PayPal announces Fifth Edition of PayPal Incubator challenge

PayPal, the digital payment platform, announced the launch of the fifth edition of the PayPal Incubator Challenge. Applications are now open for early-stage financial technology companies, including startups across the country specializing in loyalty, machine learning, big data and logistics, among others to compete for a spot in the PayPal Incubator.

Launched in 2013 in partnership with The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), the incubator provides a conducive environment for early-stage startups to grow and evolve. As well as an exclusive facility available at PayPal’s Technology Center in Chennai, the PayPal Incubator offers startups technology counsel and mentorship, infrastructure support and networking opportunities with both investors and customers.

“Enabling and co-creating with our ecosystem has been core to PayPal’s presence in India. The PayPal Incubator, with its state-of-the-art facilities backed by our 17 years of global experience and expertise in the sector, will help budding start-ups compete in a very competitive business environment. The recent demonetization has created a behavioural shift towards digital payments and as we build next-generation solutions, the Incubator will help elevate and drive innovation, propelling India into a less-cash economy.” said, Guru Bhat – GM Technology & Head of Engineering– PayPal.

PayPal’s vision is to transform and democratize financial services and become an everyday part of people’s lives. As part of this vision, the PayPal Incubator will focus on startups in the FinTech space, including those focused on core payment features such as wallets, gateways and remittances as well as payments enablers and adjacencies such as biometric authentication along with artificial intelligence, machine learning, big data, security and financial inclusion. The winners of the 2015 PayPal Incubator Challenge were FinTech startups CashFree, Codemojo, Notifie and ftcash.

Applications are open from today and will close on January 31, 2017. Successful applicants will be contacted to undergo two rounds of pitching before the final companies are selected by a jury panel. The panel will include senior leaders from PayPal as well as prominent venture capitalists and entrepreneurs in India.

To date, the PayPal incubator has hosted ten startups and provides access to global mentors, angel investors and venture capitalists. Some success stories of the PayPal Incubator include, BookMyShow investing in Fantain, a fan relationship management (FRM) solutions provider, Freshdesk Inc., a start-up that provides customer support platforms, acquiring Konotor, and PiQube receiving funding of Rs. 500,000 from The HR Fund. Other PayPal Incubator graduates such as Kobster have raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Splice Advisors.