Fintech and Internet of Things are looking up in India while Bitcoin is still on the stage of careful consideration.
India faces the time of huge investments and development. Ezetap, a Bangalore-based mPoS company, has just raised $23.5 million. Social+Capital, Helion Venture Partners, Berggruen Holdings and Horizons Ventures acted as chief investors. The news followed recent funding of $25 million that mPoS company Mswipe got in Series C round.
Ezetap was founded in 2011 and for these years has managed to transform a mobile device into an intelligent PoS with possibility to make all kinds of transactions. The project is unique and enables merchants to look at the way payments are made in an absolutely different way.
The total value of transactions processed by Ezetap makes up $1 million per day. The number of PoS brought in the market has reached 60,000. The company can boast of partnership with such leading banks as Citibank, HDFC Bank and American Express (the latter is one of investors as well).
After this last round of funding Social+Capital’s founder Chamath Palihapitiya takes the post of Chairman at Ezetap’s board. He foresees great scope for development in India: “India is uniquely positioned to build an entirely new financial services ecosystem. Moreover, it’s clear to us that this revolution will be mobile first – from mPOS to mobile wallets”.
One more promising partnership announced recently in India is between Reliance Communications (RCom) and Jasper. Thus Internet of Things platform leader Jasper has chosen Rcom as its only partner in India.
The forthcoming cooperation will enable Indian companies to cash on IoT. It’s worth saying that businesses in the countries do undergo significant changes. And the revolution is made by means of reliable networks, innovative cloud computing and scalable IoT platforms.
RCom is “pleased to team up with Jasper in this important deployment of IoT services, enabling businesses across India to build, implement and go to market faster, while gaining real-time visibility, control and service reliability”, says Bill Barney, RCom’s CEO.
Jahangir Mohammed, founder and CEO at Jasper, highly appreciates the ongoing progress: “India is investing a great deal to empower citizens and enterprises with cutting-edge technology and infrastructure, and as a result, there is a large demand for Cloud and IoT services”.
As for bitcoin it’s necessary to admit that the cryptocurrency does not meet much support in India. The attitude is still quite wary as bitcoin is known to be popular among criminals. Indian authorities underline that banks won’t work with bitcoin until strong regulation is implemented.
India has been making headlines recently. Hopefully we will hear of more mutually-beneficial partnerships soon!