India, the world’s most populous nation and the second-largest web market after China, is changing into more and more digitally lively. Nonetheless, this speedy 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 — throughout the subsequent 12 months. Even the government-backed techniques, together with Aadhaar, have been focused by dangerous actors in some circumstances.
New Delhi retains introducing new regulatory necessities to restrict fraudulent digital transactions. Nonetheless, these updates typically place a burden on companies to commonly replace their tech. Efforts to eradicate digital fraud generally additionally end in disruptions. As an 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 deal with all this with its suite of identification 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 identification databases and hundreds of API suppliers. The startup additionally not too long ago acquired an undisclosed stake in account aggregator OneMoney to mix its identification verification providers with the latter’s consent-based monetary information sharing.
“Knowledge sharing continues to be a serious drawback 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 shifting again to India from the U.S.
For over the past two years, Reddy bootstrapped Equal, and the startup has added greater than 350 clients, 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, broaden 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 buyers, together with Blume Ventures, DST International, Gruhas VC, and Quona VC.
Equal shouldn’t be alone within the area, because the market already has gamers reminiscent of Perfios (backed by Warburg Pincus and Academics’ Enterprise Development), IDfy (backed by TransUnion), and Bureau (backed by GMO VenturePartners). Nonetheless, Reddy instructed TechCrunch that not like the competitors, Equal performs the function of an aggregator and companions even with a few of its opponents.
Ravi Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Upstox, who has additionally invested in Equal’s maiden spherical and is likely one of the early clients for its identification verification and account aggregator, instructed TechCrunch that it’s the fee and uptime that provides the buying and selling platform a purpose to not search for constructing the same tech in-house.
Upstox has been utilizing Equal for a few 12 months and is processing round 350,000 transactions a month. Earlier than that, Kumar stated, the platform was counting on present ID-verification suppliers.
“Equal has been in a position to combination throughout a slew of various APIs and ensures very excessive uptime between all these totally different connections,” he stated.
