Deadline: 11 September 2023
The Swanari TechSprint is a flagship program of the Reserve Bank Innovation Hub (RBIH) – a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of India, which provides a platform to conceptualise, develop and support innovations in technology that enhance access, usage and quality of financial services for all women in India.
RBIH aims to create an ecosystem of fintechs and tech providers who are bridging the gender divide in financial services responsibly and transparently.
The TechSprint will provide all particiants with:
- Platform: Unique opportunity to work on women-centric financial solutions.
- Mentorship: Access to a pool of mentors and industry experts.
- Exposure: Exposure to VC’s, Incubators and Impact Investors
- Network: Winners will get access to Banks, POCs and Pilot Opportunities.
Problem Statements for the Swanari Techsprint
- Customer Segment Focus
- Preferred segment: Informal women-owned businesses including but not limited to – street vendors, shopkeepers, traders, micro and small manufacturers or other micro-service providers.
- Customer persona: An Indian women-owned micro to medium-sized enterprise, a thin-file or no-file entrepreneur with minimal formal credit history, who has minimal or no collateral to offer and therefore opts for more expensive informal or semi-formal sources to finance her business.
- Geography: No restrictions
- Credit requirements: In the range of Rs. 50,000 to Rs. 10,00,000 to operate and grow her business.
- Potential areas for innovation to enhance credit access to women
- Optimising loan originations, approvals and sanctions to ensure minimal manual touch points.
- Convenient, easy to use, Whatsapp/ voice-based, vernacular-friendly features to ease of applying for credit.
- Solutions that utilise alternative data based credit assessment and sanctions – eg. Mobile Data, TELCO Data, UPI transaction histories etc.
- Solutions that utilise emerging data platforms and underwriting tools (for eg. profiling based on the GST number and history) to facilitate rule based credit.
- Solutions that enable women to offer alternate collateral.
- Solutions to enable faster Turn Around Times (TATs) with minimal manual intervention.
Benefits
- Potential Benefits to the Winners (Top Three Startups)
- Access to upcoming sprint/s at CIIE.CO
- Fast Track Investment Committee (IC) for Pre-Seed Investments through CIIE.CO
- Incubation support at CIIE.CO & follow-on seed funding assistance.
- Access to Masterclasses at CIIE.CO
- Mentoring Hours with CIIE.CO & access to its expert network.
- Potential access to paid POC programs with Banks, with access to necessary Data and APIs.
- Potential Benefits for all Participants
- Visibility on the RBIH Swanari Website.
- Visibility on RBIH and CIIE.CO’s Social Media handles and newsletters.
- Be a part of an exclusive community of startups building for women.
Who can Apply
- MVP, prototype or early revenue stage startups.
- Existing technology service providers or companies with solutions that can be adapted to the specific needs of women entrepreneurs.
- If someone have an idea or prototype for any other gender intentional problem statement they are to apply.
For more information, visit RBIH.
