Interviews

Fintech startup Finsire disrupting the traditional loan market with its innovative approach

CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Mr. Shreyans Nahar, Co-Founder & CEO, of Finsire.

 

  1. What is Finsire? Brief us about it. From where is the idea driven?

Finsire is a Lending Infrastructure tech to collateralize digital assets. The idea is to ensure we provide the value of one’s net worth to leverage their assets to full potential.

We are focused on building and digitizing the Infra rails from various assets and innovating in this space. Anything digitized, like stocks, mutual funds, earned income of individuals, life insurance and digital gold, can be collateralized and pushed with an API. We marry lenders and digital-credit touchpoints and ensure the end borrower meets lenders on boards to get credit, are various points on the asset they hold.

There is so much more work left in building the rails with asset originators, depositaries and custodians.

 

  1. How is technology enabling Finsire to build secured credit infrastructure?

Finsire builds secured credit infrastructure on a strong foundation laid by our technological predecessors. A comprehensive Indian tech stack (Aadhar linkages, Digi locker, KYC, Dematerialisation of assets) enables fintech to augment an existing stack with new connections that facilitate meaningful transactions for users like never before.

Finsire builds APIs and platforms that help verify and validate any asset an individual or entity holds in real-time. This mechanism creates ample liquidity for asset-holding users, providing them much a needed money supply to finance their purchases or productive activities. On the other hand, lenders get solid risk-free assets to lend on, safeguarding their books from NPAs.

 

  1. What problem is Finsire attempting to address with technological assistance?

The task of building digital asset rails is an arduous task. Payment rails changed how we can do both P2P and P2M transactions.

India is a land of assets and scarce liquidity. India is a land of 1.4 Billion people, but only 170 million people get any form of Business or retail loan formally. Now when we think of retail loans, the majority of the loans are given to only salaried employees, which is about 80 million. There is a division even in this; only employees with a certain salary above 30,000 INR are given credit cards or formal loans. That brings the margin to nearly 25 million only to easily get retail loans.

But on the contrary, over 700 million Indians own some form of an asset – be it in hard assets such as land, real estate, or gold or digital assets such as stocks, mutual funds, life insurance and more.

Liquidity creation or Lending is done on risk. The higher the ticket size, the more significant the risk is for the lender. We aim to enable credit for our borrowers at various digital touchpoints as direct credit into their bank accounts and a component to replace downpayments at the point of sale or purchase.

Therefore creating digital Infrastcutre, we aim to start lending on their net worth.

4. In what way does Finsire seek to bridge the financial liquidity divide for borrowers?

Finsire integrates with the following stakeholders – Banks, NBFCs, asset-originators and credit requirement distribution; Finsire works with them to maximize their lending capabilities linked by collateralizing their digital assets and earned income.

The process or the journey begins on the distribution end – when the consumer wants credit or wishes to forgo some form of downpayment. Finsire then works with asset originators to pledge the asset, lien marks it, and provide almost the best rate to the borrower.

The benefits are apparent and possibly the best in the country for – Loan-to-value, interest rate, and loan duration.

5. What has been Finsire’s philosophy for innovation in products and design

Our innovation philosophy stems from aligning the needs of borrowers and lenders.

While borrowers mainly have 3 concerns – i.e., interest rates, tenure of the loan and down payments/EMIs concerning to the principal. Lenders are concerned about risk-adjusted returns on their assets and hate NPAs.

Finsire strives to lessen the burden for both by innovating in these areas, by going back to the basics of a credit system and by augmenting technology for digital collateral formation, which is deeply interlinked with the net worth and assets of users. The company’s philosophy in product and design is inspired by building a more collateral-trust-based credit ecosystem.

  1. What do you envision for the upcoming 6 to 12 months?

Finsire aims to build the go-to secured credit infrastructure for India. The process is still archaic in the era of complete digitalization, where an API can almost integrate anything. The ability to give secured loans at an unsecured speed will change the horizon for both lenders and borrowers.

Over the next six months, we are looking to grow our team. Since it’s a heavy tech product, it’s evident that our tech team would be the maximum. Unlike other lending products, we are solving a significant problem. Therefore the order book for our integration is already overloaded.

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