The Weekly Wrap: all you need to know by Friday COB | Oct 21st

By Puja Sharma

The Weekly Wrap is published every Friday and recaps the week’s main stories and deals, as well as upcoming events and announcements. For Prime subscribers only.

The Big Story

KPMG reports that venture capital investments in India were ‘quiet’ in the September ending quarter, both in terms of deal count and value.

India’s FinTech sector was the most popular investment area during the quarter, followed by e-commerce, social commerce, and gaming. Agricultural technology also attracted a growing number of deals in Q2’22; although most of these deals occurred at very early deal stages, deal sizes are expected to rise as the sector matures.  A total of $2.7 billion in VC investments were made in the June-September quarter of this year. The figure is significantly lower than the $15.9 billion recorded for the same period last year. It has however been falling since Q3 of 2021 since deal values peaked. Although the Q3 deal value in 2022 fell sharply as compared to Q2’s $7.4 billion, it did not fall dramatically sequentially.

There has been a softening of VC investment across most industries in India during this quarter. According to Nitish Poddar, partner and national leader of private equity at KPMG India, FinTech investment continues to buck this trend.

Deals of the week

• CLOWD9 launches as a cloud-native, decentralized payments processing platform
• Moove raises £15m; aims to finance 10,000 EVs in London
• Capital on Tap raises £110m from the credit facility
• KCB and TerraPay partner to enhance cross-border remittances
• Visa partners with Thunes to expand Visa Direct’s reach to 1.5b digital wallets
• MoI and Lulu Money collaborate to deploy digital KYC service
• NatWest to launch £120m BaaS business in the UK with Vodeno
• Centurion Invest and ImpalaPay partner to empower digital assets payments across Africa

Be on the lookout for

Sycamore to host Inter-FinTech gaming contest to boost Industry collaboration. The first edition of the Fintech FIFA Tournament (FINFA 1.0) is set to hold in October 2022. This video game tournament is organized by the online peer-to-peer (P2P) lending and financial inclusion startup Sycamore and features prominent Nigerian Fintech startups including Flutterwave, Cowrywise, Kuda, Patricia, Trove, Mono, GetEquity, Periculum, Tap, Credpal, Identitypass, Grey, Allawee, Youverify, Bundle, Softcom, Arca, Zoropay, Mono, Fincra, and Clan (formerly known as Creditclan). Plans are also in place to allow for in-person and online viewership of the event.

The 1st round of the FINFA event, described as the “biggest FinTech gaming event ever” by Sycamore, is scheduled to hold on the 22nd of October.

Events & Appointments

• The Cedar-IBSi Summit, with two distinct conferences in Dubai and Muscat, looks to explore this phenomenon, with perspectives drawn from industry experts across global banks and technology players sharing their views on a wide range of topics, including NextGen Banking, B2B Payments, Redefining CX, Customer Journeys, and Leveraging Cloud, amongst others. Digital Banking & Payments Summit | November 3, 2022, Shangri-La, Dubai. NextGen Banking & Technology Summit | November 24, 2022, Grand Hyatt, Muscat.
• Organised by the Financial Services and the Treasury Bureau (FSTB) and InvestHK, and co-organised by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA), the Insurance Authority (IA), and the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC), HKFW is set to attract more than 20,000 attendees and over 3 million views online from over 80 economies.