US-based digital identity verification company Socure is betting big on India’s fintech market, which is predicted to touch $31 billion in 2020. It plans to roll out services for the Indian market, double its headcount and enter more cities.

“The digital fintech movement has already started in India and we want to be part of that,” Socure CEO Tom Thimot told BusinessLine recently. “There is barely a new fintech in America that is not using Socure. Hopefully, we can be an enabler to help fintechs in India as well.”

The New York-headquartered company uses artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) with online/offline data intelligence from email, address, phone, IP and social media accounts to verify identities in real time. The company's proprietary predictive analytics tool helps banks and financial institutions reduce frauds and manual review processes and maximise the auto approval rates for new account opening.

Thimot said the company is already receiving enquiries for its commercial service, and that it will enter the Indian market in 6-18 months.

Currently, Socure’s proprietary verification platform ID+ is used by over 100 banks, lenders, brokers and payments providers worldwide. The company counts three out of the top five US banks, two of the top global remittance providers and five of the top 10 card issuers as its customers.

Game of volume

“We are in the game of volume. There are seven countries which have 80 per cent of the population and India is among the top three, and clearly the next investment,” said Johnny Ayers, co-founder and SVP, Socure, who was also part of the interaction.

Socure currently has offices in San Francisco and San Diego. In 2017, it set up an Indian subsidiary in Chennai. The facility houses 30 employees including data scientists, software engineers and infrastructure engineers apart from quality assurance, HR and finance professionals.

“Globally, we have 125 people and our goal is to double our employee headcount to around 270, proportionately adding more employees in India,” Thimot said. He added that the headcount in India will exceed 75-100 by the end of 2020. Socure also plans to expand into Mumbai and other cities.

Socure was the title sponsor for the annual student tech fest Shaastra 2020 , held at IIT-Madras last week. “We place tremendous value on the education system here. We know we could get really good talent and one of the things we are proud of is we didn’t have even one attrition last year in Chennai,” Thimot said.

The company has so far raised around $60 million from venture capital firms such as Scale Venture Partners, Commerce Ventures and Flint Capital. Socure has been named as one of America’s most promising AI companies in the Forbes AI50 list.

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