Barclays today opened the doors of Rise Mumbai, the latest addition to its network of physical spaces designed to bring together the world’s best and brightest startups and experts to create the future of financial services. The new site in Mumbai marks the opening of Barclays’ sixth Rise site globally, following the London, Manchester, New York, Cape Town and Tel Aviv hubs.
Something about Rise
Rise, in partnership with Barclays, brings together the world’s best and brightest startups and experts to create the future of financial services. Where product innovations and industry developments were once born of corporations and institutions, many are now being created by entrepreneurial individuals around the world who are working with increased speed to disrupt the business models of the past. In order to work with these entrepreneurs in a mutually beneficial way, Barclays established Rise. By combining the agility and disruption of startups with the expertise and scale of Barclays, Rise achieves a unique synthesis of speed and security, youth and wisdom, ideas and knowledge. With a global network of talent, world-class innovation programmes and workspaces, Rise is an exclusive community where the brightest and best can develop, collaborate, and scale together.
Rise Mumbai will provide a physical site for innovative fintech companies, offering a co-working environment, world-class event spaces and meeting rooms. The Mumbai site, located in Peninsula Business Park at Lower Parel is in partnership with 91springboard. At the launch event, the finalists of Risehack will have the opportunity to present their project to a group of senior Barclays stakeholders, renowned industry experts and the global Rise community. The winners receive a cash prize of INR 2,00,000 per category along with being a part of the Global Rise network.
Risehack is a fintech Hackathon, focused on disrupting the finance domain using cutting–edge technologies. The Hackathon has spanned three phases; phase one was held online from 28 April to 17 May and focused on team building, idea submission and coding contests. There were a total of 212 entries from over 600 participants. In the second phase, which began on 18 May, participants worked on executing the submitted idea with mentorship from Barclays, Pitch coaching by Rise Global experts and code reviews by the Acehacker team.
Jaideep Khanna, Director, Barclays India said, “The start-up ecosystem is witnessing a steep increase in activity and interest from investors with even large corporates looking to invest in this space. Rise provides us with the opportunity to leverage our client relationships and experience to play a relevant role in the growth of the fintech community in India.”
Lubaina Manji, Barclays Head of Rise and Group Innovation Office said, “At Barclays we are embracing the opportunities and expertise of the startup ecosystem, working together to drive innovation in financial services. Rise Mumbai will give technology entrepreneurs in India access to a global network of experts, businesses and partners, setting them up for rapid scale and growth. We are very excited about the launch and look forward to tapping into India’s budding fintech ecosystem, widening our global reach.”
The Rise platform and creation of an ecosystem of fintech start-ups will allow people from different geographies to interact with each other. The partnership with 91springboard will give the Rise network instant access to the former’s start-up community currently spread across six cities in India.
Varun Chawla, co-founder, 91springboard said, “When we started 91springboard, it was our dream to enable entrepreneurs to create products and services of the future. The launch of Rise Mumbai is a massive milestone for us and we are proud to play a pivotal role in making India a part of this global collaboration network. Rise Mumbai is poised to fundamentally shift the paradigm for Fintech entrepreneurs in India by providing unprecedented access to customers as well as technical expertise. If you combine this with the enabling regulatory and data framework that is emerging in India, it makes for very exciting times ahead!”