IIM Sambalpur, VISA Hold Workshop To Empower Fintech Companies

Indian Institute of Management Sambalpur (IIM-S), one the new generation IIMs of the country, hosted an enriching workshop for the aspiring FinTech start-ups in collaboration with Visa on Sunday. The workshop also marked the commencement of the Odisha Chapter of Visa Everywhere Initiative (VEI) India 2020 from IIM Sambalpur.

On this effort of hosting the workshop at IIM –S, Prof. Mahadeo Jaiswal, Director, IIM Sambalpur said, “At IIM Sambalpur, we practice Innovation, Integrity and Inclusion as our institute’s core operating value and due to this we are known as IIM 3.0. The research focus of IIM Sambalpur is around 3 Ds (Digitalisation, De-carbonisation and Democratisation of Business) and thus workshop in collaboration with Visa was perfectly aligned to our Digitalisation research strategy as well as to our core operating value of innovation and inclusiveness.”

“We are sure that such industry led knowledge exchange programmes and competition-based initiatives especially like this in the financial technology domain will boost up the level of confidence among the budding start-ups and influence a culture of Entrepreneurship among the future business leaders of the country,” he added.

The workshop, conducted by Govind Nair, Associate Director, Innovation & Design at VISA, India and South Asia and Kaustubh Pandey, Government Engagement Leader, VISA, witnessed key entrepreneurs and leaders in the FinTech space sharing their respective entrepreneurial journeys, the challenges faced and the mitigation approaches adopted before an astute audience comprising of aspiring FinTech start-up members, academicians, researchers, business administrators and management students.

FinTech start-ups can sign up for VEI and register for any of the three business challenges. Post registering, each FinTech will get to access Visa APIs, build solutions for the challenges they have chosen and develop a proof of concept that highlights the salience of their unique solutions.

Participating FinTech companies will also get a chance to be mentored by senior Visa executives and product leads through a Mentorship Program which will help them leverage Visa’s technology & business-related competences for their solutions.

Successively, FinTech companies will be invited to pitch their solutions along with the Proof of Concept to an elite jury of industry experts. Nine finalists shortlisted will then participate in the Finale of the Visa Everywhere Initiative, to be held in Mumbai in March 2020 having an aggregated prize money of INR 35,00,000 (INR Thirty-five lakhs) to be awarded to the winners.