In another episode of the Asia Pacific series with Taneia Bhardwaj, Taneia spoke to the founder and CEO of Niyo – Vinay Bagri, based in Bangalore, India. Niyo was one of the first neobanking platforms to go live in India - 5 years on, Niyo is serving over 1.5 million customers through its digital banking services!

Here is what Taneia asked Vinay:

FinTech founders are closer to being finance people, than technologists and that rings true for you too. You’ve been a career banker, having worked with some of India’s finest private banks. And I’m guessing that it was your time at these banks that the idea of Niyo came to you? Tell us a bit about how you ended up founding Niyo?
Let’s talk about Niyo -its offerings and the approach you took to build this company – from what I can tell, you have identified segments that were either unserved or underserved by banks and then built offerings around that. Tell us about some of the products that you have rolled out? And what are you solving for?
The idea of banking without banks and banks without branches is yet to completely take off in India – compared to, say, the UK where 9% of British adults have a neobank account – here we have close to 10 neobanks and a handful in the pipeline – given your first-mover advantage, what can you tell us about customer adoption?
How do you generate demand? For instance, how are you reaching out to India’s 100 million blue-collar workers who span the length and breadth of the country?
Your offering is also anchored in the context of a large and unbanked Indian population. To what extent do you believe Niyo has added value to people’s lives?
Globally, profitability for neobanks is a huge challenge. Is it any different in India?
Vinay, neobanks are seen as challengers to the high street banks in India. Yet, because our regulator doesn’t grant a virtual banking/ digital banking license, players like you need to work with a licensed entity – a bank partner. Is this a challenge and do you see it?