Chennai, Aug 21 (PTI): Cashing in on the growth of the financial technology software industry, Software Technology Parks of India set up by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology inaugurated a Centre of Excellence “FinBlue” here on Tuesday.
The centre located at the existing office of the STPI here would provide resource in terms of mentoring, technology support and funding to startups in financial technology, STPI director-general Omkar Rai said.
Pitching big
The move was to augment the existing ecosystem focusing on accelerating nascent startups in the financial technology into full-fledged companies, he said. “This is a collaborative effort between STPI, government of Tamil Nadu. This is to promote financial technology. This whole exercise is gaining ground,” he told reporters here. Polaris founder and the Intellect Design Arena managing director Arun Jain would be chief mentor for the startup under the Centre of Excellence. It is being set up with an investment of Rs 23 crore.
That includes contribution from government of India, government of Tamil Nadu, investors, he said. Rai said the domestic financial technology software industry was expected to touch $2.4 billion by 2020 from current $1.2 billion. Noting that there were over 560 million people employed in over 2,000 financial technology firms in the country, he said it was offering a huge potential for the sector. The objective of the FinTech Centre of Excellence was to provide resource in terms of mentoring, technology support and funding for FinTech startups. The Centre of Excellence was also to reach financial technology volume of $73 billion in 2020, he said.
New incubation centre
Aimed at benefiting the industry-academia partnership, the Software Technology Parks of India set up by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology on Tuesday said it was establishing an incubation centre that would entail investments of Rs 40 crore, a top official said. To set up the STPI-IT (information technology) incubation centre at the Government College of Technology, Coimbatore, the government has alloted three acres of land, STPI director-general Omkar Rai said here.
“The investments expected will be Rs 40 crore. This will cater to the needs of IT, IT-enabled services. It will also give a boost to entrepreneurship and exports from the region,” he told reporters here. For setting up the incubation centre, a memorandum of understanding was signed in the presence of secretary to department of higher education Mangat Ram Sharam and Omkar Rai.
The centre would facilitate and support the entrepreneurs of the state to explore global opportunity in the IT and IT-enabled services. “STPI will create a state-of-the-art incubation centre for providing raw and plug-in-play incubation facility to the industry especially for start-ups and entrepreneurs” he said. The initiative would further strengthen the industry-academia relationship and also offer a platform for “Future-Ready Technology”, especially in Coimbatore. With the facility, the employability skills can be achieved by transforming graduates into professionals by conducting special trainings in block chain, artificial intelligence, machine learning and internet of things, he said.