Meet the top 5 Indian Fintech startups which will be incubated at PayPal's Chennai Lab

Five new financial technology startups –Finbox, Neoeyed, Paymatrix, Scalend and Tybo are new entrants into PayPal Incubator in Chennai. They have been selected by the company for its year-long incubation program, after the final round of pitching during Paypal's 5th Incubation Challenge which concluded recently.

Initially, 10 startups were shortlisted from among 250 applicants who presented to a panel of judges including Guru Bhat, GM Technology & Head of Engineering – PayPal, Anupam Pahuja, MD – PayPal India and Rama Bethmangalkar, Venture Capitalist, formerly with Ventureast.

"In its 5th year, the PayPal Incubator has received an overwhelming response with over 250 applications from early stage FinTech startups – a 150% growth from last year, reflecting both the need for an incubation program, as well as the FinTech industry’s potential," says Guru Bhat, GM Technology & Head of Engineering – PayPal.

During the one year of incubation, the winning startups will get technology counsel and mentorship, infrastructure support and networking opportunities with both investors and customers. PayPal will also be picking up an undisclosed stake in each of the selected startups this year.

"Our incubation program is designed to help our newly incubated startups script their own success stories by facilitating access to PayPal’s expertise in cutting-edge technology and by enabling them to leverage PayPal’s market leadership around the world,” says Mr Bhat.

As of now, PayPal's India incubator is aiming to drive innovation across the FinTech industry with a focus on startups in financial technology as well as adjacencies like loyalty, machine learning, big data and logistics among others.

Here's are the services being offered by PayPal's 5th Incubation Challenge winners:

FinBox - A software-as-a-service lending platform that enables lenders to digitise the user’s journey and underwrite. The startup’s application programming interface enables lenders to validate identity, underwrite using data from traditional and non-traditional sources, and cross-sell financial products to their customers.

NeoEYED - A US-headquartered startup that helps businesses simplify the login and registration processes on mobile applications, enabling them to generate more revenues and improve user security.

Paymatrix - An analytics-driven property rental management platform that streamlines rent payments and collections. The platform’s dashboard provides solutions for end-to-end rent management including tenant screening, credit facilitation for rent deposits, rent documentation, rent automation, renters and landlords insurance, and also facilitates interaction between tenants and landlords.

Scalend - A ready-to-use, artificial intelligence-enabled customer insights platform for financial services companies. The platform combines proprietary AI models with big data Hadoop’s unlimited storage and computes power to help BFSI and fin-tech companies generate actionable insights around omni-channel customer journeys and back-office optimisation.

TYBO - A cloud-based omni-channel e-commerce platform designed for home-based and small-sized businesses. It provides the merchant with a single view of their evolving business across multiple sales channels. The platform also enables end-to-end integration with the supplier system and saves time by importing products directly into their store.

Only last month, PayPal had set up two innovation labs at its Chennai and Bangalore tech centres - both its first such facilities in India and third globally after the US and Singapore. In a bid to strengthen its position in the Indian market, it is believed PayPal has reportedly sought a wallet (prepaid payment instrument) licence from the Reserve Bank of India.