Former Deutsche Bank honchos are starting the desi version of SoFi in India

Deutsche Bank's former co-CEO Anshu Jain and his former colleague Bhupinder Singh are all set to launch a non-bank finance company (NBFC) in India, and are counting on the millions who are underserved by India’s banking sector.

This company will be lending to individuals, SMEs and entrepreneurs, and is said to be be modelled on San Francisco-based fintech startup SoFi. Anshu Jain works as an adviser to SoFi, as stated by four people familiar with the plan.

The company could also be backed by SoftBank, as is SoFi.

"Technology will be the backbone of this firm, which hopes to tap India's underserved and underpenetrated lending markby using online analytics through credit scores and data collected from Aadhaar," one of the people cited above told ET.

The NBFC can be called as an Indianised version of SoFi, originally Social Finance, which started in 2011 and offered an online platform to help students who wanted to study at Stanford and wealthy alumni who were ready to help such students interact with each other for funding needs.

Since then, it has grown into a full-fledged NBFC, and now gives cheap student loans, as well as mortgages, personal loans and wealth-management services.

It was in June last year that Jain had quit Deutsche Bank because of falling profits. Singh, on the other hand, is the former co-head of Deutsche Bank's corporate banking business in Asia Pacific, and had quit the bank less than a year ago.

The NBFC would see Singh as the founding CEO and Jain as an investor, and is yet to be christened.

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