The MIT Institute for the Digital Economy (MIT IDE) has awarded one of the grand prizes to the Spanish-Indian company Ftcash at the 2018 Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC). The award was in the category of Financial Inclusion.

A total of 1,500 projects registered for the awards, which were divided into four categories: Financial Inclusion; Income Growth & Job Creation; Skills Development and Opportunity Matching; and Technology Access. MIT created five regions within each category: Latin America, North America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

Four global winners, one per category, were chosen from among the twenty regional finalists.

The awards recognize the capacity of these companies to innovate through scalable solutions that use technology to broaden inclusivity in the digital economy.

Rising Startup Spain

Ftcash came to Spain for the 2017 Rising Startup Spain, the ICEX-Invest in Spain initiative to attract more international talent and promote innovative projects. That year it was one of the fifteen projects chosen from among the 283 presented from 57 countries.

Ftcash was created to empower micro-merchants and SMEs through loans using digital payments. It is one of the fastest-growing financial inclusion companies in India.

Thanks to the award granted by MIT, it will receive part of the $1.6 million are divided between the four winners and 16 finalists. All of them were also invited to the gala awards ceremony. They used the trip to network and to participate in workshops with industry investors and experts.

Shared prosperity

"The grand challenge of our era is to use digital technologies to create not only prosperity, but shared prosperity,” says Erik Brynjolfsson, Director of the MIT IDE. "We created the Inclusive Innovation Challenge to recognize and reward the many amazing people and organizations that are working to accomplish this mission."

“With the MIT IIC, we’re celebrating the entrepreneurs and innovators who are demonstrating many different ways to put powerful technology to use to improve people’s economic prospects,” adds Andrew McAfee, co-director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy. "Our winners and other entrants show us that broadly shared prosperity is possible, which makes a great antidote to pessimism and negativity.”