India, the world’s most populous nation and the second-largest web market after China, is turning into more and more digitally energetic. Nonetheless, this fast digitization comes with a rising threat of on-line fraud.
Cyber fraud is mounting in India to the purpose the place the Indian authorities estimates it may quantity to 0.7% of the nation’s GDP — over $14 billion — inside the subsequent yr. Even the government-backed techniques, together with Aadhaar, have been focused by unhealthy actors in some instances.
New Delhi retains introducing new regulatory necessities to restrict fraudulent digital transactions. Nonetheless, these updates usually place a burden on companies to frequently replace their tech. Efforts to eradicate digital fraud typically additionally lead to disruptions. For example, the latest clampdown on unauthorized use of the everlasting account quantity disrupted transactions for some fintech platforms.
Equal, a Hyderabad-based startup, goals to handle all this with its suite of id verification and monetary data-sharing merchandise.
The 2-year-old startup helps companies streamline know-your-customer (KYC) necessities, fraud prevention, and regulatory compliance by integrating greater than 50 id databases and 1000’s of API suppliers. The startup additionally not too long ago acquired an undisclosed stake in account aggregator OneMoney to mix its id verification companies with the latter’s consent-based monetary information sharing.
“Information sharing remains to be a significant downside on this nation if it’s not performed digitally with consent,” Keshav Reddy, the son of GVK Group’s vice chairman GV Sanjay Reddy, instructed TechCrunch.
Reddy based Equal with former Swiggy engineering director Rajeev Ranjan after transferring again to India from the U.S.
For during the last two years, Reddy bootstrapped Equal, and the startup has added greater than 350 prospects, together with State Financial institution of India, HDFC Financial institution, ICICI Financial institution, Reliance Jio, Airtel, Uber, and Zoom.
The startup has now raised a Sequence A spherical of $10 million at a post-money valuation of $80 million to scale its operations, develop the product suite, and forge strategic partnerships. The spherical was led by Prosus Ventures, together with Tomales Bay Capital and Reddy himself, and noticed participation from different traders, together with Blume Ventures, DST World, Gruhas VC, and Quona VC.
Equal just isn’t alone within the area, because the market already has gamers comparable to Perfios (backed by Warburg Pincus and Lecturers’ Enterprise Progress), IDfy (backed by TransUnion), and Bureau (backed by GMO VenturePartners). Nonetheless, Reddy instructed TechCrunch that not like the competitors, Equal performs the position of an aggregator and companions even with a few of its rivals.
Ravi Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Upstox, who has additionally invested in Equal’s maiden spherical and is without doubt one of the early prospects for its id verification and account aggregator, instructed TechCrunch that it’s the price and uptime that provides the buying and selling platform a cause to not search for constructing an analogous tech in-house.
Upstox has been utilizing Equal for a couple of yr and is processing round 350,000 transactions a month. Earlier than that, Kumar mentioned, the platform was counting on present ID-verification suppliers.
“Equal has been capable of mixture throughout a slew of various APIs and ensures very excessive uptime between all these completely different connections,” he mentioned.
