Indian businesses are setting up fintech partnerships at the Singapore Fintech Festival led by the State Bank of India’s launch of an innovation hub in the city state.

The State Bank of India (SBI) Innovation Hub was launched in partnership with APIX, a Singapore-based global collaborative innovation platform for financial institutions and fintechs, at the festival being held from November 6 to 8.

It is to provide dedicated space for fintechs, startups, and innovators worldwide to design next-generation financial solutions tailored to meet the digital needs of SBI’s diverse customer base.

The initiative is aimed at driving financial innovation and digital transformation as well as advancing financial inclusion, SBI said.

Designed to accelerate digital transformation, the SBI Innovation Hub allows participants to leverage SBI’s 250+ financial service APIs to develop and customise solutions within a secure sandbox environment.

Through structured challenges, hackathons, and partnership opportunities, the platform provides fintechs and startups with unique pathways to gain recognition, compete for official partnerships, and ultimately reach millions of users across India.

Vidya Krishnan, Deputy Managing Director – IT at SBI, said virtually at the launch, “The Innovation Hub of State Bank of India is a key step in our digital transformation mission to foster innovations across our banking and financial services.

“The platform’s capability for mutual discovery of APIs will enable the bank and group companies in collaborating with global innovators to create and build solutions that are innovative, impactful, and highly customer centric. We are simplifying the onboarding process by providing a single touchpoint for fintechs and startups.”

Umang Moondra, CEO of APIX, said, “While APIX has collaborated with many world-leading financial institutions, and fintechs, partnering with a major institution like SBI and delivering a unique platform dedicated to its needs is a tremendous achievement.

“The result of our collaboration is an exciting and pioneering innovation hub that represents a groundbreaking opportunity for fintech and innovators to engage with one of the world’s largest banks in a way that will benefit millions of customers.

“It also levels the playing field for innovators by providing direct access to core elements of innovation such as SBI’s secure sandbox and a suite of APIs, empowering developers to build solutions that resonate with consumers globally and promote financial inclusion,” he said that the launch.

Separately, Indian-origin Gupshup said it has established a strong foothold in Singapore’s rapidly evolving conversational AI landscape, particularly making waves in the financial services sector with a partnership with Standard Chartered Bank.

The partnership will showcase Gupshup’s expertise, where its AI-powered digital assistant handles complex banking queries in real-time, significantly enhancing customer experience and operational efficiency.

Gupshup’s specialisation in domain-specific large language models (LLMs) enables the creation of highly contextualised AI assistants that understand sector-specific nuances and compliance requirements.

“This specialised approach has proven particularly valuable in Singapore’s sophisticated banking sector, where precision and regulatory compliance are paramount,” said Ali Asgar Lightwalla, Senior Director of Sales for BFSI.

“Beyond banking, Gupshup’s innovative conversational AI solutions are transforming customer engagement across various sectors in Singapore, from retail and healthcare to logistics, helping businesses automate customer interactions while maintaining personalisation and service quality.”

Truecaller, the Swedish caller identification app provider, has named Rishit Jhunjhunwala as its group chief executive officer (CEO), effective from January 9, 2025.

This move comes as current CEO Alan Mamedi and Chief Strategy Officer Nami Zarringhalam decide to step down from their operational roles to focus on their board responsibilities and act as strategic advisors to Truecaller.

“We have a fantastic management team in whom we have immense trust, and we have a long-term strategy that everyone supports, and which has started to yield positive results. With these two pieces in place, we are convinced that the company is well positioned for future success to enable us to focus more on long-term strategy,” the duo, who co-founded the company in 2009, said in a statement.

Mamedi and Zarringhalam will continue to be employed by the Swedish company as advisors until June 30 2025.

“Nami and I will remain committed to supporting Rishit and the entire leadership team as board members and strategic advisors, and we are excited to watch the company continue to thrive under Rishit’s leadership,” the Co-founders of Truecaller, said in a personal letter following the announcement.

Jhunjhunwala has been with Truecaller since 2015, initially serving as head of product. In June 2020, he was promoted to chief product officer, and in May 2021, he assumed the role of managing director for India.

“His deep product knowledge and leadership experience have been critical to our success, and we have always regarded him as a co-founder of Truecaller. Over the past two years, I’ve had the privilege of personally mentoring Rishit to take on a larger role within the company, and Nami and I are confident that he is ready to lead the company on a global scale,” the letter added.

Jhunjhunwala, born and raised in India but a Swedish citizen, worked and lived in Sweden from 2015 to 2022.

“Together with the rest of the management team, I look forward to taking Truecaller to even greater heights. Having worked closely with Alan and Nami since 2015, I know these are big shoes to fill, but I am confident to continue tirelessly working towards getting us closer to our mission to make future communication more safe and secure,” Jhunjhunwala, remarked.

The Swedish caller identification app, with India as its largest market globally, has over 500 million monthly active users.

For the Sweden-based company, India remains the biggest market with the region accounting for 75.8% of the total net sales for the financial year 2022-23, owing to its three revenue streams—Truecaller for Business, premium subscriptions, and ads.

SaaS major Freshworkshas laid off around 13% of its global headcount, impacting 660 employees out of its 5,000 strong workforce.

Dennis Woodside, CEO of Freshworks, in an internal memo, said, the decision reflects the company’s focus on key growth areas, including AI, Employee Experience (EX), and Customer Experience (CX) offerings.

“One of the first things our Board of Directors asked me to do when I became CEO five months ago was to assess our strategy and ensure we’re focused on the most critical drivers of our business. This work resulted in our three strategic imperatives (our Employee Experience business, AI and our Customer Experience business) and gave us a clear view into where we need to simplify the way we work and operate more efficiently,” said Dennis Woodside in an internal memo. 

The Nasdaq-listed firm will notify affected employees through a “Transition Discussion” meeting, with discussions scheduled on different timelines depending on regional laws and practices. The memo further stated that impacted employees in the US and India are expected to receive notifications on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively. 

“To add more focus on our EX, AI, and CX priorities, we are realigning our global workforce, putting us on a path to have a bigger impact for our customers. We’re making these changes while our business is profitable and our AI-powered products are providing increasing customer value. We believe this will help us accelerate our growth and simplify the way we work, so that we’re running Freshworks in a way that’s efficient and scalable,” Woodside noted. 

The company said it will provide support for departing employees, including severance packages, extended healthcare coverage, career transition services, and immigration assistance.

Freshworks recently launched Freddy AI Agent, an easy-to-deploy autonomous service agent designed to enhance both CX and EX efforts. The introduction of Freddy AI Agent comes at a time when many enterprises are adopting AI agents to streamline their workflows. 

The AI agents can be deployed within minutes and have resolved an average of 45% of customer support requests and 40% of IT service inquiries, said the company in a statement.

Meanwhile, Freshworks has reported a 22% growth in revenue, climbing to $186.6 million for the third quarter ended September 30, 2024, up from $153.6 million in the same period last year.

The company parred its losses by 3.55% to $29.9 million during the quarter under review, compared to $31 million in the previous year.