This episode features a conversation with Amol Agrawal about Central Bank Digital Currencies. 

Dr. Amol Agrawal is the professor of economics at Ahmedabad University. He has done extensive work in the fields of Macroeconomics, Banking, history of economic thought, Economic and Financial History. His blog Mostly Economics is one of the most popular blogs on Indian economics and he has spent a lot of time thinking about and writing on digital currencies

Show notes:

“Fintech”, “AI”, “Machine Learning” these terms are becoming more mainstream as days go by. Any average person today understands that the use of these terms in a sentence implies increasing efficiency or bringing about some technological change. However, in some quarters, this is more of a buzzword with little understanding of its application.

In this episode, Sandesh talks to Arpit Ratan, co-founder of Signzy, a no-code, banking process automation startup, on what it means to apply AI to banking processes. We talk about how technology is being used to phase out legacy processes in customer onboarding processes and know-your-customer related compliance.

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Music by Rohan Shiva

Edited by Nirmal Bhansali

In this episode we understand the relevance of Information Utilities in the credit ecosystem of our country with Bhargavi Zaveri. 

Bhargavi Zaveri is a senior researcher at the Finance Research Group. She has previously held research positions at the Harvard Law School, the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, New Delhi, and the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai. She was part of the team that set up NeSL, the first Information Utility in India.

Show Notes:

Do check out Bhargavi’s other recent podcasts on Bankruptcy which would supplement the understanding of Information Utilities:

Title credits: Beni Chugh (check our her episode with Legal Synthesis here)

Episode is edited by Nirmal Bhansali and the soundtrack was composed by Rohan Shiva.

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Financial inclusion and a well-functioning financial system are the hallmarks of any developed economy. India, for the last 73 years has been trying to solve the problem of providing access to financial services. While we are almost there now, what next? How do we make sure this access translates into benefits? How will our country now step on the path to prosperity? These are some of the broad themes we cover in this episode. We talk to Beni Chugh, a senior research associate at Dvara Research about what financial inclusion really means, how the idea has evolved, and what we can do as a society to make financial services more inclusive. In the course of the conversation, we also discuss the role of each of the stakeholders in the process, what the capacity constraints are, and the regulatory barriers that currently exist.

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There has been a trend of increasing investments in legal technology companies. Many of the biggest firms, internationally and in India have launched their own incubator programmes to build tools and systems that can help reduce effort put in by lawyers. Through a conversation with Marisha Thakker, a Legal Solutions Architect at Dentons - we breakdown the decision making process of adopting legal technology, and what kind of culture is required to disrupt the processes in the legal industry.

Music by Rohan Shiva

Over the last couple of years, the big tech companies have been increasing their presence in the Indian financial services market. In this episode, with the help of Shohini Sengupta, we try to look at the incentives for these companies and what should the regulators keep in mind to ensure financial stability. 

Show Notes:

We're launching a new podcast series - Legal Synthesis. It's a podcast about the interface between law, finance and technology. If you're someone who's interested in these fields, and are eager to learn something about these issues, this podcast is for you.