Barclays has launched a new financial technology platform in Mumbai intending to provide start-ups with a physical site to work and interact with stakeholders and their peers in other markets for a fee. The British bank hopes that providing such a platform will help it find innovative financial technology quickly and at a cheaper cost. Mumbai will be the sixth such location that the bank has maintained across the globe following London, Manchester, New York, Cape Town and Tel Aviv under its ‘Rise’ platform. It will start its seventh location in Vilnius, Lithuania in July. The bank will not invest in these companies initially but hopes that the ideas generated through this platform can be used by the bank in its own innovation. According to Lubaina Manji, head of Rise and group innovation officer at Barclays, it is five times cheaper and three times faster for the bank to take out new ideas from this platform and getting the innovation back into Barclays. She gave the example of an innovation by a start-up called Dopay in Egypt which helped employers to transfer employee salaries electronically cutting out cash. As a result of the innovation Barclays got 2 lakh new accounts by issuing pre-paid debit cards. Over 3,700 start-ups across the world have applied to be the part of this platform.