iSPIRT works to transform India into a hub for new generation software products, by addressing crucial government policy, creating market catalysts and grow the maturity of product entrepreneurs. Welcome to the Official Insights!
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others” ~ Mahatma Gandhi
This is one of the core values that we cherish at iSPIRT.
We started an open process of bringing in Balloon Volunteers by kicking off our First Volunteer Open House session in September 2020. We did this with slight trepidation, unsure about what to expect. Till then, almost all our Balloon Volunteers had come in through referrals by existing volunteers. However, nearly two years in, we are happy that we opened up the process. Five of the many Balloon Volunteers who came in through this open process have become regular volunteers.
The expertise, dedication, and willingness to share knowledge of these five volunteers have humbled us. Romita has built protocols for dispute resolution. Vineet is building the reference model for OCEN underwriting. Siddarth is applying future-back thinking to Drones. Palak and Harsha are designing an open, modular, and interoperable system for digital consultation for Bharat.
They have become part of this mission to build public goods for Bharat and, in so doing, create a Product Nation. If you want to be part of this movement, check out some of the areas you can contribute to on this page: volunteers.ispirt.in
Building on the previous Balloon Volunteering Open House Sessions, we will give a flavour of available volunteering opportunities in the Technology space.
In the fourth Session, we have Dr Pramod Varma, Chief Architect of Aadhaar and IndiaStack, giving you an insight into what it takes to volunteer in iSPIRT. He describes our design principles for building digital public infrastructure and gives you a peek into the thought process of an architect in iSPIRT. Finally, he breaks down how we are redefining the approach towards solving societal problems. We are playground builders. We orchestrate or create a playground so that market players can bring out an array of solutions.
iSPIRT is addressing solvability. We have a multi-decade horizon as a mission-oriented volunteer-based Think-and-Do-Tank.
As part of this session, we have some of our volunteers explaining the technical challenges you can embrace as new volunteers at iSPIRT Foundation. The problems that we are tackling require a thought process that is new and innovative. We use cutting-edge technology.
In addition to the new technical volunteering options outlined in this session, other policy-related and ecosystem-building volunteer options also exist. Apply now on https://volunteers.ispirt.in.
How do you build using Lego Blocks? Watch the recording to learn more.
On 31st July we hosted the second open house discussion on Open Credit Enablement Network (OCEN). This week’s session covered several potential Loan Service Provider (LSP) products and business cases, and answers to questions that came up following last week’s introductory presentation.
To recap, OCEN is a new paradigm for credit that seeks to provide a common language for lenders and marketplaces to build innovative, financial credit products at scale. OCEN seeks to reimagine the lending ecosystem so that any service provider that interfaces with consumers and MSMEs can become a Fintech-enabled credit marketplace, or more specifically, a Loan Service Provider.
The discussion this week centred around what kind of role LSPs could play in an OCEN-enabled cash flow lending value chain. OCEN APIs can enable lending products for both consumers and businesses, and for both capital and operating expenses. They are designed to allow for several different types of LSPs and financial products to flourish.
To build this new credit economy, we need to move from the ‘Lend and Forget’ mindset of traditional lenders to the holistic ‘Lend, Monitor and Collect’ model allowed by the myriad of service providers and marketplaces in our tech ecosystem. These platforms not only have insightful data into their user’s commercial activity but they have an ongoing interface and interaction with potential borrowers.
With OCEN standardisation, LSPs can improve and contribute to all the five aspects of lending i.e. acquisition, underwriting, ROI, collections and monitoring. Tailored credit products can be plugged in at every stage in a typical supply chain (from ‘Procurement to Pay’) to help ease liquidity concerns and ensure business continuity.
Our volunteers illustrated this with two examples: 1) A seller on the Government e-marketplace (GeM) obtaining invoice financing through the Sahay GeM LSP
2) A truck owner availing of Business-Vehicle Trip Financing through a logistics company performing the role of an LSP
OCEN is also enabling the creation of a new type of credit product that is digitally applied for and disbursed, where the end use of the loan is identified and paid for, and where repayment of the loan is enabled by the locking of incoming cash-flow.
Every participant in our fintech ecosystem is incentivised to take part in this new open credit economy enabled by OCEN. There is an opportunity here for lenders, service providers, aggregators and tech providers to all play their role in bridging India’s credit gap and giving our people and businesses the support they need.
The second session on OCEN covered the following topics broadly, and the entire webinar is also available on our official Youtube channel:
By Siddharth Shetty
An introduction to iSPIRT and our values
By Ankit Singh
Recap of what OCEN is, and how LSPs fit in to the framework
Recap of Sahay, the reference app for OCEN (and the first LSP)
Becoming an LSP (and the role of CredAll)
By Nipun Kohli
Examples of different cash-flow-lending products enabled by OCEN
Key differences between traditional lending and credit products on OCEN
How LSPs can participate across the lending value chain
‘Procurement to Pay’ credit products
Product example 1: GeM – Procurement to Pay
Product example 2: Business-Vehicle Trip Financing
By Praveen Hari
Building new credit products on OCEN
The Type 4 loans
After the presentation our volunteers answered some questions from the community including: – How is Sahay different from TReDS? – How does the underwriting take place for LSP-enabled loans? – How can risk be managed between the LSP and the lender?
We will be hosting weekly open house sessions to keep diving deeper into OCEN. The next such event will take place at 5 pm on 7 August 2020
Readers who wish to learn more about OCEN are encouraged to share this post and sign up now for the session below or click here.
As always, in order to successfully create a new credit ecosystem for Bharat it will take the collaborative effort of participants from every corner of our fintech ecosystem.
Readers may also submit any questions about the OCEN to the same email address. We shall do our best to answer these questions during next Friday’s open house discussion.
If you would like to know more about becoming an LSP, please check out www.credall.org (CredAll is a collective of lending ecosystem players to drive cash flow based lending)
About the Author: The post is authored by Rahul Sanghi
