Assisting startups become business ready

Afthonia keen to collaborate with the Hyderabad ecosystem

Fintech incubator Afthonia Lab has been assisting early-stage startups to become business-ready and scale up through specific strategies, backed by global mentor connect and curated ecosystem partners to overcome bottlenecks in their growth journey. It provides access to the venture capital community and other crucial networks, value-based learning, and insight-based guidance to startups. Tanul Mishra, CEO, Afthonia Lab tells Y V Phani Raj her vision for the incubator and how she wants to disrupt the fintech space. Excerpts-

Fintech scenario

Unlike the western markets, startups in India begin with ingenious ideas but often lack a secured ecosystem that can help them thrive. India is the third largest startup ecosystem but there are not many dedicated incubators for fintech startups. To address these gaps, Afthonia Lab was formed to provide an ecosystem for fintech startups to grow and succeed. We provide a personalised mentorship team from diverse sectors in India and the US, an environment to test ideas and handholding to help raise funds. Through our incubator, we want to help fintech startups take financial services to every corner of the country. Segments such as the insurance technology will be one of our core focus areas.

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Untapped potential

For Afthonia Lab, fintech has been an obvious choice as there is a huge untapped potential waiting to get unlocked as India moves towards becoming a digital economy. With a strong government thrust on one side and a mushrooming of great ideas on the other, we believe that the time is ripe for incubators such as ours to empower startups in this space. Besides working with industry bodies, government officials, venture capitalists, we also work with management and technology institutions to design programmes for mentoring and innovation to spur more entrepreneurs into India’s fintech landscape over the next few years.

Handholding startups

Afthonia Lab is actively supporting startups in tier II and III cities across India that have the potential to create an impact on consumers and businesses globally. We have so far supported startups such as Ginger Root Code Factory that works in the areas of payment and remittance processing, BlockSurvey that has a privacy-driven data collection platform, Niivo that offers financial services, Tarrakki that offer wealth management services and Earnvestt that manages working capital for MSMEs. We don’t have a cohort system and we take startups throughout the year. We work with startups from concept to pre-revenue stage, which are typically in the 12-18 months lifecycle.

Go-to-market strategy

We are helping startups to access global markets with the most suitable go-to-market strategy. We are also talking to startups from Germany, Japan and the US, which want to explore the Indian market. Though our incubator is physically located in Bengaluru, we work with startups virtually from their cities of origin. We will tap opportunities in the accelerator space and enable peer-to-peer collaborations among startups. Currently, we work with seven Indian startups in fintech and aim to work with at least 25 startups within the next 1-2 years.

Hyderabad ecosystem

Hyderabad startup ecosystem has a great government support and T-Hub is a fantastic incubator model. There can be more opportunities in the insurance technology space as well as supporting more women entrepreneurs in the fintech space. Afthonia is keen to collaborate with the Hyderabad ecosystem.

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