WATCH: Why Veri5Digital chose Aadhaar to build its technology and how it cracked the identity conundrum in India
In a conversation with YourStory, Saru Tumuluri talks about how Veri5Digital continued to grow even after the Supreme Court verdict last September that stopped Aadhaar from becoming the primary form of identification for Indians.
Veri5Digital was started by Saru Tumuluri in 2016, as an entrepreneur in residence (EIR) at Khosla Labs, in an attempt to build identity technology around Aadhaar’s digital signatures, KYC, and video KYCs. The company solves issues around KYC and identity using deep tech like artificial intelligence.
"You need technology to solve the conundrum of identity. It applies to banks, ride-share companies, and anywhere that has a transaction between two individuals," she says.
At present, Veri5Digital’s products include Veri5 KYC, Veri5 Sign, Veri5 Hosted, and Veri5 eNach, and it competes with businesses like Yoti and eMudhra. In India, the startup works with five digital identities - PAN, Aadhaar, driving license, passport and voter ID.
In a conversation with YourStory, Saru talks about how the company continued to grow even after the Supreme Court verdict last September that stopped Aadhaar from becoming the primary form of identification for Indians.
Saru was chosen for Khosla Labs’ EIR programme to build technology around Aadhaar. Her plan was to use the IndiaStack to build identity management solutions over the cloud.
It took the team a good two years to gain market acceptance. But what began as just an idea in 2016 soon turned into one of the fastest growing cloud-based identity management companies.
Khosla Labs, founded in 2012 by Srikanth Nadhamuni and Vinod Khosla in Bengaluru, was aimed at incubating ideas in mobile payments and banking, Aadhaar applications, machine learning, and data efficiency.
Saru Tumuluri
Saru has been an entrepreneur for over two decades. A graduate from San Jose State University, she came back to India because she believed the country was leapfrogging legacy technologies.
She says, “The opportunity to build a solution for a large population set could only be done out of India. At Khosla Labs, we were able to build on IndiaStack and we know the impact it has made on our lives through Aadhaar.”
Over the last three years, Saru has been able to raise more than a million dollars (she does not disclose the exact amount) and has more than 30 B2B customers.
(Edited by Saheli Sen Gupta)
