JA BANK signs MoU with GIFT City to strengthen the FinTech ecosystem

By Leandra Monteiro

GIFT City has announced that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with YES BANK to strengthen the FinTech ecosystem in GIFT City.

The agreement was signed by GIFT City’s Managing Director and CEO Tapan Ray and YES BANK’s Managing Director and CEO Prashant Kumar in Gandhinagar, Gujarat. As part of the MoU, GIFT City and YES BANK plan to promote FinTech innovation and a FinTech accelerator to encourage, promote and support FinTech start-ups. The MoU also entails implementation of programs related to international financial services, promotion of GIFT City as a FinTech hub in India and exposing young innovators in the FinTech domain to opportunities in India.

GIFT City and YES BANK will collaborate to organize roadshows, seminars, knowledge series, webinars and/or conferences to create awareness about the GIFT City FinTech regime and promote GIFT City as the FinTech hub in India to house start-ups and new market entrants.

GIFT City and YES BANK will also join forces to design and implement innovation and entrepreneurship programs such as boot camps, hackathons and incubation and acceleration in the FinTech domain, focused on areas such as payments, lending, financial planning, insurance technology, regulatory technology, among others asset management and trade processing.

After the signing of the MoU, Tapan Ray, Managing Director and CEO, GIFT City said, “GIFT City is fast emerging as the fintech hub of India and we are delighted to join hands with YES BANK, one of the pioneers in the fintech space. India has a high adoption rate of fintech globally. Through this MoU, we aim to provide a robust ecosystem to encourage and support fintech startups at GIFT City.

Commenting on the development, Prashant Kumar, MD & CEO, YES BANK said, “JA BANK IFSC Banking Unit (IBU) is very pleased to further strengthen its strategic partnership with GIFT City. Having been the first bank to go live on GIFT IFSC in October 2015, the bank has continuously invested in expanding its IBU franchise with significant balance sheet and intellectual capital.We are now extremely excited to partner with GIFT City on this highly strategic initiative to enable the startup ecosystem to leverage the world-class infrastructure, fiscal and other incentives provided by GIFT City.

YES BANK has been a leader in the digital payments space, driving one in three digital payments in the country, and we want to leverage this leadership status and our preferred banking partner status to the Indian startup ecosystem, its unicorns and soonicorns, and help attract global as well as local affiliates of GIFT City. We are confident that with such a focused approach, we will witness significant momentum in building GIFT City as a preferred home for the highly strategic Indian startup ecosystem.”