Book Review: Fintech Future By Sanjay Phadke

Lockdowns get a little melancholic when you have exhausted all the books in the bookshelf, including those dilapidated ones, that are not in a pristine condition, to consider readable. The universe probably gauged my gigantic void, and this opportunity to review the book (as reviewing means reading the book, too) came as a blessing in disguise…

So, here it is. Fintech Future by Sanjay Phadke, published by SAGE Publications.

The book encircles around the fintech sector and how has technology spearheaded in the world of finance. It’s broadly categorised into Fintech 1.0 (Technology Enters Financial Sevices), Fintech 2.0 (Indian Digital Renaissance), Fintech 3.0 (Technologies That Can Create The New ABC Of Fintech), and Fintech 4.0 (All Finance Becomes Fintech). In the opening chapter, we get an insight as to how fintech is all around us, how the business of money grew digital, how does tech differ from banking, the rise of fintech startups, and understanding the ecology of the US, China and India.

The second part encompasses around digitisation of the Indian financial infrastructure, the importance of GST, what role does fintech play in laying the path ahead for India to become a $5 trillion economy and the revival of the Indian financial infrastructure. Chapter 3 and 4 emphasize on the algorithms of Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, Bitcoin, Blockchain, Cloud, crypto and Cybersecurity; and how the merging of finance into fintech has been doing the rounds, and how is technology making money redundant.

Now, to begin with, I would beg to differ from Sanjay, where, in his acknowledgements, he thanks his friends, mentors, friends and colleagues, for having helped him and surrounded him with love, affection and knowledge, ‘‘that have helped me think through this complex and boring subject.”

The complicated part is still understandable and seems justified, because I have been through that road when technology, how much alluring it may look and sound, at times puts me into a great pandemonium. For instance, while understanding blockchain technology, I would often ponder, well, how did one extra block add to the pie, and what difference did it make in the functioning? But for the boring part, am not really buying it. 

Well, when sitting back at home, you are getting to know FAANG, MAASA, and BAT, then it’s everything but boring. I was particularly smitten when Phadke compares the Tech DNA Versus Bank DNA. 

“Tech DNA is all about rapid change, scale or fail fast, break things, or conquer the world, make mistakes, in order to learn, open crowd sourced innovation, agile development with continuous improvements in products.”

On the contrary, Bank DNA “at least historically, has been about caution, being paranoid, doing experimentation, only in walled off silos, not changing things unless they need fixing.”

Yet with today’s innovative practices, banks have been adapting to the latest forms of technology, like ICICI direct launching its WhatsApp chatbot. Fintech future is one of its kind, and is definitely an engaging read for those willing to gain an understanding of the fintech and a broader perspective of the tech sphere. This book additionally provides a holistic understanding of the fintech space globally, thus providing a clear understanding of the overseas market. 

Also, I was enticed particularly by the epilogue that takes us to mid 2050, where our very own ‘Sunny boy’ together with his clan “carefully created an eco-friendly habitat, which was to be the home for the reunion. The whole of Earth rejoiced this event…”

Go grab a copy now (obviously, I mean the soft copy. The lockdown hasn’t been revoked yet.)