Face biometrics and digital KYC to get more prevalent: Veri5Digital’s Saru Tumuluri

At a time when most enterprises are taking their digital transformation journeys to the next level, the need of the hour are stringent security measures in terms of IAM (identity and access management). 

IAM standardises and helps make the management of identities, providing authorisation and authentication services better. These aspects are more critical in a country like India, which is faced with a large populace combined with a wide technology disparity between tier-1, tier-2 and tier-3 cities. 

The security and protection offered by IAM solution providers, such as Veri5Digital, are key to form a strong IT security base.    

Veri5Digital, headquartered in Bengaluru, aims to address the growing need for IAM through solutions such as video recognition/video ID, Aadhaar-based KYC, design verification and a host of other offerings. 

The company also provides a host of APIs (application program interfaces) that can be integrated into enterprise security systems and government systems to aid verification. 

Veri5Digital recently raised $2 million (about Rs 14 crore at the current exchange rate) in a Series-A funding round, led by US-based venture capital firm Khosla Ventures. The company had said that it would use the funds to scale solutions and build new identity products and services.

Saru Tumuluri, CEO of Veri5Digital, spoke toTechCircle about the various means by which IAM has evolved and how government IDs such as Aadhaar and Pan Card could be utilised to confirm identities. 

Tumuluri highlighted the growing importance of facial recognition/photo recognition services as a non-invasive method of identification, compared to traditional invasive methods such as pupil detection, fingerprint and signatures. 

“Enterprises try to look at what documents we cover. We cover Aadhaar, Pan Card, Voter ID, driver’s license and passport. Second, to what accuracy are we detecting these documents? They look at our FRR (false reject rates) and FAR (false accept rates),” said Tumuluri.

“In the near term, I see face biometrics getting more prevalent, as android devices are now available for as low as Rs 3,000. Secondly, we wish that the RBI approves digital KYC -- it can always be followed up with human verification,” she added.