The International Fintech Innovation Hub --- being set up with the assistance of Asian Development Bank (ADB) --- in GIFT City will become functional by January 2025 after a start-up accelerator and an institute, aimed at creating a fintech talent pool, become operational, officials said on Wednesday.
“There are more than 100 fintech firms in GIFT City today. The total employment has now crossed 25,000 and in the next five years we plan to touch 1.5 lakh employees. About 90 per cent of this talent pool needed will be related to finance or technology,” Saurabh Singhal, Chief Commercial Officer & Chief FinTech Officer of GIFT City told businessline on the sidelines of the ‘Global Fintech Fest 2024’.
“To promote more fintech companies to come to GIFT City, we have tied up with ADB to create an international fintech innovation hub. This hub will have three distinct pillars. We will set up an international fintech institute and we are in the process of recruiting an institute of an international repute with an Indian partner to come and train people on fintech and create a talent pool,” he added. In February 2024, ADB had approved a $23 million loan for fintech education, research and innovation at GIFT City.
Research & Development
Singhal said the innovation hub will also have a fintech incubator and an accelerator for promoting new start-ups in the fintech space from GIFT City. The third pillar of the hub is a research centre to promote fintech research and development. “This will enable us to create talent, new start-ups and research which will all feed into this financial ecosystem at GIFT City,” he added.
GIFT City is in the process of closing the RFP for the accelerator and is expecting to award the same by September. “We are hoping to start both the institute and start-up accelerator in January next year,” Singhal added.
Speaking about the possible fintech courses that will be offered by the new institute, he said, “GIFT is fairly unique due to the cross-border use cases. We have realised that the native talent produced in the current university system is not catering to the demands. The courses that will be rolled out by the new institute will be focussed on cross-border financial services use cases. There will be courses on Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, which are the future of fintech. These are issues which we will work on when we select the partner.” The GIFT City official also said that the courses offered in GIFT City will be unique and not a replica of courses offered by campuses in India.