All set for Vizag Fintech Festival from today

  • Welcome Keynote Speech by Chief Minister of AP & Minister of IT
  • Enlightening talk by Sophia, the world’s first Humanoid Citizen
  • 75+ Renowned Speakers
  • 2000+ Delegates from around the globe
  • CxOs Roundtable with CM, 8 power packed keynotes
  • $1 Million Challenge
  • Investor Connect, Demo Day and Awards, CxOs Golf Tournament

Visakhapatnam, October 22, 20118 : The Vizag Fintech Festival 2018 is poised to be the nation’s largest Financial Technology event. The week-long event will take place from October 22-26, in the city of Vizag, also known as India’s Fintech Valley. Hosting over 2000 attendees including decision makers and investors from the Global Fintech fraternity, the event is considered by the Indian Fintech community as the largest platform to explore opportunities, innovation and partnerships.

Organised by Fintech Valley Vizag, Government of Andhra Pradesh in collaboration with SingEx Exhibitions, this five day festival will bring together the financial institutions, startups, investors, tech firms, and regulators from India and across the globe.

The Heart of the Festival : 

At the heart of the festival will be the two day conference covering five major themes

• GovTech – Role of regulatory authorities and demand generation by Governments

• BankTech – Future of Banking, Investments and Payments

• Financial Inclusion –Technology enabling inclusion of underserved in Finance

• InsurTech – Technological advances in Insurance Industry

• EmergeTech – Focus on emerging technologies including Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, Blockchain, IoT, and Big Data

World’s First Robot Citize, Sophia @ Vizag Fintech Festival

The world’s first robot citizen, Sophia, is expected to steal the show at the Vizag Fintech Festival to be held in Vizag from October 22 to 26.

The festival will showcase product launches, innovations, and augment the forethought through conference and exhibition.

Sophia, a Saudi Arabian citizen, was first activated on April 19, 2015 and is able to display more than 62 facial expressions. Hong Kong-headquartered Hanson Robotics has said that its social humanoid robot will now help research artificial general intelligence (AGI).  

JA Chowdary, Special Chief Secretary and IT Advisor to AP government said Sophia will also interact with the participants who will be experts in the financial technologies, regulators, investors and IT professionals. Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu will be present.

$ 1 Million Challenge

The Government of Andhra Pradesh, in strategic collaboration with its challenge partners, DCF Ventures and Biz of IT, have selected 40 startups globally, from Fintech, Agritech and Emergetech, for the finale of the $1 M challenge. The shortlisting of the startups was completed after the roadshow in Bengaluru on Wednesday.

Twenty-four startups have won $ 10,000, two are tied with the award of $ 5,000 each. Due to the superior quality of the startups and the overwhelming response, an additional list of 14 consolation prizes have been awarded to 14 startups, who will be pitching at the Grand Finale. All the 40 startups have an opportunity to exhibit at the Vizag Fintech Festival to more than 1500 global delegates comprising of VCs, angel investors etc.,. There are almost 40% startups who have attracted informal interest from the investors through these roadshows already  and these investors are likely to be present on the demo day.

A total of 14 startups were selected from the Fintech category, whereas 15 and 11 startups were selected from the Emergetech and Agritech categories respectively.

The startups were selected after roadshows in San Francisco, Chicago, New York, Tel Aviv, London, Paris, Hong Kong and Bengaluru. An equity-free funding of first prize of $150,000 (~INR 1 crore),second prize of $100,000 (~INR 70 lakh) will be awarded to the winners. Finalists in each category will get ~INR 7 lakh each to set up their business in Vizag, Andhra Pradesh. 

$1Mn Challenge winners will be announced by email and on the  vizagfintechfestival.com site at 6:00 pm on October 25th. The Awards ceremony will be held at the Vizag Fintech Festival on the same day.

The finalists and winners of the challenge will also be supported by Fintech Valley Vizag in enabling them to set up operations and grow their business in the state of Andhra Pradesh.