HDFC Bank will mentor and hand-hold fintech startups founded at IIT-Bombay, IIT-Roorkee and Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at the IIM-Ahmedabad. The bank has entered into an agreement with these institutions for the purpose. It has plans to launch such partnerships with 50 institutes with the objective of identifying potential fintech ideas at entrepreneurship cells in these institutes at a nascent stage. Nitin Chugh, head (Digital Banking) at HDFC Bank, said several innovations by the bank are an outcome of its Digital Innovation Summit where fintech teams are challenged to come up with solutions. The bank’s artificial intelligence-driven chatbot Eva was the result of such a challenge. Through these innovative products, the bank wants to ‘hyper personalize’ its engagement with customers, said Chugh. Besides mentoring the young entrepreneurs, the bank will also provide them access to its domains to test new products in the absence of finance laboratory. The bank’s Center of Digital Excellence (COCE), which is responsible for the Digital Innovation Summit, will manage the partnerships.
