IFTA is an annual competition organized by Indian Fintech Forum, a not-for-profit fintech advocacy group formed in 2016. The fifth edition of India Fintech Awards recognized Vijay Shekhar Sharma as the Fintech Leader of the Year 2020. Mr. Vijay is the founder and CEO of Paytm. The platform is organized to celebrate global fintech excellence, it is a joint initiative backed by Amazon Pay, PayU, HAPPY, WazirX, CashRich, TransUnion CIBIL, and Deloitte.
Simpl, a payment startup by Nityanand Sharma and Chaitra Chidanand, won the Fintech Startup of the Year trophy. Five other Indian fintech startups won the Next Big Idea contest in the 5th edition. AssetVault from UK and Khatabook and Nearby Technologies from India were chosen as Fintech Rising Stars. The past IFTA winners had cumulatively raised over USD 1.5 billion in funding.
The application process that started in August 2020 received over 600 applications from countries around the world, including the United States, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Switzerland, Spain, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Norway, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Germany, Ireland, India, Hungary, Hong Kong, France, Canada, Brazil, and Algeria. From 30th November to 2nd December 2020, for the Fintech Startup of the Year award, shortlisted 27 companies from 20 countries presented live demos to high profile jury. The finalists were shortlisted in two rounds by an eminent panel of judges with broad experience in finance, technology, and business. Deloitte and MEDICI managed and developed the assessment framework for IFTA 2020. Also, at IFTA 2020, MEDICI launched its Banking-as-a-Service 2.0 report.
Former TRAI Chairman, Dr. RS Sharma was the keynote speaker, he discussed the impact of Aadhaar in fintech innovation and digital diplomacy. He said India can aid other countries in making a platform like Aadhaar. Aadhaar offers a financial address where one can transfer money. Billions of Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) take place through Aadhaar, for instance, LPG cylinder subsidy alone constitutes more than a billion transactions per year. He added that the ultimate purpose of innovation is to reduce the pain of end-users.
Sougata Basu, Founder of CashRich and Executive Committee Member of India FinTech Forum, said that IFTA 2020 also maintained the five years old tradition of bringing the most innovative companies on one platform. It also had many brilliant startup founders to demo their product innovation. It also witnessed many thought leaders coming together under one roof and putting their views on various topics such as neo banking, crypto as an asset class, digital lending, etc.
