several digital lending startups have been receiving a unique set of visitors in recent months chinese lending companies looking to set shop in the country at least half a dozen chinese financialtechnology companies have held multiple meetings with the founders of digital lending startups in india for investment as well as partnership opportunities according to domestic entrepreneurs involved in those discussions while indias rapidly growing fintech sector appears greener to the chinese companies because of a regulatory clampdown back home domestic firms stand to benefit from their chinese counterparts ability to innovate and robust business models we started looking at the india market in october i have made several trips to do the groundwork for our market entry since then said james chan chief executive for asiapacific at wecash the beijingbased fintech startup which uses big data and machinelearning for creditassessment in china will set up an india team within the next two months chan told et chinese lending platform billion finance peer lending platform itouzi and fintech companies finup fenqile and cashbus too have held meetings with local companies chinese technology firm apus and investment firm suxiang have also held meetings with domestic fintech companies said the entrepreneurs mentioned above some of these meetings are at an early exploratory stage with the chinese firms trying to understand the local market and the mindset of regulators here before finalising their india plans chinese microlending company fenqile and smartphone maker xiaomi have already invested in bengalurubased student lending platform krazybee xiaomi also invested in zestmoney et reported last month consumer lending as an industry witnessed a huge boom in china the last few years fintech companies yirendai and hexindai even successfully listed their shares on us bourses but according to local industry executives tracking the consumer loans segment in china the rapid growth also resulted in situations that saw interest rates spike up to as much as 100 per annum late last year chinese regulators cracked down on the microlending space tightening lending rates to 36 annualised and withholding new licences for online lending startups despite being prepared for the regulatory change everyone felt its shockwaves albeit at varying levels wecashs chan said but did not elaborate on the impact on the companys business the impact on the sector seems to have been significant ecommerce giant alibabas ant financial registered a 74 quarteronquarter drop in the consumer loansbacked securities it sold in the march quarter as per a bloomberg report the crackdown forced many fintech companies to look beyond china at large markets such as india and indonesia wecash which raised 160 million in march entered indonesia last year through a joint venture with two indonesian partnersbig opportunity for midsized firms there is a big opportunity in the consumerlending space in india alibababacked paytm being the only big fintech player here can give further impetus for other chinese players to enter india said sachin seth partner for fintech at advisory firm ey the chinese fintech companies looking for opportunities in india