Setu: Fintech infrastructure for India

Hello everyone!👋 I’m Sahil Kini, the CEO, and co-founder at Setu! (https://setu.co/). Let me start with *What we do* Setu makes it possible for any app to become a fintech app. We build the infra connecting banks and financial institutions to any third party application. We do this by unbundling financial products into their fundamental building blocks and offer them as APIs to developers, startups, and enterprises. They can then package these APIs into highly custom apps, tailor-made for their customers. At Setu, we have four fintech verticals— 💰Payments - https://setu.co/payments/bbps 📈Investments - https://setu.co/investments/fixe... 🔒Data - https://setu.co/data/account-agg... 💳Lending - https://setu.co/lending/devs We believe that financial technology will be a core part of every company’s offering. And at Setu, we’re building the fintech infrastructure that will accelerate this. We’re also hiring across the board so do check out open roles at https://setu.co/careers *Why do we do this?* India is a poor country. India’s GDP per capita of $1950 is a mere quarter of her BRICS counterparts. India’s middle class of 520 million (hereafter referred to as 🇮🇳 ‘Bharat’) has a per capita income between $600 and $3000. In other words, ~1/10th of humanity lives on less than $8 a day. One of the large contributing factors the immense underpentration of formal financial services underpenetrated in the country - India’s household debt to GDP ratio is just 11% (compared to 49% for China, and 77% for the US), and insurance penetration is a paltry 3.49% (compared to the global average of 6.28%). 🇮🇳 ‘Bharat’ needs access to affordable financial services to become financially independent. To do that we will have to create new financial products. A vegetable vendor doesn’t need a Rs. 1 Crore home-loan against property. Instead, what they might need is a 1500-rupee daily line of credit with low interest rates to make their purchases and not heavily depend on daily sales. 👝 Bharat needs flexible “sachet-sized” variants of the financial products the rest of us take for granted. They are not interested in the 750ml L’Oréal shampoo bottle with the easy-squeeze actuator, they go for the 3-rupee tear and toss packet instead. In-order to create small-ticket short-tenure products, India will have to reinvent the way financial products are distributed. And here’s how we see that distribution architecture evolving: Phase 1 - Branch Banking (1900s - 2010) where customers had to physically go to a bank branch. This distribution mode is most expensive and hence financial services were accessible to only 60 million Indians. Phase 2 - App/Mobile Banking (2010 - Present) where customers had to digitally go to a bank/Fintech app. This made financial services accessible to about 120 million Indians. Phase 3 - Embedded Finance/API Banking (The Future) Instead of getting the customers to come to the bank (either physically or digitally), the bank will embed their products contextually into any and every app. This is the only way to reach 500 million Indians. A huge-shout out to @adityavsc for the hunt! 🥳

Sahil Kini

Setu

Maker

3yr ago

Sandeep Injarapu

@adityavsc @sahil_kini great job guys! Keep going.

Rajath Kedilaya

@adityavsc @sahil_kini Great stuff team. Good to see Setu here on PH!

Henry M. Lee

@adityavsc @sahil_kini good vision

Aditya

Product Hunt

Hunter

Hey PH Fam, Fintech space in India is on 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥 Just read this wonderful news!! "Google has teamed up with Setu, a fintech specialising in providing APIs to allow its users to book fixed deposits through Google Pay." This is BIG!! Kudos to the Founders @sahilkini, Nikhil Kumar, and their team for building Setu! Btw, 'Setu' is a Hindi word that means 'bridge'. Team Setu stands true to its name and aims to accelerate India’s economic growth by making financial services accessible and affordable to all.

Amrutha Jalihal

@sahilkini @adityavsc Thanks a ton for the hunt, Aditya! We can't wait to see what feedback and thoughts we get on the products we’re building!

Najmuzzaman Mohammad

Simple Utm

Rarely, you find a team that understands Bharat (India) so well and who had already been involved in building/investing in a tech stack for the world's largest democracy even before Setu. Now, they have turned India's complex financial infrastructure into a APIfied platform and democratized finance for more than a billion citizens and thousands of SMEs, while ensuring data privacy. I recently had a developer sharing his Setu hackathon product with me and I was super impressed. Nothing but praise for the team.

@najmuzzaman This is so wonderful to hear, Najmuzzaman! We are so humbled by the love we are receiving! Upwards and onwards from here on!

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