Awareness must for next phase of growth for Account Aggregators: Finarkein Analytics' Nikhil Kurhe

While, currently there are around eight Account Aggregators (AA) operating in India but to make it successful there is a need to create more awareness and build brand names by building their own identities, says Nikhil Kurhe, CEO and co-founder of technology service provider platform Finarkein Analytics, who is the volunteer architect behind Account Aggregator (AA) System. 

To counter the lingering fear of financial data being misused by bad elements, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in September 2021, introduced the concept of the Account Aggregator (AA) network. 

“The next phase of growth for the AA ecosystem will be when Account Aggregators themselves emerge as name brands and build their own identities. Currently, Account Aggregators are positioning themselves as invisible background enabling entities, which I strongly feel is the wrong way to go about it. This has to change and we're actively engaged with all Account Aggregators to make this change happen and unlock the next growth phase for the entire ecosystem. The challenges we face are again towards awareness and inclusive adoption where all kinds of end users benefit from the AA ecosystem,” says Kurhe.

Account Aggregator is a data-sharing system that is required for making investments or accessing credit, among other financial services. As a consumer, you can decide whom to share your data with. It also gives you the power to decide the duration of the consent along with the ability to withdraw it. You would be able to manage all consents on the AA dashboard, which acts as a conduit for the data flowing from one end to another. Experts say it drastically reduces the chance of financial fraud compared to the offline process, where documents can be faked and misused, as data available with AAs is encrypted.

"The concept of data aggregation itself is not new. One way or the other, ways such as SMS parsing and screen scraping have been used to collect data, often without end users being clearly aware of how their data will be used and without their explicit consent. Public Digital Goods such as the Account Aggregator solve this challenge quite seamlessly. But for the framework to be successful, we first require awareness and mainstream adoption. That has not quite happened so far and should change,” says Kurhe.  

Finarkein Analytics plans to raise $10 million for their next institutional funding round. The company’s current investors include Info Edge's Capital 2B Fund, IIFL's Fintech Disrupt Fund, Prophetic Ventures, and Eximius Ventures. “We are keenly exploring all options across both venture equity as well as debt,” says Kurhe.

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