This week “Startup of the week” hero is iDenfy – a cross-border online identity verification solution, helping businesses to mitigate fraud risk, reduce costs and comply with KYC/AML & GDPR regulations, during user onboarding process in a digital environment.

Arūnas Vismantas, marketing and business developer of iDenfy says that iDenfy extracts biometric data from the user, it also extracts information from the document and runs numerous background checks. AI-based algorithms match a user to its ID, checks if a document is valid, determine if it’s not a fraud attack and gives the company a report. All of the processes are done automatically in real-time and only takes around one minute. It’s very user-friendly and has a high conversion rate.

Arūnas tell us what are your competitors and competitive advantages?

We have several competitors, however, digital user onboarding is a rapidly growing market. So, there is plenty of space for everyone. We pride our self on offering a tailor-made approach as we help companies with a unique solution, specific to their market. After all, their customers are different as well. We have a huge selection of unique industry add-ons that tackles specific market players’ needs. This way we align with our partners’ needs and help them solve their challenges while growing.

What were the reasons behind coming up with this idea and launching this product?

iDenfy, as most great combos (vanilla & chocolate, pizza & coke…), was born out of two remarkable, like-minded, childhood friends who shared a vision, passion, and determination.

Late summer of 2016 two friends Domantas Čiuldė and Gediminas Ratkevičius, sat out on a journey to make the digital world a safer place. As with most tech start-ups, the original idea was slightly different. Having witnessed the rise of increasing online fraudulent activities in payments, founders pitched their business vision to potential clients. Followed by several failed attempts, quickly realized that simply they were not thinking big enough. And so, first partnerships were formed, angel investments secured and iDenfy was born.

When exactly did you launch, what were the main challenges before launching?

2016 was the start of our project. Biggest challenges were to secure our first clients and angel investment. Back then startups were not as trendy as they are today in Lithuania, so we had to work twice as hard. However, starting a startup is full of challenges bigger or smaller. The way we see challenges, they are simply hidden opportunities and approach them with excitement. During two last few years, we manage to build a very strong team with a remarkable set of personalities and skills. We feel that has been the main driver of our success.

What are your target customers? Both in terms of user profile and geography?

We are solely B2B solution, so our clients are companies. In terms of fields they work in, we have a lot of partners that operate in the Fintech environment as financial tech industry players. However, we have partners from all over the world and different use cases. We maintain a close relationship with Central bank of Lithuania and support EMI license applicants with eKYC solutions.

Currently, our market research has identified over +70 industries and use cases for our services, so we have a different go to market strategy. Geographically we are cross-border service provider, but at the moment we focus on EU partners with Poland being one of our expansion priorities.

What are the main challenges while working on this product and how are you overcoming them?

Technology is rapidly progressing, so we need to maintain a close focus on our clients/partners needs and follow ever-changing regulation related to our product. That can be tricky.

How are you funded? Do you seek extra funding?

So far, we have been funded by angel investors and our internal revenue, we are currently finalizing seed round/pre-series A. Our aim is to finish it until end of this year to further fuel our growth.

Please introduce your founders, your core team and your broader team?

iDenfy has been founded by Domantas and Gediminas their dynamic duo has quickly grown as Laimonas joined the crew to head the project as CTO. At the moment our core consists from founders Domantas (COO), Gediminas (CEO) & Laimonas (CTO), as well as, key people – Darius (Sales), Arūnas (Marketing & Business dev.), Greta (Customer success). iDenfy family has been expanding at a rapid pace and today we have 16 super-powered-geeks who equally contribute towards company goals and growth.

How has business been so far? Could you share some numbers to illustrate this (users, sales, etc)?

It’s been a fast growth sprint over the last 18 months. Till the end of this year our goal is to hit 100 clients in B2B field and every day expand our services further. Currently, we are simultaneous trying new market acquisition models, developing the product further and exploring opportunities abroad while finalizing investments. It’ challenging, but we are happy to have a very dynamic, committed and driven team.

Plans, ambitions? Simply speaking – what’s next?

At the moment, our main milestone is to grow our startup to 100k MRR, after which we will seek further investment as Series A round. Recently we have opened a legal entity in Poland as part of our expansion plan, we will further seek opening new branches in other markets within EU territory and cutting bigger part of the pie in this market.