MIT Awards $250,000 to ftcash for Most Innovative Future of Work

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology Initiative on the Digital Economy has announced ftcash as the global grand prize winner for the 2018 MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC). The winning organization was selected by the IIC Champion Committee from 20 Regional Winners in Latin America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and North America. All were vetted after a year-long search for the most innovative, impactful, and scalable future of work solutions on the planet from more than 1,500 global registrants by in-region experts and chosen by Selection Panels at regional celebrations this summer. ftcash exemplified scalable, working solutions that broaden opportunity and harness technology to include more people in the digital economy.

The MIT IIC awards $1.6 million globally to organizations that are using technology to reinvent the future of work and create a more equitable economy.

ftcash was previously the regional winner of the Inclusive Innovation Challenge in Bangkok, Thailand. All the IIC regional winners received an expenses-paid trip to MIT for the Grand Prize Gala where they were honoured with receptions, networking opportunities, and workshops with investors, MIT, and industry experts.

“It is our absolute pleasure and honour to be recognized by MIT. This award represents the highest achievement in inclusive technology, but in our case, it is a validation and reflection of our mission of financial inclusion that resonates with millions of individuals globally. Today, with our technology any small business owner in India can access credit or digital payments with a click of a button. This gives us extraordinary power for us at ftcash to march for inclusion, to reignite the movement for “the missing middle”; to create a just society. With MIT’s unparalleled strength in technology and their commitment to Digital Economy and Artificial Intelligence, we are looking forward to a successful partnership that can allow us to harness the best available resources in the world.”, says Vaibhav Lodha, Co-founder of ftcash.

“ftcash has established itself as one of the most innovative companies today in the fintech sector and the recognition from MIT is a testimony to their focus on product market fit to serve this credit starved market segment. Through our long-term association with the company, we aim to help the company unlock the vast market potential for its product, possibly on a global scale.” says Vikram Gupta, Managing Partner, IvyCap Ventures

“The grand challenge of our era is to use digital technologies to create not only prosperity, but shared prosperity,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. “We created the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge to recognize and reward the many amazing people and organizations that are working to accomplish this mission.”

“With the MIT IIC, we’re celebrating the entrepreneurs and innovators who are demonstrating many different ways to put powerful technology to use to improve people’s economic prospects,” adds Andrew McAfee, co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. “Our winners and other entrants show us that broadly shared prosperity is possible, which makes a great antidote to pessimism and negativity.”

For more on the MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge and our mission, please visit: www.MITinclusiveinnovation.com. For more on the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, visit: ide.mit.edu.

ftcash: ftcash is one of India’s fastest growing financial technology venture, recognized by Forbes, which aims to empower micro-merchants and small businesses through financial inclusion using digital payments and loans.

ftcash provides a software and hardware based full-stack payment solution to small merchants to initiate digital payments in less than 5 minutes. In addition, ftcash uses its proprietary algorithm to understand the credit-worthiness using their transaction flow data on the payments platform along with several other data points including psychometric analysis, which can be leveraged to provide these underserved SMEs with institutional finance. After disbursement of loans, the collections is done using the payments platform for their future receivables. The company was launched in Mumbai, India in mid-2015. It was incubated by PayPal and is currently in a strategic partnership with MasterCard to enable merchant services globally. The team comprises of senior executives from Deutsche Bank, Capital One, World Bank, KPMG among others with a pedigree from Wharton, Harvard, IIMs, IITs etc.

ftcash was awarded by HRH Prince William and Kate Middleton as a winner at the UK Trade and Investment – Great Tech Initiative. Most notably, ftcash was recognized for its work in financial inclusion by President of India at Pitch@RB, TechCrunch Disrupt Battlefield, Berlin, Singapore Fintech Festival and Abu Dhabi Fintech Festival. The company has also won several other accolades that include Mastercard Global StartPath, IBM Fintech Smart Camp, Red Herring Asia 50, NTT Data Open Innovation, IIM Ahmedabad CIIE-IIFL Fellowship, KPMG Hot 100 Startups, NASSCOM Emerge 50, iSPIRT InTech 50, The Fintech20 India, mBillionth Award South Asia, ISB-SAP Social Enterprise Jumpstart, Action for India 100, Village Capital Program among other accolades. It was selected for World’s first Impact Investment Show – The Real Deal on NDTV and Young Turks on CNBC. ftcash is funded by IvyCap Ventures and 500 Startups.