Lakshmi Narayanan
Former Head of Digital Channels, scheduled commercial bank
Payments and merchant acceptance
FINfinblue.stpi.in
FinBlue
India's Centre of Entrepreneurship for FinTech, in Chennai
We take fintech teams from a working prototype to a regulated pilot. Residency, a sandbox with anonymised financial data, mentors who have shipped in banks, and introductions that actually convert.
A Centre of Entrepreneurship under STPINEXT Initiatives, the Section 8 company of Software Technology Parks of India. Go to the national portal
FinBlue in numbers
- Startups supported
- 148
- Since 2018, across eight cohorts
- Capital raised by portfolio
- Rs 1,640 crore
- Reported by founders, March 2026
- Bank and NBFC pilots
- 63
- Run inside partner institutions
- Floor area
- 18,000 sq ft
- At the CIT Campus, Taramani
What FinBlue does
One domain, done properly. Everything here is built for teams whose product touches money, and therefore touches a regulator.
Domain focus
We take applications in eight fintech areas.
- Payments and merchant acceptance
- Digital lending and credit scoring
- Insurance distribution and claims
- Wealth and retail investment
- Regulatory reporting and compliance
- Fraud detection and risk analytics
- Core banking and co-operative bank tooling
- Cross-border remittance
Facilities
Open from 8 am to 10 pm, badge access for residents.
- Co-working floor with 140 seats and 12 team cabins
- Sandbox with anonymised transaction datasets
- API testbed for UPI, ONDC and account aggregator flows
- Device lab with card terminals and PoS hardware
- Demo room wired for bank evaluation panels
- Two mentoring rooms and a recording booth
What a cohort gets
Twelve months, with a review at month six.
- Seed support up to Rs 25 lakh, in three tranches
- A named mentor and a quarterly board review
- A regulatory clinic with the legal partner
- Introductions to pilot banks and NBFCs
- Cloud and compliance tooling credits
- A slot at the annual demo day in Chennai
Our mentors
Each resident team is matched to one mentor for the full twelve months, not to a rotating pool.
Ritika Bhandari
Partner, financial services regulatory practice
Licensing and regulatory compliance
Syed Imtiaz Ahmed
Chief Risk Officer, non-banking financial company
Credit underwriting and collections
Meera Raghunathan
Engineering Director, core banking platform
Architecture and production readiness
Joseph Mathew
Principal, early-stage venture fund
Fundraising and unit economics
Ananya Deshpande
Head of Information Security, payments network
Security, audit and data protection
Our startups
Forty-one teams are in residence today. These are the ones running live pilots.
Paykosh
Offline-first UPI acceptance for shops on weak mobile networks.
2021Cohort 04
Rincheck
Credit scoring from cash-flow data for borrowers with no bureau record.
2021Cohort 04
BimaBridge
Assisted insurance sales and claim tracking for rural agents.
2022Cohort 05
LedgerLoom
Reconciliation automation for urban co-operative banks.
2022Cohort 05
Vittarang
Voice banking in nine languages, usable on a feature phone.
2023Cohort 06
FraudFence
Real-time scoring of merchant UPI transactions for mule-account patterns.
2023Cohort 06
NidhiStack
Treasury and liquidity tooling for small non-banking financial companies.
2024Cohort 07
ArthaTrail
Audit trails and automated regulatory returns for lending platforms.
2025Cohort 08
Our partners
Twenty-two institutions work with the cohort each year.
Partner marks are not reproduced in this prototype. Each tile below is a typographic placeholder describing the kind of partner that sits in that slot; the real logo wall is supplied by the centre before launch.
- Scheduled commercial banksSix slots
- Payments networksTwo slots
- Non-banking financial companiesThree slots
- Early-stage venture fundsFour slots
- Cloud infrastructure providersTwo slots
- Audit and assurance firmsTwo slots
- Financial regulation law firmsTwo slots
- Academic and research partnersOne slot
Open now
Applications are read in the order they arrive. Incomplete forms are returned with a note saying what is missing.
Open
FinBlue cohort nine
Twelve months of residency in Chennai for twenty teams with a working product and a first customer.
Closing soon
FinTech for Bharat Challenge 2026
A problem statement set by three partner banks on collections in semi-urban districts. Winning team gets a paid pilot.
Event
Regulatory clinic for account aggregator products
A free half-day clinic with the legal partner, open to any Indian fintech team, not only residents.
Closed
Demo day 2026
Cohort eight presents to investors and partner banks. Applications from the cohort closed in July.
Work at FinBlue
Three roles are open at the Chennai centre. Selection follows the STPINEXT recruitment rules.
Manager, startup engagement
Contract, three years
Applications close 10 October 2026
Technical architect, fintech sandbox
Contract, three years
Applications close 24 October 2026
Programme associate, cohort operations
Contract, two years
Applications close 10 October 2026
Search all STPI vacanciesVacancies across every centre are listed once, nationally.
Tenders
Procurement for this centre is published on the national tender register and on the Central Public Procurement Portal.
- Supply of card terminals for the device lab
STPINEXT/FIN/2026/17 — bids close 9 October 2026
- Annual maintenance of the co-working floor
STPINEXT/FIN/2026/14 — bids close 21 October 2026
Find us
Walk-ins are welcome on Wednesdays between 3 pm and 6 pm. For anything else, write first.
FinBlue, STPI Chennai
Centre of Entrepreneurship for FinTechNo. 5, 3rd Cross Street, CIT CampusTaramani, Chennai 600 113, Tamil Nadu- Cohort applications
- Centre Head, FinBlue
- +91 44 2254 1101
- apply@finblue.stpi.in
- Partnerships and pilots
- Manager, Partnerships
- +91 44 2254 1118
- partners@finblue.stpi.in
- Facilities and visits
- Facilities Desk
- +91 44 2254 1125
- desk@finblue.stpi.in
What this centre inherits
FinBlue is published from the same platform as every STPI site. The cohort content on this page is local to the centre; everything below is maintained once, nationally, and rendered here.
- Government masthead, language switch and accessibility controls
- GIGW footer and the mandatory policy pages
- Incubation scheme content and application forms
- Tender register and the national careers listing
- Grievance workflow, site search and sitemap