Global Finance Magazine Q&A on India's Digital Infrastructure and Fintech Trends
Melissa Frakman spoke with the Global Finance Magazine to underscore India as ‘one of this decade’s most important economic stories.’
Speaking about India’s Digital Public Infrastructure, she said, “There’s this global trend of digital public infrastructure (DPI) that’s emerging, of which India has become the unequivocal leader: implementing national digital systems at scale that are free or low-cost and accessible to the poor…Even the most remote poor person in India is able to access digital payments in a way that those at the bottom of the pyramid in the US cannot”
While speaking about what other regions can learn from India, she highlighted, “Smaller economies can look to India for fintech models that actually work when the transaction size is small or when per-user revenue is small.
One example is (our portfolio company) Khatabook. It’s a micro app that works on a simple phone with micro or small businesses with low data needs: from a manufacturing business with 30 or 50 employees to a single person like a chai seller. They are enabled to do all the tracking of transactions and accounting and everything else they need to do on their phone. And Khatabook has been able to scale to every remote part of India. Well over 10 million micro and small businesses are using it.
Khatabook was able to scale so quickly because it was so simple, and it was tailored to what actually is needed. It was not trying to replicate what a large bank or a large accounting stack would use.”