Mastercard backs digital identity solutions startup Syntizen

Hyderabad-based digital identity solutions startup Syntizen Technologies has raised an undisclosed sum in a seed funding round from global payments technology company Mastercard and biometric solutions provider ACPL.

The company plans to strengthen its product offerings and drive expansion in India and across the world, an official statement said.

“Syntizen has achieved a great milestone with the investments from Mastercard and ACPL. It has added to our energy at Syntizen and has motivated us to work even harder to achieve all short-term and long-term goals of Syntizen. Building a great team, increasing our client base, entering new domains, and being identified as the go-to digital identity provider in India are some of the primary objectives that we are eyeing with this relationship,” said Siddharth Kukatlapalli, co-founder and chief business officer, Syntizen Technologies.

Syntizen, founded in 2014 by Kukatlapalli, Vamsi Kotte and Dinesh Desu, is a software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup that offers digital identity solutions to regulated organisations and state governments in India by leveraging Aadhaar-based solutions like e-KYC (know your customer), e-sign, subsidy management and attendance systems.

“Syntizen has exhibited a unique ability to develop meaningful technology solutions from its industry knowledge and on-ground initiatives. Mastercard is proud to help Syntizen scale up and achieve success in the market," said Rajeev Kumar, senior vice president, market development, South Asia, Mastercard.

The SaaS startup counts Muthoot Fincorp, Manappuram Finance, housing finance companies such as Shriram Housing and India Shelters and stock brokerage firms such as Motilal Oswal and Angel Broking among its clients, the statement said.

"The new-age startup Syntizen works on Aadhaar-based digital identification solutions. We believe that teamwork, at its best, generates a synergy that can be very productive, something which turns out to be a forte of Syntizen. This is the reason we have become partners in growth with the tech-driven platform. They have already executed and deployed some of the exemplary solutions such as the one in Telangana, and there is a wide scope of business to tap the prevailing market opportunity," said Ajay Sinha, managing director, ACPL.

Syntizen claims its platform helps state governments save about Rs 85 crore annually. It also offers a digital affiliation solution that allows institutions like schools or colleges to get digitally affiliated to any university. The solution has already been implemented at Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University, Hyderabad, the statement said. 

“The impact was that fake faculty were found and suspended. Also, affiliation was removed from multiple colleges that were not following regulations. We had also helped the University collect all the pending affiliation fees from colleges with the help of our payment gateway,” Kukatlapalli said.