HDFC Bank’s Centre of Digital Excellence (CODE) Friday launched ‘Industry Academia’—the initiative, first-of-its-kind in the country, aims at mentoring and hand-holding fintechs and start-ups incubated at country’s top technical and B-schools.

In all, over 50 such partnerships with institutes are envisaged in phase-one of the initiative beginning with IIT-Bombay, IIT-Roorkee and CIIE at IIM-Ahmedabad.

The objective is to identify potential fintech ideas at Incubation and Entrepreneurship cells in these institutes at a nascent stage, and help them evolve into a consumer-ready product. The Bank will use its domain expertise to mentor start-ups on customer experience, reduce time to market and costs, among other things. In turn, the start-ups will get the Bank’s platform to test their ideas in the real world, in addition to expert insights, and knowledge.

‘Industry Academia’was launched by Prof. Manish Shrikhande, Dean – Incubation and Innovation – IIT Roorkee; Prof. Anand Kusre – Head, Desai Sethi Centre for Entrepreneurship, IIT Bombay along with Nitin Chugh, Country Head – Digital Banking, HDFC Bank at an event in Mumbai.

 “We are delighted to partner with top-tier institutes. We’ve always believed exchange of ideas and knowledge breeds culture of innovation. The CODE Industry Academia is another major step in that direction,” said Nitin Chugh, Country Head – Digital Banking, HDFC Bank.

“New technology developments are essential for attaining high-priority objectives like inclusion, superior customer servicing and scale. BFSI and Institutes of Technology therefore need to work together to apply new tools to create high value propositions,” said Prof. Anand Kusre – Head, Desai Sethi Centre for Entrepreneurship, IIT Bombay.

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