SBI to aid early-stage start-ups and help the Bengaluru ecosystem flourish

The last few months have seen large corporate enter the start-up industry by offering consultancy services and going further ahead to participate actively in funding rounds. The State Bank of India is the latest to join the ranks of such companies to enter Bengaluru’s fertile start-up ecosystem. This move has been seen as a window for the corporation to match up to tech-savvy competitors and fit in the new financial services industry which is going through a technological makeover.

Reports have claimed that last month, SBI Chairman Arundhati Bhattacharya attended a start-up discussion to learn about new technologies and trends taking over the banking and finance industry.

Numerous start-ups have already pitched before an SBI team that consisted of two board members of the company. Some of these start-ups were Novopay, en-Stage, Happay, Vote4Cash, ProbeEquity and Capital Float.

“We were surprised to see how these people are developing/working on technologies to solve some of the problems we didn’t even know existed. It was very interesting to see how pointsolutions by startups have the potential to impact the banking industry.”  SBI CIO Mrutyunjay Mahapatra said.

The fact that new age financial services like online gateways, payment banks, mobile wallets and digital currencies like Bitcoins are becoming popular day by day and are being fuelled by the start-up ecosystem – traditional Indian conglomerates are now opening their eyes to the potential start-up industry by offering incubation and accelerator programmes.
SBI has tied up with iSPIRIT to get itself used to the major technological shift that is occurring in global industries and how the financial services in India are being affected by such developments. While this is surely a step towards the future, it would definitely take time before there are any significant results that can be highlighted.

(With inputs from The Economic Times)