Fintech startups expectations from Budget 2022: As Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is all set to present her third Union Budget on February 1, 2022.
Here’s what the Fintech startups expects from Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman:
Akash Sinha, Co-Founder & CEO, Cashfree Payments:
The upcoming Union Budget holds high significance, as the Indian economy takes strides towards its complete recovery and growth post the pandemic. This imperative will be greatly supported by enhanced financial inclusion and digitalization which makes it crucial that appropriate measures are announced in this regard. It is heartening to see the Government’s recognition of fintechs’ ability to reach out to the unserved and underserved sections of the country, as evident from multiple initiatives in recent times. To further scale financial inclusion, it is essential that the government’s support is directed towards boosting digital infrastructure and innovation.
Additionally, policy and regulatory efforts should be aimed at creating a favorable investment environment. While ensuring an appropriate degree of regulation, easing the investments in unlisted private businesses, especially in non-metro cities is crucial for convenient capital flow to technology start-ups towards their healthy growth. In the same respect, reducing the entry limits for Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs) and syndicates, aligning with the Government’s allocation to priority sectors, will ensure fund infusion to businesses.
Madhusudan Ekambaram, Co-Founder & CEO, KreditBee & Co-Founder, Fintech Association for Consumer Empowerment (FACE):
The Union Budget 2022-23 is a crucial one, considering economy’s efforts to fully recover and set on a growth path. In this imperative, focus on financial inclusion is very significant. The Government’s recognition of the enhanced operations and effectiveness of fintechs to reach out to the unserved and underserved population, as evident from multiple initiatives in recent times, is encouraging. We expect this emphasis to become more prominent in the upcoming budget. It is essential that the Government announce measures to ease the liquidity flow to NBFCs and fintechs. Further, while ensuring the right degree of regulation, relaxation of norms and tax liberalization to some extent will allow the fintech sector to boost their reach and operate effectively to offer innovative credit solutions to the borrowers. Focus should also be on enhancing the country’s digitization bid, to empower the consumers to avail various credit products.
Lalit Mehta, Co-founder & CEO, Decimal Technologies:
2021 was a transformative year for the fintech industry with significant technology adoption in financial services. While traditional lending still accounts as a major credit provider in India, digital lending has picked up pace with the ease of process, less paperwork and use of alternate data sources, making it a key enabler for the MSME sector.
Fintech players have already shown willingness to work with the government to curb the menace of the illegal digital lending apps. Budget 2022 should introduce regulations that will help in greater credit access to MSMEs and curbing illegal activities while building trust in the digital lending process for the last mile.
In line with the government’s goal of creating a digital economy, introducing credit schemes will incentivise the sector and help in providing timely credit to MSMEs that have struggled due to the lack of credit accessibility through traditional means of lending which has directly affected their business opportunity.
Vineet Tyagi, Global CTO, Biz2X:
The pandemic that shook the entire world has brought immense innovation by startups and new-age technology companies and it is quite evident that the trend will only pick up in the year 2022 as well. In the spirit of tech innovation and digital transformation, we hope, through the union budget 2022-23, the government will bring game-changing reforms, new policies, and regulations that will offer relief and tax sops to MSMEs and the overall startup ecosystem.
With the pandemic providing the boost to digital payments, there is an increased need for revolutionary advancements of end-to-end infrastructure as fragmentary solutions may not sustain in the long run. In 2022, we expect that the government to focus more on the development of digital infrastructure to enhance customer experiences, credit quality, and streamline the growth of financial entities in FY22-23.
Aditya Damani, Founder, Credit Fair:
The government needs to play a fine balancing act between spurring economic growth while consolidating its finances. We expect Credit Fair’s focus sectors of Healthcare, Housing and Education to get policy support from the government as they’re key to improving our social infrastructure as well as for job creation. The LIC IPO and other measures to raise revenues will be crucial for the government. We hope it’s a fiscally responsible budget since inflation has been rising and that could lead to higher interest rates which would be a headwind for fintechs.
Subdued interest rates especially in Government bonds and Fixed deposits will be needed to spur capex, SMEs and fintech lending. As a creator of Alternative Assets we hope the Budget will nudge individuals to diversify their portfolio and enable pension funds to invest in a wider range of fixed income or equity assets that have been created by fintechs.
Amit Nigam, COO & Executive Director, BANKIT:
Nowadays, people are looking for more convenient banking services. As intriguing as it is, Start-ups and FinTech industry are quite handy to the public. Those who have comprehended the accelerated needs of not only the unbanked population but also of the underbanked population hold the brightest of future in the FinTech industry. The expected outcome of the efforts of FinTech industries is to make people rely on uncomplicated, safe, and one-stop-solution services. FinTech industry is based on technology and innovation. With a huge investment on IT infrastructure and manpower, we are expecting tax relaxations on these investments.
Rajeev Agrawal, CEO, Innoviti Payment:
2022 is projected to be an exciting year for the Indian FinTech industry. Timely and targeted policy initiatives last year gave this sector the much-required boost paving the road for tremendous innovation. I anticipate that the Union Budget 2022 will play a supporting and helpful role.
Some initiatives that can support this momentum include allowing credit on UPI, mandating transparent publishing of reliability rates of various bank UPI and card processing systems, permitting tokenization in offline payments, liberalizing the tax regime for small merchants by offering a reduction in GST for adopting to digital payments and expanding the digital infrastructure of the country to include transactions in the absence of real-time connectivity. The formation of a dedicated FinTech division at the RBI is a positive move, and we look forward to the RBI not just encouraging FinTech innovations, but also identifying and addressing the challenges and opportunities that come with it.
Mahesh Shukla, CEO & Founder, PayMe India:
We believe that the upcoming Budget will give a push to the Fintech Industry towards an affluent future and will strengthen the existing financing system. Budget 2022 is expected to include tangible steps which will make conducting business more accessible, and it is anticipated that the government will investigate how low-cost financing for entrepreneurs may be made available. The new Budget may implicit flexible corporate laws, which will be a boon for the Fintech Industry.
Anurag Sinha, Cofounder & CEO, OneScore & OneCard:
The Fintech space has not only accelerated the ‘Digital India’ initiative by years, but introduced an array of new-age platforms powered by super apps offering multiple services through few swipes on a mobile – significantly influencing digital adoption across the spectrum including payments and credit.
While the pandemic triggered a steep rise in demand for consumer credit, it also highlighted the lack of credit penetration in the country. However, given the rise of smartphone usage, shift to digital avenues and the increasing number of digitally-savvy consumers, licensed digital banks can effectively enhance reach and bridge this gap. A digital bank license regime will therefore enable fintechs to leverage their tech-stack optimally to create credit products and user experience which will redefine the investment and consumption landscape in the country.
Rohit Garg, CEO & Co-founder, SmartCoin:
The fintech landscape is changing tremendously on account of some significant measures. The allotment of Rs 1,500 crore for a new fund in Budget 2021 has further accelerated growth by incentivising businesses to offer digital payments to assist fintech businesses in thriving in the ecosystem. Last year’s budget was a testament to how the industry proved its worth during the COVID-19 crisis. However, there is still a long way to go with many more difficulties that must be addressed quickly and effectively. In recent years, digital lending start-ups have proven to be a huge asset to the country.
The Union budget 2022 is all set to be announced soon. We eagerly anticipate increased spending on liquidity and guarantee programmes to help improve loan supply and make NBFCs more capital accessible. The NBFC sector is likely to grow more modestly this year and new capital is expected to be supplied to support this expansion. We look forward to working with a new era of NBFC/FinTechs beginning this year in which the government promotes more banks and larger NBFCs while also giving credit access to individuals who are yet not served by the banks.