Request for Proposal for Selection of a Technology Service Provider for a Rural Credit Pilot

Background of the project: Financial Inclusion in India remains low, hampered by the high cost of reach, small ticket sizes and difficulty in underwriting the credit risk for the segment. The objective of the project is to enable India Post Payments Bank to roll out a pilot for providing assisted-mode financial credit to rural customers through lender banks. CGAP serves as a global advocate for the financial inclusion community by collaborating with strategic institutions that influence policy and market development and providing evidence-based research and practical lessons that guide their work. CGAP is housed in and administered by the World Bank.

Role of Sahamati: CGAP has mandated Sahamati for the end-to-end delivery of the assisted Rural Credit Pilot for IPPB which includes the building of a Digital Credit Assistant Application and live pilot of the application with a minimum of two lenders.

Sahamati, within its charter of being an industry alliance working to build the Account Aggregator Ecosystem, took up the project to build out and demonstrate a live assisted digital lending use case for financial inclusion riding on the Account Aggregator Framework.  The live pilot should serve to generate findings relevant to CGAP, IPPB and the AA ecosystem.

Scope of the RFP:  As a part of the overall mandate, Sahamati has invited proposals from Technology Service Providers to build and deploy a Digital Credit Assistant application for India Post Payments Bank, that will be used by Grameen Dak Sevaks (GDS) to assist borrowers in getting loan offers by giving their consent to electronically, securely, share their bank account data in real-time through AAs and OCEN lending APIs of partner lenders. The scope of the current RFP is limited to the pilot with no guarantee on the pilot translating into a larger project, post rollout.

Selection Process: The selection of the Technology Service Provider will be done by an independent panel of industry experts composed of CGAP and IPPB representatives. Sahamati is committed to drive the process with complete transparency and neutrality, the two key pillars of its organisational foundation.

Selection criteria: The selection of the Technology Service Provider will be done solely based on a technical evaluation as detailed in the RFP

Commercials: Up to Rs 20 Lakh (including GST) for building and deploying a Digital Credit Assistant Application). We request participants to consider doing it at a minimum cost and with flexible payment terms. The project has an experimental development and capacity building orientation and is not a commercial-grade project.

Sahamati will receive remuneration for its role as a project manager and oversee the execution of technological and non-technological modules of the pilot. However, it has earmarked the majority of the total fees it will receive on the project implementation for the Technology Service Provider that gets selected under this RFP.

Sahamati will receive a fee for its role as a project manager to execute the pilot and has earmarked the majority of the fees it will receive for the Technology Service Provider that gets selected under this RFP.

Important Dates

• Date of issuance of RFP: 21^st February 2022
• Pre-bid Clarification Call: 28^th February 2022
• Last Date of submission of proposal: 7^th March
• Date of Awarding the mandate: The earlier date was 14^th March 2022, now expected to be completed by 24^th March 2022.

Status Update as on 21^st March 2022

The selection panel has received 11 proposals before the deadline of 7^th March. Based on the assessment, the panel has shortlisted the following for TSPs for the next round of discussion.

1. Jocata
2. Juspay
3. Lentra
4. Perfios

The next round of discussions with the shortlisted TSPs have been scheduled and the panel is expected to announce the final decision by 24^th March.

Next Steps:

• In person discussion with the shortlisted bidders, if required
• Awarding of the mandate
• Project Kick Off

APPLICATIONS FOR THE REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL HAVE CLOSED.