India's FinTech companies get Rs 2,255 crore investments so far in 2016

India grabbed the second spot in attracting investments in its financial technology sector among the Asia-Pacific nations. The FinTech space received investments worth $339 million (Rs 2255.28 crore) thus far in 2016. China was at the top spot, an Accenture report said.

Accenture released a report of CB Insights data titled 'China Leads Global Fintech Investments, Accenture Finds'. 

According to the report, investments in FinTech in the Asia Pacific region, led by China, reached $9.62 billion (Rs 63,999.45 crore) as of July 31, more than twice the $4.26 billion (Rs 28340.71 crore) it did all through 2015.

Interestingly, the top 10 investments in Asia-Pacific fintech ventures in 2015 took place in China and Hong Kong, valued at $8.75 billion (nearly Rs 58,211.56 crore), accounting for 90% of the overall Asia-Pacific investments.  

So far in 2016, total of China and Hong Kong FinTech ventures have attracted $9 billion (Rs 59874.75 crore) investments.

FinTech in India

Investments into Indian FinTech companies pit the country after the combined investments into China and Hong Kong. Investments into Indian companies was at $339 million thus far in 2016.

"Investments in Asia-Pacific have eclipsed North America, which as of July 31 garnered $4.58 billion (Rs 30469.59 crore) in FinTech investments and also tops Europe, which attracted $1.85 billion (Rs 12307.58 crore) in the same period", the report added.

The report mentioned that the deal volume remained higher in North America and Europe, as the Asia-Pacific increase is due to big investments in a few select fintech companies in China.

According to the report, there have been 192 deals in Asia-Pacific so far this year, as compared with 509 in North America and 230 in Europe.

Beat Monerrat, Accenture senior managing director, Financial Services Asia-Pacific, said in the report, "Fintech companies with major backers such as Alibaba and JD.com are focussed on providing positive end-to-end customer experiences, which includes payments and lending. This is transforming China’s financial services industry and is consistent with the global ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’, which is bringing innovation from non-traditional competitors to the financial services industry", Monerrat said. 

Further, as per the report, the fund raising trend could be seen in many companies such as Ant Financial Services, operator of China's online-payment platform Alipay and affiliate of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings, closed a $4.5 billion (Rs 29937.37 crore) fund raising round in April. 

Another company Lu.com, earlier known Lufax backed by Ping An completed a $1.2 billion (Rs 7983.3 crore) round of fund raising in January.  In that same month, China’s second largest e-commerce company, JD.com, raised $1 billion (Rs 6652.75 crore) in new funding for its consumer finance subsidiary, JD Finance, the report added.

Albert Chan, managing director financial services China, Accenture said that, "The fintech trend in China continues to skew toward online payments and lending, including peer-to-peer (P2P), which is creating market-share dilution for banks. China’s banks, whether building their own competitive platforms or not, should consider investing in collaborative fintech ventures in order to remain competitive".