The E-KYC service startup Verihubs announced $2.8 million (approximately 39.9 billion Rupiah) seed funding round led by Insignia Venture Partners with participation from Central Capital Ventures (CCV) and Armand Ventures. The company plans to expand into regional markets, as well as develop new products, one of which is credit scoring.
Participated also in this round a series of local startup angel investors, including Budi Handoko (Shipper’s Co-Founder), Jefriyanto and Ricky Winata (Payfazz’ Co-Founder), Rohit Mulani (Gotrade’s Co-Founder), Chinmay Chauhan (Bukuwarung’s Co-Founder), and Pramodh Rai (Modalku’s ex-Chief Product Officer).
Previously, in the 2019’s pre-seed, Payfazz’ Co-founder, Hendra Kwik and Xfers’ Co-founder, Tianwei Liu participated in this stage along with Indigo Creative Nation.
Quoting from TechCrunch, a series of angel investors were previously Verihubs’ users. Together with Payfazz, Verihubs opens the opportunity for customers to deposit money with local agents to use for online payments, and BukuWarung, to access transaction data.
The two examples above are Verihubs solutions for the unbanked segment. Meanwhile, the company also serves the segment of users who already have a bank account. The CCV entrance as Verihubs’ investor ranks opens the possibility of implementing e-KYC verification, especially for users with bank accounts, as they can partner with BCA to access customer data.
Currently, 46 companies have used Verihubs’ service, most of which are in the financial sector. The number of users is targeted to be doubled to 100 companies, because Verihubs technology can also be used for e-commerce companies, marketplace rentals, and hospitality. One of Verihubs users came from hospitality, they used the platform to simplify the room check-in process.
Verihubs’ Co-founder & CEO, Rick Firnando said, before Verihubs, many of its clients still doing manual customer verification, which takes between one to two weeks. Verihubs serves as an all-in-one verification solution to only five seconds, using AI-based identity authentication technology and APIs that enable companies to continuously verify returning customers via SMS, WhatsApp or speed dial.
“Because developer has difficulty to do integration with multiple vendors, Verihubs allows clients to do KYC, offer phone number verification using WhatsApp or SMS, and also verify customer financial data,” Rick said.
When users log into the app using Verihubs for the first time, they will be asked to take a selfie and then upload a photo of their government-issued photo ID. Verihubs AI technology compares the two photos to see if they match, and cross-references the ID with a telecom operator’s credit score and Indonesian government database, including criminal records.
The company applies a transaction fee-based business model, the client will pay according to the number of successful verifications.
Rick continued, the company is building a credit scoring system based on transaction data and account balances. In addition, it plans to expand into regional markets, such as Vietnam and the Philippines.
“For the ID verification system, we found that Verihubs already has a product-market fit in Indonesia, however, we want to expand it to new products. We consolidate financial data from multiple sources, not only for banks, but also for the unbanked population. And we are also exploring potential expansion into new markets, such as the Philippines and Vietnam.”
This startup has just graduated from summer batch of Y Combinator 2021, this funding is claimed to be YC’s first AI startup from Indonesia.
Verihubs was founded in 2019 in Jakarta by Rick Firnando with more than 9 years of experience in the B2B industry, and Williem, an AI researcher with a PhD in computer vision from Inha University, South Korea.
Market competition
In Indonesia, there are already several services targeting similar segments such as ASLI RI. In collaboration with LoginID, a Silicon Valley company, ASLI RI launched AsliLoginID, a Biometric-Authentication as a Service (BaaS) platform with FIDO2 certification. The certification is one of today’s most stringent security standards, internationally recognized and is compatible with various types of computing device operating systems.
In addition, one of the service development startups based on artificial intelligence Nodeflux also has a business line that focuses on developing solutions to simplify the eKYC process, Identifai. Nodeflux alone is one of the partners of the Directorate General of Civil Registration as a joint platform provider to provide the best performance in data utilization without security risks.
Regarding the SaaS industry landscape that specifically develops API-based verification solutions, Rick also said that in terms of education, the target market for this service already has a good understanding of the importance of verification solutions. “As the fintech industry and other digital-based companies grow, this solution will be increasingly needed and developed,” he said.
According to ReportLinker, the global software as a service (SaaS) market is expected to grow from $225.6 billion in 2020 to $272.49 billion in 2021 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.8%. The market is expected to reach $436.9 billion by 2025 at a CAGR of 12.5%.
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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian
