India third-largest fintech market in 2019, investments doubled to $3.7 bn

New Delhi: Investment in financial technology (fintech) ventures in India nearly doubled to $3.7 billion in 2019 making the country the world’s third-largest fintech market, as per an analysis by Accenture.

“Fintech investments in India nearly doubled to $3.7 billion in 2019 from $1.9 billion the previous year, putting the country as the world’s third-largest fintech centre, behind only the US and UK,” an Accenture analysis of data from CB Insights said.

The number of deals was up slightly to 198 last year from 193 in 2018, it added.

Investments in payments companies more than tripled to $2.1 billion from about $660 million in 2018, while funding into insur-techs rose 74 per cent to $510 million.

The vast majority of funds raised last year in India went into payments startups (58 per cent), while insur-techs raked in 13.7 per cent of the investments and fintechs in lending accounted for 10.8 per cent of the total, as per the data.

One97 Communications, the parent company of Paytm, raised $1.66 billion from two separate transactions, while PhonePe tapped investors for about $210 million and Razorpay raised $75 million.

Other large transactions included $282 million raised by PolicyBazaar and $120 million from credit card payments company CRED.

Investment in fintech companies rose sharply in most major markets in 2019 led by gains in the US and UK and emerging economies such as India and Brazil, it said.

Despite those gains, the total value of fintech deals globally dipped 3.7 per cent to $53.3 billion in 2019 from $55.3 billion in 2018, when totals were boosted by a record $14 billion from Ant Financial and three other multi-billion-dollar transactions from Chinese companies, it added.