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Creating a multi-stakeholder partnership to set up a Lab for capital & technical support to Fintechs
MSC helped to set up a “Financial Inclusion Lab” that identifies, mentors and brings to scale early-stage FinTech startups. These startups address the issues faced by the underserved communities by developing innovative and technology-enabled solutions. So far, over 40 startups have been supported, impacting over a million customer, and 1000+MSMEs. Four major social investors fund the initiative with committed funding of USD 9.5 mn. The project demonstrates MSC’s ability to structure and implement multi-stakeholder projects, especially those involving the investors and service providers (startups), to achieve a developmental outcome.
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MSC launched the ‘Financial Inclusion Lab’ in India—a one-of-its-kind incubation program that aims to address financial exclusion. The lab will provide intensive consulting, catalytic support, prototyping capital, and customized services to early-stage FinTech start-ups that focus on the low- and middle-income (LMI) segments.
The USD-9.5-million initiative will identify and bring to scale early-stage FinTech start-ups that help LMI families. The start-ups will enable access to and use of appropriate financial products and services, such as savings, credit, and insurance for LMI households. The Lab is part of IIMA-CIIE’s Bharat Inclusion Initiative (BII), a program that incubates and supports start-ups that develop technologies to benefit under-served communities in the areas of livelihoods, financial inclusion, health, and education.
The Bharat Inclusion Initiative receives support from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, and the Omidyar Network. The overall initiative would channel approximately USD 25 million over the next 3-4 years to back start-ups that use the ongoing digital transformation in India to create access to services for hundreds of millions of families.
At the time of writing, the Financial Inclusion Lab was gearing up to incubate six cohorts covering about 60 start-ups over a period of four years.