this story originally appeared in on may 10 2016mumbai deutsche banks former cochief executive anshu jain is partnering with former colleague bhupinder singh to launch a nonbank finance company in india counting on the millions underserved by the banking sector in his home country the nbfc will lend to individuals smes and entrepreneurs and may be modelled on san franciscobased fintech startup sofi to which jain is an adviser four people familiar with the plan told et it may be backed by softbank as in the case of sofi technology will be the backbone of this firm which hopes to tap indias underserved and underpenetrated lending market by using online analytics through credit scores and data collected from aadhaar said one of the people the idea is to build a desi version of sofi which started as social finance in 2011 offering an online platform to help match the funding needs of students wanting to study at stanford with wealthy alumni who were ready to help it has since grown into a fullfledged nbfc giving cheap student loans as well as mortgages personal loans and wealthmanagement services jain quit deutsche bank in june 2015 amid falling profits at the german bank mainly as a result of high legal costs and fines on misadventures like the alleged rigging of benchmark rates by european lenders in february the german financial regulator closed special audits at deutsche bank effectively freeing jain of any wrongdoing the proposed nbfc will be jains first financial services venture in india jain directed et to talk to singh when contacted via email for comment singh declined to comment singh a former cohead of deutsche banks corporate banking business in asia pacific quit the bank less than a year ago he is likely to be the founding ceo for the new venture while jain will be an investor the people et spoke to said it will be like sofi but an indian version as there will be need for brickandmortar branches albeit a sparse network because the endeavour would be to do a majority of the business online said the first person another of the four people said the venture has been in the works for six months it is still awaiting final regulatory approvals but one thing is certain that it will be backed by foreign private equity or venture money softbank may be one of the backers especially because jain is putting his skin in the game said this person softbank could not be immediately reached for comment the firms name is yet to be finalised it will have different lending verticals such as small medium enterprises sme loan against property and mortgages head hunters are already recruiting people for the venture the nbfc will look to tap the vastly underserved lending market in india where according to a world bankgallup global findex survey released last year more than 47 of the population still does not have a bank account i am not surprised that