India, July 1 -- For nearly a decade, India's fintech ecosystem chased the dream of using technology and alternative data to lend to millions of borrowers overlooked by traditional banks, replacing salary slips with digital footprints such as UPI transactions, smartphone usage, among others.

However, rising delinquencies in the unsecured lending segment have prompted banks to tighten their risk appetite, forcing fintech lenders to slow disbursals.

Against this backdrop, Bengaluru-based fintech infrastructure startup Spense believes the industry's next phase will look fundamentally different.

Instead of building better algorithms to predict whether a borrower will repay an unsecured loan, the startup wants to change the starting point a...