British multinational bank HSBC has announced a new strategic partnership with India’s largest startup incubator T-Hub, where they will jointly run an acceleration program to find innovative startups with solutions for the finance and banking industry.
With a 169% increase in valuation of the top 50 global fintech startups in the last 5 years, the aim of this partnership is to leverage global innovation ecosystem and apply innovative products and solutions developed by startups to banking operations.
The call for applications will begin next month and not more than 10 startups will be picked for the twelve-month program, which is slated to begin in April. The accelerator program will be open for startups across the globe.
“Technology and innovation are rapidly changing the way customers want to access banking services, so HSBC wants to try new ways of doing things. This collaboration with T-Hub is an opportunity for HSBC to partner with innovative start-ups to help us deliver products and services in ways that are simpler, better and faster for our customers”, said Paul Raddon, Head of Operations, Global Service Centres, HSBC.
HSBC has Global Service Centres (GSCs) across five cities in India and in six other countries. They support the operations of HSBC’s global businesses by performing processing and analytical tasks to fulfil customer payments, transactions, regulatory compliance and everyday banking needs. The GSCs are part of HSBC Global Operations which manages about 1.7 trillion transactions a year and around 380 payments every second for HSBC’s 38 million customers worldwide.
By engaging with the innovative ideas of start-up and developer communities from all over the world, HSBC, in partnership with T-Hub, can help unlock the potential of emerging technologies to improve its customer experience and access the ecosystem of startups, which will be given an opportunity to apply their thinking on a global scale.
At the end of the program, startups will get to pitch at the Demo day where HSBC will pick the most innovative ones to work with them on their proof of concept and eventually apply them within the company. Startups will have the opportunity to have their solution applied globally, given the reach HSBC has globally.
“The pace at which the society and technology are evolving is faster when compared to the ability of organizations adapting to the changes. In India, on one hand, the number of startups in FinTech have been growing significantly and on other hand, the government’s initiatives in cashless technologies space including BHIM, UPI, and others have restructured the financial sector. Considering all these changes in the recent time, we believe that this partnership will help HSBC to explore most innovative startups disrupting in delivering products and solutions,” said Jay Krishnan, CEO, T-Hub.