New Delhi: Swiss-based EST Group said Friday it is planning to invest USD 250 million (around Rs 1,770 crore) in the next 18 months into Indian startups that are focused on fintech applications and related business models.
The EST Group is very bullish about India market and believes that when markets are slow they provide new opportunities, its CEO and Director Sindhu Bhaskar said in a statement.
“India’s largest asset is its intelligent and educated human capital and it is important to use these resources by allowing them to innovate in a problem area and then giving access to capital,” Sindhu Bhaskar pointed out.
“EST Group is planning to invest USD 250 million in next 18 months into India-based startups focused on fintech applications and related business models that will plug into larger EST’s vision of building an aggregated platform for capital that will allocate impactfully to help growth sectors in our economy,” the statement added.
Sajid Jamal, who is heading the venture fund of EST Group, said capital is not scarce but scattered and EST’s vision is to aggregate unused capital by investing in technology and then use AI (artificial intelligence) voice command technology to disburse capital to SMEs, startups and agriculture verticals.
“For this, we have decided not to start from scratch but to invest in existing platforms and then connect this platform to one larger ecosystem platform that will help in enhancing growth in the economy by solving grassroot problems of the economy,” said Jamal.
EST Group provides financial advisory, asset management, semi- banking operations, custodial, clearing and settlement and security issuance services. It has operations in Latin America, Europe, London and Southeast Asia.
PTI