On this International Women’s Day, Get Inspired by these 5 Women Entrepreneurs in the AI-driven Fintech Industry

In the past five years, fintech has developed into a significant force for inclusive development, one that has embraced all the facets of company finance, consumer finance, and personal finance across all scales and categories. In India, the beginning of automation in conjunction with efforts to increase financial inclusion or close financial service gaps has given a boost to various industries. 

The finance sector in India is evolving rapidly, and more women are steadily making a place for themselves here. Their cutting-edge businesses are modernising India's financial environment by using technology to provide access to financial services to the vast majority of the country's underbanked and underserved citizens.

Here are five women entrepreneurs who have established a name for themselves in the fintech industry.

Sucharita Mukherjee, Kaleidofin

Sucharita pursued a career as an investment manager after graduating from IIM Ahmedabad. However, her time working for the IFMR Group—now Northern Arc Capital—changed her course as she became aware of the importance of financial inclusion. She observed the stark divide between the official and informal banking industries as well as how disjointed the market was. She was able to see the route to reach 800 million Indians thanks to the mobile technology revolution and India's Aadhaar drive, which occurred at the same time.

The team at Kaleidofin has developed a digital financial services platform that makes use of technology, data, design, and networks to offer financial solutions to 600 million customers in India who are fiscally excluded. According to Sucharita, their goods include credit scoring, digital payments, and customised credit solutions. For their first few institutions during the pandemic, the team introduced KiScore, India's first proprietary credit health underwriting tool.

She co-founded the IFMR group in the past and most recently served as group CEO of IFMR Holdings. She came up with the concept for and founded IFMR Capital, which opened up access to capital markets for financial inclusion, and IFMR Investments, an alternative fund management platform with an emphasis on financing the unorganised sector. Sucharita was selected by Economic Times in 2016 as one of the "top 40 under forty" business executives and in 2017 as one of India's top 20 fintech change makers. In 2017, she was given the Young Alumni Achievers Prize by IIM Ahmedabad. In 2017, she was ranked among India's top twenty fintech change agents.

Sonam Srivastava, Wright Research

Entrepreneurship is one of the boldest and most rewarding journeys that a woman can embark on to fulfil her goals of equal opportunity, independence, and ambition. Sonam Srivastava founded Wright Research in 2019. It's a SEBI-registered investment advisory firm that uses Deep-Tech, AI & ML modules to invest using Quant research.

Smashing stereotypes, Sonam Srivastava is a globally recognized researcher in the field of machine learning in finance & quantitative investing. Her role as a female entrepreneur has been the most engaging and fulfilling in her career. As an entrepreneur, she makes business decisions true to her vision that has worked well in the big bad world, and there is nothing more fulfilling than that for an ambitious woman. There are always bigger and better challenges around the corner, inspiring a drive to improve and grow. She has seen many achievements in her journey as well. She has become a somewhat recognized face in the male-dominated investing and trading community. She is often introduced as the first female member to participate in various industry events, which is thrilling. She has built a strong team that efficiently manages more than 100 crores and is greatly appreciated by her clients. Not just that, they can not wait to do more and grow bigger and better and are building relationships to achieve the same. Her firm has raised an undisclosed amount of pre-seed funds from BSE Institute Limited, Ryerson Technology startup Incubation Foundation (BRTSIF), Govt. of India, Nidhi SSS. It has been awarded by NASSCOM under the top 50 AI game-changer startups. Recently the startup has raised $1 million in Seed Funding from Orios Venture Partners also.

She aims to give back the support she has received from the BRTSIF incubator to the next female leaders, supporting them and enabling them in their journeys.

Sonam Srivastava used to create trading algorithms for high-frequency securities traders. But when the U.S. advisory she worked for scrapped plans to launch in India, she decided to start her own advisory business in Mumbai. In 2019, she began offering stock portfolio recommendations as a SEBI registered advisor through digital platforms, and thus Wright Research was born.

Hardika Shah, Kinara Capital

In Bengaluru, Hardika Shah began her entrepreneurial adventure after leaving her life in Silicon Valley because she saw the credit gap as an opportunity. 2011 saw the founding of Kinara Capital. For MSMEs, the company offers collateral-free business loans for operating capital and asset purchases.

During her time in business school, Hardika began developing risk assessment modules. At the moment, her company uses data-driven, automated credit decisioning based on AI and machine learning. Through a user-friendly vernacular digital application procedure, they provide loans with disbursement cycles of 24 hours and amounts ranging from Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 30 lakhs. In India, female entrepreneurs encounter more structural obstacles than their male counterparts. The goal of Kinara Capital is to close this gender disparity. They started the HerVikas initiative, in which they provide business loans at lower rates to female entrepreneurs.

A 100 crore financing was obtained by Kinara Capital in May 2019 from impact and private equity investors. They received $10 million in financing from IndusInd bank at the beginning of 2021. Hardika noted that roughly 25 to 30 percent of MSMEs have gone digital in recent years, and that this shift is crucial for them to survive the third wave of the pandemic and carry on expanding their businesses. Kinara Capital keeps up with the shifting market trends while remaining true to its mission of assisting MSMEs.

Henna Jain Tatia, StuCred

Henna Jain Tatia and her brother Jaijash Tatia founded StuCred together. In  2017 she graduatde from the University of St. Andrews with an MA with honours in Economics and International Relations (Scotland). During her gap year, she naturally started assisting her brother with StuCred, a concept he had come up with and was starting to develop. After some initial involvement, she and he ultimately co-founded the company. Chennai is home to StuCred.

An innovative FinTech app called StuCred offers college students in India quick financing with no interest. Loan repayment is required within 30 days and can vary from Rs. 1,000 to Rs. 10,000. Students can use the app at any time to access credit after completing a one-time identification verification and college authentication. Over 250 schools in India have signed up for StuCred's app, including a number of IITs and IIMs. With small but valuable loans, the network seeks to provide formal financial inclusion and financial independence to Indian college students. The network, which has more than 35,000 users, has benefited from the introduction of India Stack and UPI payments around the time it was first launched.

Henna and her sibling shared a lot of college years together while they were both studying in the UK. Near the end of the month, when their accounts were at their maximums and they were awaiting their allowance for the following month, they frequently found themselves transferring money to one another. They recognised that many college students experience this end-of-month pocket money gap as a problem. The bank in the UK where their funds were held provided students with an interest-free overdraft option. But they quickly discovered that students in India didn't have access to such a facility. While borrowing money from friends informally is prevalent, StuCred is a formal platform that makes it possible for this. Additionally, compared to postgraduate students from developed countries, many Indian students who complete their undergraduate degrees in India but pursue their postgraduate degrees abroad are at a disadvantage because they lack their own credit scores because they were not exposed to financial service products when they were younger. StuCred enables college students to establish their credit records by letting them borrow money. Henna wants to teach Indian college students the same lessons she learned while attending college in the UK about being a responsible borrower.

Upasana Taku, Mobikwik 

Upasana co-founded a startup for digital payments, Mobikwik in 2009. When consumers were hesitant to use technology to make payments, they entered the industry. Getting customers to register on Mobikwik and overcome the barrier to taking advantage of digital transactions was undoubtedly a difficult job.

Upasana Taku completed her secondary education in Surat before enrolling in the renowned National Institute of Technology, Jalandhar, to study engineering. She graduated from that university with an engineering degree in industrial engineering. After that. Stanford University in the US is where she received her MS in Management Science and Engineering.

Her qualifications and training brought her to HSBC in San Diego. Taku excelled in her position there. She achieved success in a variety of industries, including forecasting, market research, and marketing and promotion. She joined PayPal at a time when large businessmen were driving change in American commerce. She gained knowledge of the payment networks in the Americas, Europe, and Asia while working at PayPal. In addition, she learned about user experience, design, and risk identification and fraud management.

By 2009, she was back in India. She made many new friends in the subcontinent and gained insight into the trendiest industries and unmet needs in the startup and business environment. She claimed that a bank like PayPal was not well-liked in India. Users could never envision a future without cash as a result. Well, the idea to close this gap and strive for the development of technology in the nation came from the example of India.

Mobikwik by Upasana Taku is very basic and focused on needs. They initially started the business as a recharge site, but after a few years it quickly rose to prominence as the nation's leading mobile wallet. Taku revolutionised the industry by introducing the idea of a tangible wallet to a mass audience at a time when people were still reliant on physical cash for small sums like Rs 10. A millennial today can't even imagine going to a store for minor recharges; all they need to do is use an app. Mobikwik has now experienced phenomenal corporate growth. It was difficult for the team to locate someone with the same mindset to serve the community when the company hired its first employee in 2010.