NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Thursday, June 16, 2016

By Abhijit Bose

While global stock markets reset and U.S. tech unicorns readjust to new expectations and valuations, India’s tech renaissance is just beginning to flourish.

Infosys founder Nandan Nilekani calls it India’s “WhatsApp Moment,” echoing how a simple software solution from Silicon Valley turned the Asian telecommunications industry upside down, making obsolete decades of infrastructure,business models and loyal customer relationships with massive telecom operators.

Just as WhatsApp surpassed all incumbent telecom operators in its messaging scale, financial technology is poised to become the next sector ripe for radical change. In this piece, I’ll explore how a single innovator could surpass the scale of all financial incumbents in all emerging markets combined.

Moreover, I’ll show how this disruption is different from other domestic leapfrog stories in India and China — because if it delivers as promised, India’s fintech revolution will have global repercussions, affecting all publicly traded banks and payment companies by the end of the decade.