About Finnovatica

The program has 3 stages

Genesis

• We launch the program at your campus 
• Register on this page individually or as a team*
• Login and upload your ideas in the form of a 1 pager Concept Note.
• Teams with the most promising ideas will be given a certificate and assigned a business mentor from within the organization.

Appathon

• Selected teams work on refining their ideas with the help of business mentors
• Prepare a detailed presentation and a prototype (wireframes, cardboard models, etc.)
• Present both at the Appathon event of Finnovatica in Mumbai to an eminent jury panel.
• Selected teams win cash award*

Final Arena

• Qualified teams work on a project development plan.
• Financial resources, timelines and milestones to be mutually agreed upon
• Cash award* to the team post project plan approval.
• Develop the project under supervision of business mentors.
• Demonstrate the project at the Grand Finale
• Chance to win Grand Cash Awards; support for teams interested in entrepreneurship

*Terms and Conditions apply

Program Schedule

Currently, registrations for this programme are closed.

Awards and Recognition*

• Certificate of Appreciation for every student who clears the Genesis round.
• Up to INR 30,000 cash award to every team which clears the Appathon Round
• Up to INR 20,000 cash award to every team whose project plans are accepted
• Up to INR 15,000 cash award to every team for achieving a milestone
• Winners of the Final Arena stand to Grand Cash Awards upto INR 25,00,000

*Terms and Conditions apply

Thought Starters

Fullerton India Credit Company is a Non-Banking Financial Company (NBFC). We aim to help customers with a wide range of lending products such as commercial loans, vehicle loans, personal loans, loan against property, SME loans, and so on. Unlike Banks, NBFCs don't accept deposits (savings account/current account) from their customers.

Lending has been a primary facet of our society, ever since the days of money-lenders. Every individual or company looks for a viable credit solution so as to gain the best possible advantage in his/her current situation. For instance, a salaried person may prefer purchasing a vehicle on loan rather than risk using up all of his savings at once.

Similarly, companies in the MSME sector often find themselves facing hurdles due to non-availability of working capital. At the same time, being small players or in rural areas, they may not be able to easily access lenders who could meet their needs. Alternately, corporates may face issues in balancing their financing and accounting hurdles.

At Fullerton India, our primary focus is on using the latest technologies to develop solutions and redefine the business of lending. Can you think of mobile applications which could help us acquire more clients for loans, improve the disbursement process, help us communicate with consumers better, reduce paperwork, etc?

Here is a set of problem statements. Please note that these are merely pointers, and other promising ideas pertaining to technology innovation will also be welcomed.

1. Loan Processing
   When processing loan applications, financial institutions require companies to transmit a number of documents. These documents need to be submitted in original version (paper) and witnessed by a lawyer/notary. The process of this paper based documentation is cumbersome, resource-heavy and therefore expensive. As a result, small companies are underserved because this process is expensive. Develop a platform and/or standard that would enable digital exchange, signature and authentication of notary documents. This platform may also be used for board resolutions, credit facilities as well as other forms of contracts.
2. Passwords/User Authentication
   Customers often rely on weak or common passwords across services as they struggle to keep track of complex passwords and authentication methods. Other than passwords, customers have to use many authentication tokens, each for a different purpose. Propose a different approach to authentication that does not depend on passwords, cumbersome 2FA methods or would not require financial institutions to invest separately in authentication infrastructure.
3. Mobile Gaming
   Parents feel that either they or their children are spending a lot of money on mobile apps including gaming apps. Create a free-to-play mobile game (with in-app purchases). The proceeds of in-app purchases would be placed into an investment vehicle and/or a personal account. After a certain amount of funds have been accumulated, the Financial Institution running the game would provide tools that would enable customers to reinvest and manage these funds
4. Non-traditional data sources for effective underwriting
   Existing credit underwriting models do not leverage new sources of qualitative and quantitative information, both for individuals and small-and-medium enterprises (“SMEs”). Find a solution that would leverage non-traditional data sources to selectively refine existing under-writing models (rather than re-write them). This would enable Financial Institutions to lend to new customers that they would have rejected before.
5. Innovative solutions to promote financial literacy among young adults
   Costs of living in Asia have risen, pension systems in most parts of Asia are not effective, and inflation is high. If a young adult doesn't invest for the future, they may find themselves not being able to support retirement when it finally comes. The key inhibitor in reluctance to invest is low financial literacy, leading to conservatism in managing personal assets Develop a creative and engaging tool, game or app that provides basic financial literacy education at strategic points in early life education or young adult life.
6. Inventory management for SME and MSME's
   SME/MSME clients form a large existing/potential customer base for FICC. In the rural and semi urban areas these individuals continue to rely on paper-based methods to reconcile payments and accounts, manage their inventory/orders, manage supply of raw material and the overall supply chain. Develop a full product suite for SMEs to manage their purchase orders, invoices and cash flows, the solution should be taking into account key factors like the education level and preferred languages of the target segment.
7. Digital Wallets
   Technologists expect 2016 to be the year of the mobile wallets. The offerings among current wallets are very similar and undifferentiated. From a consumer perspective, even people having 5 to 6 cards per person comprising of mainly debit and credit cards are interested in utilizing the mobile/smartphones for secured mobile financial services. Find an idea to enhance the value proposition of the mobile wallet to create customer stickiness, promote mobile centric lifestyle and give individuals a compelling reason to stay with the mobile wallet ecosystem. Some suggestions could include loyalty, couponing/discounts, real time redemptions that add further value beyond the simple payment solution.
8. Reports
   Financial institutions produce thousands of reports for their customers. Although the production of these reports is automated, the translation of these into the customer's local language is manual, costly and time consuming. Develop a semi-automated translation solution for Financial Institutions that enables efficient review and workflow validation.
9. Data Privacy
   Institutions could derive great insights from overlaying data from different types of data sources. Data sharing will drive innovations in Big Data. However data privacy and security discourages firms from sharing and exchanging data. Develop a solution that would mask confidential information, attribute data a common key so that information can be aggregated and exchanged without breaching customer confidential information.

Some broad areas participants may focus on for delivering the solutions to the above

1. Mobile Applications: With the widespread use of smart phones across the country (including rural areas), mobile applications is one of the best channels to reach out to customers.
2. Web Applications: A recent study has indicated that while mobile apps are here to stay, certain applications can only be effective when used via the web. As a result, a few popular e-commerce companies are speculating on taking down their mobile apps and remaining a pure web service.
3. Social Media Applications: Social media is becoming one of the most powerful channels in today's world. Applications such as Whatsapp, FaceBook, SnapChat, etc. have reduced the world into a tiny place. Leveraging these applications to reach out to customers, and enable them in performing transactions (individually or as a group) could be the next big thing.
4. Big Data Analytics: Personalized services can only be provided to customers when service organizations have sufficient information available and powerful algorithms to make intelligent analyses. Developing products which can perform such tasks instantaneously by analyzing data from a vast number of resources dynamically could raise customer service levels to heights which had never even been imagined before.
5. Cloud Computing: As the world gets larger, the cost of infrastructure rises exponentially too. This realization has given birth to cloud computing. Apart from this, cloud computing also enables users to access data anywhere, anytime and in a convenient fashion.
6. Near Field Communications: This is a very popular form of data transfer, especially due to the advent of smart phones. However, security issues persist due to which many organizations refrain from developing this technology for conducting a secure transaction.
7. Cognitive Computing & Machine Learning: This technology deals with self-learning systems which grow more efficient due to data mining, pattern recognition and natural language processing similar to the way humans think and understand.
8. Integrated Design: This is a very popular field, which has wide applications across a variety of spheres. This area deals with developing products (digital or otherwise) with flawless designs that are not only perceivable by every human being, but are also quick to implement, easy to maintain, and have universal applications.
9. Do-it-Yourself Enablers: Like ATMs have revolutionized the banking industry, more such kiosks or devices which can help customers perform transactions without the requirement of human intervention are being sought after. Developing machines with an effective design which can help any and every kind of customer across all markets in India perform simple tasks without the need of human intervention could greatly help NBFCs improve their productivity.
10. Chat Bots: The use of artificial chat agents is widely used today to help customers answer any basic questions they may have. These chat agents are powered with algorithms that use natural language processing and data mining so that they become more efficient with increased usage, and interaction with a chat bot can almost resemble a human.
11. Optical Character Recognition: OCR Technologies can be effectively used to convert different types of documents, such as scanned paper documents, PDF files or images captured by a digital camera into editable and searchable data. Developing applications that can seamlessly use these technologies to minimize the need for manual data entry and fraud detection will help NBFCs achieve higher efficiency in credit originations.

Finnovatica 2018

Please click here; to view the results of Finnovatica 2018

Finnovatica 2017

Please click here to view the results of Finnovatica 2017

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