With a Y Combinator grant, tech entrepreneur Bhavna Singh aims to go places with her deep tech startup

Armed with a Y Combinator grant, Bhavna Singh’s deep tech startup AuthMetrik addresses the ever-increasing problem of unauthorised subscription-sharing.

Monday September 09, 2019 , 5 min Read

Online streaming services and OTT platforms have been plagued by users sharing their account password, in which a single sing-up would enable multiple users to access online streaming services. This problem troubled Bhavna Singh to the extent that she quit her job at an edtech startup to find a solution with AuthMetrik.

Bhavna was born and raised in Ghaziabad, the youngest among three siblings. Since childhood, she was fascinated by technology and coding. While doing her BTech from NIT-Raipur, Bhavna began coding for different companies right from her second year.

“I used to take up remote internships or freelancing projects while still in college. I would often bunk my classes and sit in my hostel room coding and striving to create the best products for companies. There was even a time when I was working for three companies at the same time. That's when I realised how much I love solving problems through technology,” she tells HerStory.

Girl who codes

In her final year, Bhavna applied to an edtech company, e-GMAt headquartered in the US. “They loved my profile and decided to hire me right away. I started working part time. I joined the company full time after completing my graduation.”

While at e-GMAT from 2013 to 2016, she realised how there was a loss in revenue since the courses were being shared by four to five people on an average.

“I started searching for a solution but couldn’t find any. At the same time, I came across multiple reports by Parks Associates that stated that OTT companies were losing a lot of revenue due to password sharing. And the revenue loss is expected to reach $9.8 billion by 2020. I got curious and started digging deeper into this problem. I realised that this problem is common across multiple sectors and as the world is moving towards a subscription economy, it will aggravate further.”

This led to the founding of AuthMetrik, a startup that aims to provide solutions for the ever increasing problem of unauthorised subscription-sharing. She started working on AuthMetrik in March 2018 but incorporated it in January 2019. The startup is based in Gurugram.

Typing rhythm and machine learning

What AuthMetrik does it simple. It uses Keystroke Dynamics-based Machine Learning (ML) algorithm that can uniquely identify each user and restrict access of an account only to the person who registered for it in real-time.

We identify each user based on his Keystroke Dynamics (typing rhythm). Keystroke Dynamics is a biometric trait that requires no external hardware and cannot be shared, stolen or imitated, Bhavna explains.

That’s not all. The founder says there is a play of psychology here. She explains, “The roots of password sharing go way beyond just splitting the cost. People see password-sharing as a medium to measure the strength of their relationships. We have carefully studied the psychology of people involved in sharing passwords and identified multiple signals that can clearly denote sharing an account.”

Overcoming challenges

Given her tech expertise, Bhavna is devoted full time in this area, while others for for sales and strategy. It’s a lean team but a focussed and efficient one.

As a woman tech founder, the journey is one without challenges. “The major challenge is to convince people on the effectiveness of the deep tech product created by a women,” she says.

The, there is the unconscious bias.

It is a common notion that a deep tech product made by a women in tech might be of an inferior quality than the one made by a male counterpart.

Bhavna ignores the preconceived notions and continues doing what she is best at – a woman in tech, passionate about her startup.

She has invested around Rs 5 lakh for research and development and creation of the product. The team is currently experimenting with pricing and target segment.

Recently, things took a positive turn when AuthMetric won an equity free grant from Y Combinator.

“Starting a deep technology startup as a solo founder is tough. You often doubt your approach and decisions a lot. Y Combinator was a life-changing experience. I was initially a part of YC Startup School Advisor Track. We were assigned a YC alum as mentor for 10 weeks. YC gave me an opportunity to interact with multiple people and get a global perspective on the state of the problem I was trying to solve. Due to this, I decided to apply to their W19 batch," says Bhavna.

Bootstrapping a deep tech startup as a solo founder where fund raising is a challenge in itself. While most entrepreneurs look for tech talent, Bhavna’s challenge has been with sales.

She says, “Building the deep tech product was the easier part but pitching the product for sales and funding was the hard part. I knew I had to be the one selling the product but didn’t know the proper way to do it.” But with the right mentorship, feedback and practice she overcame that challenge.

Scaling up

The startup is currently bootstrapped but Bhavna is in conversation with some angel investors for seed funding while she also works on scaling her startup.

She started with a solution for preventing subscription sharing fraud and is looking at the major OTT platforms as a client. But that’s not all. She is looking to scale and is working with a bank for a prototype to prevent transaction fraud.

“We aim to become a universal solution for preventing fraud for all sectors starting with subscription fraud and transactional fraud in the financial sector.”

(Edited by Rekha Balakrishnan)