Expect budget 2023 to be very development focused, says expert

India's fast growing fintech sector is home to over 2,000 startups and more than 20 unicorns. The industry's market size was estimated at $50 billion in 2021 and is projected to touch $150 billion by 2025.

Fintechs are increasingly assuming an important role in the economy, reaching the yet-unbanked customers with payments, lending and other activities.

Speaking to CNBC-TV18, Deepak Jain, Co-Founder of FlexiLoans said he expects a very development focused budget.

“Given this is the last budget before the elections, we expect a very development focused budget. So we are likely to see government spending a lot on infrastructure related themes. From fintech startups perspective, we see some steps being taken to bring more global capital not only in the form of equity but also in the debt form,” Jain said.

Meanwhile, Anand Kumar Bajaj, Founder MD & CEO of PayNearby expects government to provide 150 percent weighted tax benefit on the entire expenditure rather than just the capital expenditure.

“Infrastructure companies were given 150 percentage weighted tax benefit for building infra in deep rural. I believe fintechs have done that same thing for reaching financial services to the masses in the deep rural. Since our costs are mostly variable in nature, the government may consider giving us 150 percent weighted tax benefit on the entire expenditure rather than just the capital expenditure.”

“Secondly there is a 18 percent GST on the banking correspondent services, we expect that the government makes it 5 percent, so that the model becomes little viable,” Bajaj said.

Also watch Saurav Kumar, Founder & CEO of Euler Motors and Pulkit Khurana, Co-Founder of Battery Smart discuss electric vehicle industry’s expectations from budget 2023. According to a report by Bain & Company, EVs will become a $100 billion+ opportunity in India by 2030. The union budget 2022 was a step in the right direction in introducing forward-looking policies to accelerate EV adoption.

Moreover, CNBC-TV18’s Aishwarya Anand gets a report on how two changemakers are building solutions to solve for single-use plastic waste.