturing truly worthy start-ups and innovators and guide them to achieve a measure of success in the form of acquiring clients, investments and even setting up operations for the start-ups in the B2B space. The incubator has helped mentor start-ups such as Ahmedabad-based Tarakki Invest, a wealth management platform, investment platform Niivo, BlockSurvey, and Ginger Root Code Factory.
She also added that the incubator space is nascent in India with just 200-odd operating incubators, compared with 1,500-2,000 that operate globally. Most of the Indian incubators are either backed by the government or educational institutions due to which business learnings into the space become very difficult. Afthonia Lab has built a corpus of up to INR 50 million to pulled together from key players in the investor community. The bigger agenda for Afthonia this year would also be to mentor women in finance.
The incubator has been providing access to global mentors and key industry veterans for its incubated start-ups since its launch in May 2019, to help innovative fintech start-ups build strong and sustainable businesses. The lab has now partnered with key players in the investor community to provide access to funds by building a corpus with investors who will evaluate Afthonia incubated businesses.
According to Mishra, Afthonia aims to be a one-stop destination for fintech startups with an experienced and well-structured body of mentors from diverse sectors in India and abroad. These programs will enable the startups to scale at different stages of the business’ life cycle with a unique approach of curating knowledge from mentors across matured markets such as the US and Europe.
“We want to empower players who are bringing disruption and efficiency to how businesses and people transact in the financial realm, as we see immense latent opportunity in this space. We want to provide the right access to our incubatees as well as our investors and play a catalytical role in shaping the fintech businesses of the future. Our aim is to create solid businesses that can draw on the global network horizons that we have,” Tanul said.
The incubator follows a strict selection criterion for the start-ups it intakes. Once onboard, start-ups get support in the form of solutions like mentorship, operational intervention, funding access, and physical location to help their incubated focus on their core competence and create a sound and solid business.
PS: The story has been updated with the names of startups incubated in Afthonia.
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