dmifinance - Tumblr blog

[dmifinance]

Read & view the DMI Finance auction notices.

[dmifinance]

Payments infrastructure platform YAP collects Series A cheque

M2P Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which operates payments-focussed application programming interface (API) startup YAP has raised $4.5 million (Rs 34.62 crore at current exchange rates), barely two months after its angel funding round.

The Series A funding round has been led by Singapore-based Beenext. Others that took part in the round include Vikram Chachra-led 8i Ventures Fund, the DMI Group via its investment vehicle Sparkle Fund, and Better Capital.

Angel investors such as Alok Mittal, Bharatpe chief executive officer Ashneer Grover and existing investors Amrish Rau, Jitendra Gupta, and Abhishant Pant also participated, YAP said in a statement.

The Chennai-based company will use the funds to strengthen its team, build its technological infrastructure and API product and service portfolio.

In February, YAP raised Rs 10 crore (around $1.4 million) in an angel funding round led by Rau, with participation from Pant, Gupta, Chachra in his personal capacity, and Kunal Shah. At the time, the payments infrastructure company said it would use the capital for growth expansion and developing banking-focussed products.

YAP, incorporated in 2014, was founded by Madhusudhanan R, Muthukumar A and Prabhu R. The firm says its API platform is used by its customers to open new financial accounts, issues and process payments and co-create new products.

The company says its API bundle includes financial products such as bank accounts, payments products and newer methods such as QR and unified payment interface (UPI).

“I have been actively looking for a fintech firm in India for the past 12 months and was happy when I met Madhu, Muthu and Prabhu and heard about their very unique founding journey,” Quaquebeke said.

Deals in the fintech segment

The fintech segment has seen heavy investor activity for startups across all stages. Startups in verticals such as wealth management and neo-banking have pocketed large cheques. Companies in the space are seeking to apply new technologies to traditional financial products and bring more people into formal financial structures.

Earlier this month, VCCircle exclusively reported that mobile wallet firm ZipCash had raised its Series A funding round from a mix of domestic and foreign backers. Also this month, Juspay Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a payments technology firm, raised $21.6 million in its Series B funding round led by a Swedish investor.

Entellus Business Solutions Pvt. Ltd, which operates enterprise-focussed neo-banking platform Nupay, raised funding in a seed investment round led by startup incubator and accelerator Venture Catalysts in January.

That month, EpiFi Technologies Pvt. Ltd raised $13.2 million (around Rs 93.5 crore) in seed funding at a valuation of around $50 million from investors such as Sequoia Capital, Ribbit Capital and Hillhouse Capital.

[dmifinance]

Future of cyber security: From SMAC to BRISC

The future of cybersecurity will revolve around Business Continuity (Backup), Remote Collaboration, Internet, Security & Cloud.

By Manikant R Singh

Over the past few years

technology

spends and discussions by industries were only on Social,

Mobility

,

Analytics

& Cloud (SMAC). Many organisations were first movers and got benefited with these platforms. Investing in these technologies were very promising and gave enough investment returns.

Social helped social engagement, customer collaborations.

Mobility made customer centric data available anytime for mobile workforce

Analytics made predictions based on patterns.

Cloud gave organisations Reliability, High Availability, Scalability & Competitiveness.

Many nascent technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & Virtual Reality acquired popularity and got its implementation. These technologies had few successes and many failures, as reported by enterprise technology leaders.

Fast forward to today, during this pandemic situation, many organizations have enabled work from home solution ensuring business as usual during the crisis. While many were prepared for this kind of situation it was not all the same for every organization.

When countries were declaring lock down every organization relied on IT and

Cyber Security

professionals to ensure business continuity during the pandemic. It was a great and bold decision by leaders who had to keep customers satisfied during this term, with little impact on the business. There was no respite for manufacturing and ecommerce companies while more and more technology companies ensured business continuity

Given the situation, the entire security posture which was designed for perimeter and multi-layered protection collapsed while redefining cyber security measures. Many businesses would adopt this WFH opportunity for cutting costs & improving productivity of employees.

There is no doubt that organizations are taking every method and technology to protect the organizational data while keeping the lights on. A global study says that there will be enormous cut in IT budgets, but I feel there will be more investments toward cyber security and optimization in technology costs.

The future of cyber security will revolve around Business Continuity (Backup), Remote Collaboration, Internet, Security & Cloud (BRISC). Although this might not follow any sequence it is for sure the sustainability of organisations will depend on the total of investment they do in tools and technologies. When this sudden lockdown was declared every Security-Leader had to ensure the following :

Business Continuity on untoward situations.

Remote Collaboration tools

Internet - last mile

Security

Cloud

While above are the big cheese which was nucleus of the problem statement, there was dozens of other solutions which were running and underlying the untold story. Few tools and technologies would be replaced with new ones in the coming years.

Business Continuity which gets tested periodically by majority of the organisations were never prepared for the worldwide lockdown and their cascading effects. Industries like ITES, Contact Centres and Customers Support centres got a big jolt and had to completely bypass many procedures and let loose their processes and live on as-is where basis.

Now following this the history will be re-written and every organisation will rigorously think about comprehensive Disaster Recovery, Backup and Business Resiliency solutions.

Remote working employees resorted to remote collaboration tools for video & audio calls. While many were not mature, the show had to be managed. The future looks bright for all-in-one, ease to use solutions which will get more secure and productive like geofenced, p2p encrypted and private rooms.

The remote deployment tools will also increase to ensure whitelisted applications will be patched besides the signature-based AV and Active Directory polices will get applied to the remote clients with reduced delay

Internet Last mile connectivity and infrastructure which is still a big roadblock for technology utilisation will get more focus and government may help telecom companies to upgrade the last mile and improve the speeds. Technologies like managed Wi-Fi over, SDWAN and State-wide Secure Wi-Fi will capture more market.

Security will be on the highest tide to ensure protection. Tools like Encryption, VPN, 2FA, MFA, EDR security, DLP, CASB, BYOD will engulf the market to protect the remote Work from Home users. The most practised Triade which ensures the CIA of data will take precedence. Identity and access management (IAM) will see a soaring demand.

Cloud will be undisputed, which was once looked as second priority will catch the priority list with no doubts. Private, Public & Hybrid clouds will see more penetration into all industries. More standards for effective monitoring will emerge to safeguard

Cloud Technologies

.

Artificial Intelligence will automate many Cloud workload and take the utilisation north and cost south. Challenges of shadow IT, misconfigurations on cloud will become a pain point for many corporate.

There will be no dearth for budget approvals as far as the business translates the lessons learnt from the crisis. Amid the rush from customers to define problems and vendors to resolve and provide solutions there would be plethora of new opportunities for start-ups, incubations to render Innovative, disruptive & low-cost solutions.

The author is CISO at

DMI Finance

DISCLAIMER: The views expressed are solely of the author and ETCIO.com does not necessarily subscribe to it. ETCIO.com shall not be responsible for any damage caused to any person/organisation directly or indirectly.

[dmifinance]

Expo Theatre - DMI Finance

[dmifinance]

DMI Finance give you the power to Dreambig

[dmifinance]

Experience the joy of Digital Lending through DMI Finance

[dmifinance]

DMI Finance help you remain at the top