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PayPal, which is among world's leading payment platforms, has appointed <keyword id="2587447" type="PERSON" weightage="100" keywordseo="Anupam-Pahuja">Anupam Pahuja</keyword> as the MD and Country Manager for its India operations. 
 
Pahuja, who has been associated with the company for six years now, served as its head, technology in the APAC region. In his new role, he will be responsible for all aspects of PayPal's India business, while also strengthening the company's operations. 
 
"India continues to be a key part of PayPal's growth strategy. In India's fast-growing e-commerce and payments market, we have enabled hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses and entrepreneurs participate in the global economy. With Anupam's appointment as the business leader of this market, we will continue to bring our global scale, experience and risk management platforms for safe and frictionless experiences to our customers," said Rohan Mahadevan, APAC CEO, PayPal. 
 
Before joining PayPal, Pahuja served as the India MD for SumTotal Systems, which is amongst world's largest eLearning companies. 
 
<a href="http://bsmedia.business-standard.com/_media/bs/img/article/2016-06/22/full/1466589479-4827.jpg">Image source</a>

Anupam Pahuja is the new MD of PayPal India

Five new financial technology <keyword id="6362513" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="startups">startups</keyword> –Finbox, Neoeyed, Paymatrix, Scalend and <keyword id="4966455" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="tybo">Tybo</keyword> are new entrants into <keyword id="3979043" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="paypal-incubator">PayPal Incubator</keyword> in Chennai. They have been selected by the company for its year-long incubation program, after the final round of pitching during <keyword id="6357940" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="100" keywordseo="PayPal">Paypal</keyword>'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 &amp; Head of Engineering – PayPal, Anupam Pahuja, MD – <keyword id="284992" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="paypal-india">PayPal India</keyword> 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 &amp; 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.

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

The payment industry in India has evolved dramatically through the past couple of years. Driving this change has been the interface between technologies, policy and user driven product development. Disruption has been at the core of this change. India’s growth story in <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=payments+technology+&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">payments technology </a>has been further catalyzed by disruptive offerings pioneered to engage an ever evolving consumer demographic. 
 
Set to be the youngest country in the world by 2020, India is home to a majority of consumers who are willing to take the leap into <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=digital+payments.+&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">digital payments. </a>This churn has led to a massive transformation from traditional currency to non-cash instruments paving way to digital payments. A key accelerator of this transformation is the penetration of smartphones. 
 
The opportunity for India really lies in the fact that it is the second largest active smartphone users market in the world, despite low penetration rates. The adoption of smartphones is estimated to grow to 520 million by 20201. An added impetus is the rapidly expanding 3G and <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=4G+internet+network+&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">4G internet network </a>in to the hinterland. 
 
The government has initiated the process of making digitization an intrinsic part of the India growth story. Under the ‘<a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/searchresult.cms?query=Digital+India%E2%80%99+initiative&amp;sortorder=effectivedate">Digital India’ initiative</a>, 90 percent of mobile devices in the country are expected to be internet-enabled by 2017. The change has started to reflect in urban India. Digital transactions are said to have shown a growth of 50 percent Y-o-Y, followed by ATM transactions growing at 15 percent and branch transactions at 7 percent growth. While urban India naturally adapts itself to newer technologies, development of the internet infrastructure will drive rural India to follow a similar pattern. 
 
Traditionally, an empty pocket with no cash has been associated with a lack of financial security. However, technology continues to challenge tradition. Economies across the world have gradually realized that cash comes at a cost of printing, managing and moving it, besides being a key driver of a financial system that is unaccounted for. Alarmingly, India’s cash-to-gross domestic product proportion at 12 percent is higher than many other economies. There is an urgent need to acknowledge that the primary competition for any payment technology in India comes from cash and not from other peers and contemporaries. 
 There has not been a better time before in the nation for payments, especially with the regulatory bodies cognizant of the need to improve the payment system network in India. RBI’s breakthrough Vision-2018 document focuses on responsive regulation, robust infrastructure, effective supervision and customer-centricity, thus acting as an enabler for the payment transformation. The Unified Payment Interface (<keyword id="6358921" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="UPI">UPI</keyword>) has gone live and so have the incentives for digital transactions, tax deductions for cash transactions exceeding 2 lakh rupees and real time payment transfer using <keyword id="155319" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Aadhar">Aadhar</keyword> enabled payment systems. 
 A key characteristic of the payment industry has been its ability to constantly innovate. The increasing adoption of technologies like Near Field Communication (<keyword id="6409450" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="NFC">NFC</keyword>) enabled smartphones that allow real-time, one-touch payments, cloud-based PoS, peer-to-peer transfers, virtual currencies like bitcoins enabling higher transaction speed and efficiency are creating a shift in the mindscape of consumers, proving a lucrative model for all players in the system. 
 
What next? 
 
In a bid to enhance customer acquisition, wallet companies offer high-volume discounts and offers, thereby escalating customer expectations. Although the ecosystem is currently perceived to be in favour of customers, the discounting and cash–back led model might not be as sustainable as it is envisioned to be. A sustainable value proposition that any payments technology provider can offer the consumer should essentially be in the form of covering risk. 
 
There is an urgent need for financial technologies to back their core competencies and enable a secure and risk-free environment to create a loyal customer base. Most payment interfaces currently are responsible for processing payments. The next level of evolution will be driven by ensuring the safety of buyers and sellers through various systems that protect their interests beyond just the transaction. 
 
Enhancing user experience 
 
Risk mitigation mechanisms in India currently also rely on the consumer to ensure the safety of transactions. With a considerable number of purchases being made on the mobile phone, customer authentication techniques require them to switch between screens. Most instances of cart abandonment take place at this cumbersome stage of switching between two screens. This gap is currently the greatest opportunity for payment companies. To leverage it, companies would do well to redefine their operational models that stand for strong risk management capabilities in the backend. And in the process, ensure security of the customer’s money while facilitating a flawless checkout experience. 
 
In a nutshell 
 
India is slowly transcending from using technology to living it. The demographic dividend that India offers is immense – what makes this phase a winning spree is the happy coincidence of the inflexion points of the payment industry and the country’s young populace. While it may be a matter of time before digital payments landscape is more democratized than it is, the rate at which consumers are adopting the concept is encouraging. It is now over to us to make the game better than it was yesterday. 
 
(This article is authored by Anupam Pahuja, Managing Director and Country Manager, PayPal India)

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