Financially Speaking with The Fin Lit Project The Fin Lit Project

Angel Investing has caught a lot of attention in recent times with interest in startups.

Learn more about this asset class from Jayaroopa Jeyabarathi, Founding Partner, Encubay Angel Network, an angel network investing in early stage startups. She is a seasoned finance professional with deep experience in early stage equity investments. She earlier led the Indian investments for a venture capital firms has invested across sectors such as fintech, sustainability, edtech, healthtech and B2B distribution.

Prior to her investing career, Jayaroopa has worked in microfinance and corporate banking. She is passionate about impact and gender inclusion. She also co-founded India’s first community driven investor network, Women In Investing Network in 2018.
Having been an investor, entrepreneur and banker, she understands what the journey of an entrepreneur entails and is always eager to engage and enable entrepreneurs.

Tune in to this conversation now!

In this conversation find our more about: Invoice discounting and Revenue-based financing as Alternate Investment Classes.  About the speaker: Vineet has over a decade of investment experience across sectors including real estate and hospitality. He has managed and closed over 30 deals amounting to $1bn+ across equity, debt, and mezzanine debt, among others. He was part of founding team of Piramal Fund which over time grew to AUM of $7bn+. Prior to Piramal Fund, he worked with a large corporate desk of Axis Bank across cement, retail, and engineering. He is an alumnus of XIM, Bhubaneswar, and RVCE, Bangalore.  Lets enable financial literacy for alternate investments!

Learn about Trade Finance or Supply Chain Finance from the legend in the industry: Ram Iyer, Founder and CEO, Vayana Network:  Ram Iyer, is the Founder & CEO of Vayana Network, a serial entrepreneur with over 25 years in the Cash Management and Trade Finance space providing solutions to some of the largest Banks in India and across the globe. At Vayana Network, Ram has led the company with the vision to democratize access to affordable finance for MSMEs. Previously, he was the co-founder and CEO of CashTech Solutions, a leading Cash Management service provider in Asia which was acquired by Nasdaq listed Fundtech (now a part of the Finastra Group). He started his career with Accenture in their management consulting arm. He is a management graduate from IIM Ahmedabad and an Engineer from Mumbai University. Ram carries an exceptional understanding of B2B trade, payment ecosystems, technology and how to merge them for the benefit of last-mile B2B lending.  About Vayana Network-  Vayana Network is one of India's largest Supply Chain Finance platform in India, having enabled finances of USD 8 Billion to over 22,000 MSMEs across 1000 supply chains in 25 different sectors. Vayana connects corporates and their trade ecosystems to provide digital, convenient, and affordable access to credit for their payables and receivables. With its proprietary technology, Vayana has processed over 2 million transactions and offers a zero-change experience to customers. The network today spans across 600 cities and 1150+ pin codes in India and extends to 20 countries across the globe. The company is increasingly catering to the smallest of MSMEs in the long tail of the supply chains. Vayana is also one of the largest GSP (GST Suvidha Provider) in the country, facilitating, GST, E-Way bill and E-invoice for numerous corporates and lakhs of SMEs. The GSP platform has witnessed over 2.5 billion-plus API calls in GST and e-invoicing, with zero downtime. Since its launch, 1 in 5 e-invoices have been generated by Vayana.

In our 3rd episode in Season 2 we discuss a new aspect of finance which is #LeaseFinancing with Nikhil Aggarwal, Founder & CEO, Grip Invest.



About Nikhil:



Nikhil Aggarwal is the founder and CEO of Grip Invest. In his role as a CEO, Nikhil seeks to offer new-age investment opportunities to retail investors that focus on asset-backed investments options. He has 16+ years of experience in investment banking and fintech and oversees new growth opportunities, credit controls, and risk management of the organization. He also acts as a Consultant to the Transport Practice of the World Bank.



Prior to Grip Invest, he co-founded Chalo in 2016. Chalo is one of India’s largest mobility startups that focuses on building smarter solutions for public transit. He has also served as the Vice President at Morgan Stanley for 6 years where he advised some of India's largest companies on M&A and capital raising. Apart from this, Nikhil has been a part of the core strategy team involved in rebuilding HSBC India’s mortgage portfolio. He holds a degree in Economics and an MBA in Finance. 





About @Grip Invest: 

Grip is building a new category of investment options for the new-age of Indians. Millennials don’t communicate, shop, pay, entertain or work like the previous generation - then why should they invest the same way? 



Started in June’20, Grip has seen a 35% month-on-month growth to become one of India’s fastest-growing destinations for non-stock market linked investments. Today, Grip offers a unique investment option of leasing assets to some of India’s most disruptive businesses like Udaan, Stanza Living, Furlenco, Bounce, Blue Tokai, Everest Fleet, IPLElectric, FabAlley and LetsTransport. 



Grip was founded by Nikhil Aggarwal, Vivek Gulati, and Aashish Jindal. Prior to Grip, Nikhil co-founded and served as COO of Chalo, India’s leading mobility startup for city buses. He started his career at HSBC and then worked for 6 years with the Investment Banking team at Morgan Stanley, India. Nikhil also currently serves as a Consultant to the Transport Practice at the World Bank. Vivek was previously part of the business development team at Chalo and led business development for the Expansion Team for OYO Hotel’s domestic and international operations. Aashish Jindal previously worked in product and project management roles with ICICI Bank, Pepperfry and Chalo.



Nikhil talks about Diversification for Retail Investors, the need to be cautious while investing for the first time and the importance of Alternative Investments.



Watch Now to learn more from the legend in Lease Finance!



To know further about Lease Financing you can follow Grip Invest on

Website: https://GripInvest.in

Instagram: https://instagram.com/GripInvest

Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/GripInvest

LinkedIn:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/Grip...

In our second conversation, find out more about SEBI Registered Investment Advisory from registered investment advisor Mr Harish Menon, co - founder of House of Alpha. House of Alpha is a Client focused Fee-Only Advisers specializing in on Lifestyle Financial Planning & Investment Advisory. Check out House of Alpha at: www.houseofalpha.in  Harish talks candidly about the need to educate people about everything from building a corpus to retirement plans and even succession planning.  He talks about the concept of Pulley and his inspiration from this book called Enough.  Harish also mentions the concept of Lifestyle Inflation, an often overlooked aspect while saving for the future.

In our 12th Financially Speaking episode we discuss a very important aspect in this world of growing Financial Technology: Digital Trust Ecosystems.  We're honoured to be joined by John Jordan, the Executive Director of the BC Digital Trust Service and of the Trust over IP Foundation. He is an experienced product executive and technology strategist who has over 25 years of experience in both the private and public sectors. John has extensive experience in delivering products leveraging open standards and open-source software. Prior to joining the Government of British Columbia, he led the implementation of Buyandsell.gc.ca, the Government of Canada's procurement service, which is built entirely using open source software including Drupal, MySQL, nginx, and SoLR. Currently, he leads the Province of British Columbia’s participation in the establishment of a trust layer for the Internet. This includes leading teams who have been making significant contributions to the open-source Hyperledger Aries and Indy projects since the Fall of 2017.  He also leads the Trust over IP Foundation, which is defining a complete interoperable architecture for digital trust. In this capacity, he provides direction to over 150 companies and organizations working together to make services, transactions and relationships better by using verifiable credentials. In the late 1990's John's Masters research focused on the use of open-source software development and distribution as an emerging dominant design. Something which has come to pass.  John's recommended read is Good to Great by James Collins and John truly believes in the strength that good people can bring to organisations. Learn about this interesting framework and the ToIP Foundation in this candid interview.