Why Unicorn Ventures India Invested in Open Bank

The rise of neo-banking in recent years

Neo-banking has become a global phenomenon these past five years, but what is neo-banking?

Neo-banks or ‘challenger’ banks are essentially online-only banks that have no physical presence. They can be separated into two types:

1. Companies with no banking licence and only offer a ‘user service’ and rely on a traditional bank for the processing payments or use a partnership model.
2. A complete full-service online bank with a banking licence, such as Monzo, N26 etc.

There has been a global influx of these Neo-banks, totalling 100+ globally. For example, Banco Original (Brazil), N26 (Germany), MyBank and WeBank (China, owned by Alibaba and Tencent respectively), Timo (Vietnam), Jibun Bank (Japan), K Bank (S Korea).

The difference between neo-banks focused on consumers and those focused on SMEs

Most neo-banks focus on the consumer segment, however there are a few who primarily attract business customers. Although these types of neo-banks are similar in idea, in practice they differ wildly, particularly in their value added services.

While consumer focused enterprises will have extra services such as personal property insurance, easy budgeting, and features like apple pay. Business account orientated neo-banks will add real value with to their customers with useful services to increase the efficiency and profitability of a company. Some examples include:

• Product integration with a customer’s systems
• Allowing a company’s accountants to easily access information
• Payment gateways
• Multiple company cards with independent tracking/limiting

UK, a league above the rest

Although global in its reach, the UK has shown itself to be at the forefront of the neo-banking revolution, the key players are:

Monzo: £324m raised from marquee investors Y combinator and Accel partners

• Monzo offers personal accounts and loans. They are also working on opening up business accounts and a payment gateway service.
• Over 2 million customers with 200,000 added monthly. Customer deposits increased nearly 7-fold to £461m in 2018

Revolut: $336m raised from marquee investors DST global, Index Ventures and Ribbit Capital

• Revolut offers business and personal accounts as well as other services such as international money transfers, insurance and cryptocurrency wallets.
• As of April 19, the company services 4.7 million customers with 360,000 more added each month

Atom Bank: £419m raised from lead investor BBVA (Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria)

• Atom offers saving accounts, mortgages and business loans
• £1.8 bn in retail deposits (as of Oct 18), £2bn in completed mortgages (as of Nov 18)

Starling Bank: £233m raised from marquee investors such as Merian Global Investors

• Personal and business banking with savings accounts, personal loans and business overdraft facilities
• They also have a international money transfer facility
• 340,000 customers (as of Nov 18) with £202m held in deposits

Tide: raised $41 million from investors Creandum, Anthemis Group as well as others

• At its essence a Business account, but they have spew of value added services including bookkeeping, instant invoices and scheduled payments. They also tied up with a partner to offer working capital credit
• They are one of the few Neo-banks to focus solely on the business customer segment
• As of August 19 Tide has 100,000 customers, account for around 1.75% of the business account market. Their goal is to reach 8%

This UK specific exceptional growth is believed to have occurred for two reasons. First, Britain isn’t as saturated with big banks and their branches as a nation like the US, creating an opportunity for non-traditional financial institutions. Second, the UK was an early adopter of digital banking, dating back to the dotcom era of the late 1990s and early 2000s. That head start has probably helped it lead the shift toward challenger banks and other alternative models.

Thanks to UK exposure, Unicorn could see the trend coming

Unicorn Ventures, through its UK operations and its UK Fund gets specific exposure to the fin-tech ecosystem in the UK. With this unique situation we were able to see the potential that Neo-banking has to offer before it had taken off in other markets. Thus, we decided to invest in Open-bank, India’s first neo-bank targeted at SMEs.

We invested into Open in 2018, and continued to back them as they grew and captured new markets. Currently Open Bank is at the forefront of the neo-banking revolution in India, with $5 billion worth of transactions each year, 100,000 customers and 20,000 new customers each month.

Our hypothesis of neo-banking riveting across India was validated as Openbank is one of the fastest growing business in India in the fintech space. This was further confirmed by a Series B which the company did wherein Tiger Global and Tanglin Partners invested USD 30m into Open at a valuation of US$ 150m.

How it could work in India too

With systematic inefficiencies within the retail banking sector and a need for more financial inclusion, India has become ripe for the neo-banking revolution. The ability for challenger banks to scale fast and wide allows them to reach places where traditional brick and motor enterprises could not. This coupled with the fact that digital penetration in India is growing at an accelerated rate means that Neo-banks have the opportunity to flourish.

India’s Digital Migration in Numbers

In 2018 alone 161m smartphones were sold (making it the fastest growing smartphone market in the world). Furthermore, between 2014 and 2017 the price per GB of mobile data dropped from $4.4 to $1.9. These pieces of information show us the level of opportunity available in India today. With the infrastructure in place and ample room to grow, we believe the neo-banking disruption has already begun and will continue to develop over the next 10+ years.