An Exclusive Interview with Ajay Trehan, CEO and Founder, AuthBridge

AuthBridge is India's largest authentication company, delivering cutting-edge technology and alternate data analysis for identity management, onboarding &verification and business intelligence.

Analytics Insight has engaged in an interview with Ajay Trehan, CEO and Founder, AuthBridge. 

Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

AuthBridge is India's largest authentication company, delivering cutting-edge technology and alternate data analysis for identity management, onboarding and verification and business intelligence. AuthBridge has three main business segments—Workforce Solutions for candidate verification and onboarding, Fintelle for customer KYC and digital onboarding journeys in the BFSI sector and business solutions for user KYC and onboarding and vendor due diligence. More than 1500+ clients across 30+ sectors, including Fortune 500 and Indian Unicorns, rely on AuthBridge's sophisticated authentication products and solutions. These AI and ML-powered products are supported by the largest proprietary identity, education and criminal databases in the country. Led by an experienced management team, AuthBridge has conducted over 10 million verification checks since its inception in 2005. AuthBridge is ISO 9001:2015 certified for quality and ISO/IEC 27001:2013 compliant for information security. Recently, AuthBridge has secured two rounds of funding from Infinity Alternatives (Series A) and Phi Capital (Series B) for accelerated growth and technology innovation.

With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since inception of the company?

In 2005, AuthBridge started with the sole purpose of building a formal infrastructure for the background verification industry in India. Right from the time we landed our first enterprise client in 2006, we have been building processes and defining best practices in this niche industry in India. From completely manual operations, to building an online system that led to assembly-line-like handling of our operations (Cornell University has published a case study on this) to becoming the first authentication company that ISO 27001 certified and the first company that got UIDAI authentication license, we have come a long way since our inception.

With a strong foundation in place, we started technology innovation to scale up verification and onboarding for our clients. Building proprietary identity, criminal and education databases, launching APIs for easy integration with HRMS systems and introducing end-to-end platforms for digital verification and onboarding journeys became a part of our technological core and helped us capture a larger market share. Timely acquisitions, like Footprints in 2018, were strategic moves that established us as the largest background verification company in India.

Most recently, much of our efforts have been dedicated to the application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing, among other state-of-the-art technologies like document classification, OCR, and biometric authentication to the authentication space in India. Our mission now is to enable one-stop, AI-powered digital onboarding ecosystem for employee, customer, user and vendor onboarding in India and abroad.

Mention some of the awards, achievements, recognitions, and clients' feedback that you feel are notable and valuable for the company.

Cornell University published a case study on operational excellence in 2012

Awarded ASSOCHAM Service Excellence Awards in 2017

Acquisition of Footprints and addition of 100 new enterprise clients in 2018

Launched a Digital Address Verification product that uses geo-coordinates to validate addresses in real-time in 2020

Recognised by NASSCOM AI Gamechanger Awards for Enabling a Contactless World in 2021

Launched our BFSI specific KYC and risk intelligence brand, Fintelle, in 2021

Secured Series A funding from Infinity Alternatives in 2021

Raised Series B funding from Phi Capital in 2021

Brief us about the proactive founder/CEO of the company and his/her contributions towards the company and the industry.

I am Ajay Trehan.I have been working for quite a long time in building and operating successful businesses. I believe that my strengths i.e, foresight and logical bent of mind have contributed to my success with my ability to listen to my gut timely. The former enabled my decision to get hands-on corporate experience before I chasedmy dream to be an entrepreneur while the latter empowered my leap of faith to leave a distinguished career with reputable organisations as Shriram Industrial Enterprises Limited and ICI India to pursue my passion.

I envisioned AuthBridge while working on CORE BPO, his joint venture in business process outsourcing, catering to the global real estate industry. The trust deficit experienced by his global clients in conducting business in India led me to find AuthBridge in 2005. I led the organisation through many phases of innovation and business transformation since, including the recent pandemic when I led AuthBridge through a phase of digital transformation. From a pioneer in background screening to India's leading service provider of real-time data and cutting-edge, AI-powered, marquee solutions for background authentication and intelligence, AuthBridge's journey has been my journey too.

I am passionate about mentoring young entrepreneurs. Iam on the Advisory team of several start-ups, lending his guidance in helping them evolve and scale. Actively associated with NASSCOM and TIE, I often love sharing mys thoughts on innovation, process and business transformation and trust infrastructure – subjects that are very close to my heart.

Tell us how your company is contributing in the IoT/AI/big data analytics/robotics/self-driving vehicles/cloud computing industry of the nation and how the company is benefiting the clients.

AuthBridge has made significant strides towards the application of AI to create end-to-end digital onboarding journeys that are real-time, compliant, secure and user centric. Some of the technologies that power our products are:

Biometric authentication (face and voice) for fraud detection

Image recognition for document tampering detection

Liveness detection to match an ID to an owner in real-time

Document classification for accurate extraction of NID details via OCR

Geo-coordinate triangulation for digital address verification

Digital E-sign workflows