Digio – Helping fintech to go paperless
Fintech – technology-enabled financial services – is unlocking huge value in all its sub-segments of payments, lending, insurance & wealth etc.
According to the World Bank’s report on fintech, the two fundamental drivers of fintech globally are ubiquitous connectivity and low-cost computing. Connectivity and data exchange allow a product or service to be broken up into distinct components i.e. atomisation, which can be offered by different providers and recombined in different ways. The report uses the example of account opening which has moved from a bank branch using its front and back offices to a range of configurations with the account being opened by a bank or an e-commerce partner application, with ID verification being performed by one provider and the ledger sitting on another provider’s outsourced IT infrastructure. The atomisation, unbundling and rebundling of financial services through APIs is allowing newer business models.
In India, this process is happening even faster as the government and regulators have encouraged digital public infrastructure (DPI) goods. Elevation Capital’s report highlights the world class DPIs and enabling regulatory environment as tailwinds that have underpinned the fintech growth story in India.
The DPIs help in all stages – eKYC enabling, epayments engaging and data empowering – the fintech user’s journey.
However, the DPIs are not enough by themselves. DPIs are protocols on which businesses have to build pipes. It doesn’t make sense for everyone to build these pipes. That’s the insight that led to the formation of Digio.
In this episode of From Scratch, the two co-founders of Digio share their startup journey. They were both working on the problem independently when they were introduced to each other through an investor. Together they were able to home in on the key issue – going paperless – at every stage of any transaction.
The duo outline each of the main services –
- Digital identity – enabling eKYC
- Digital documents – allowing forms
- Digital signing – eliminating the wet signature
- Digital payments – through eNACH
- Consented data – through account aggregation
The duo shared that while their services have wide applicability, their first set of clients came from fintech.
The company has been growing revenue profitably – a rare achievement in the fintech industry.
We hope you enjoy the back-to-basics insights from this episode of From Scratch.
