The coastal city of Vizag in southern India is an emerging fintech hub. Photo credit: Ravikiran Rao (Flickr)
Four months ago, the world’s largest fintech hub Lattice80, spanning 30,000 square feet, opened in Singapore’s Central Business District. It aimed to help fintech startups take advantage of Singapore’s legal infrastructure and access to global investors as a fintech and trading hub.
Yesterday, Marvelstone – the private investment group behind the project – signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the government of Andhra Pradesh, a southern state in India, to open another Lattice80 in the coastal city of Vizag. This will be the first Lattice80 center to open outside Singapore.
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The state of Andhra Pradesh was split into two in 2014 following a long agitation. Ten of its 23 districts, which comprised the former princely state of the Nizam of Hyderabad, were carved out to form a new state of Telangana.
The chief minister of the new, truncated state of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, who was earlier credited with creating ‘Cyberabad’, is now on a mission to build Vizag into a tech hub. One of the initiatives is the creation of Vizag’s Fintech Valley, where startups, investors, and financial institutions can collaborate with the government’s regulatory support.
The new state of Andhra Pradesh is also a startup.
The Andhra Pradesh chief minister’s special advisor for tech, J A Chowdary, gave a glimpse of the road ahead at a meeting with fintech players on the sidelines of the Fintegrate conclave in India’s financial capital of Mumbai last week. “The new state of Andhra Pradesh is also a startup,” he told them.
One of the initiatives to attract innovators is a million-dollar prize for any fintech startup in the world that wins an annual challenge. The road shows for this year’s competition will go to three Indian cities as well as global fintech cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, and London. The demo day for the finalists, and the award for the winner, will be in Vizag in October.
The state government has also allocated US$75 million for a fintech fund, and is looking for corporate and institutional partners to expand it as well as help with its deployment. The plan is to have a fintech accelerator in Vizag, which will serve as a gateway for startups to become eligible for the fund.
In an informal chat with Tech in Asia at the Mumbai event, Chowdary made no secret of his hope that recent protectionist moves and visa curbs in the West would prompt Indian techies to return home – provided India can create a conducive environment for them to work, innovate, and do business.
See: India’s pain and gain from US curbs on H-1B visas
AP bitcoins
Lattice80 and Andhra Pradesh government officials after signing an agreement to open a new center in Vizag. Photo credit: Marvelstone.
Chowdary said the Andhra Pradesh government as well as banks and insurance companies in the state are developing a “use case library” for fintech startups to target. One idea is to launch “AP bitcoins” for transactions like property registrations.
The government has also signed MoUs with five global companies to set up academies in fintech domains like analytics, security, and blockchain. The MoU with Marvelstone to set up Lattice80 in Vizag’s Fintech Valley is a continuation of this build-up.
With Singapore as our base, we hope to reach out to new markets for fintech startups.
“In November last year, we set up Lattice80 in Singapore to support the government’s smart nation vision. Now, we are happy to be part of the new Vizag-MAS (Monetary Authority of Singapore) partnership to support Fintech Valley Vizag. The goal is to bring together industry, academia, and investors to build the fintech ecosystem,” says Marvelstone Group CEO Gina Heng on the MoU with the government of Andhra Pradesh.
As part of the agreement, Lattice80 will train 1,000 professionals in India every year in key new technologies such as mobile payments, blockchain, and big data. The Vizag center is expected to open in the third quarter of this year.
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“With Singapore as our base, we hope to reach out to new markets for fintech startups to develop and collaborate. We are very happy to start our overseas journey in Vizag Fintech Valley,” says Marvelstone Group managing partner Joel Ko.
Lattice80 objectives include helping fintech startups to grow, supporting corporates and financial institutions in adopting innovation, and bridging gaps between the private and public sectors.
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