CXOToday participated in an exclusive interview with Jiabir Nihal Singh, Co-Founder, TraqCheck
- Give us an overview of TraqCheck and its journey so far?
TraqCheck is India’s first AI-based background check product that can verify and summarize criminal record, educational history, previous employment, identity, address and psychometric results with meticulous accuracy and fast turnaround time. We achieve this by automating the vetting process using cutting-edge technology and machine learning systems to make sense of massive volumes of data. TraqCheck’s technology increases speed, increases efficiency, reduces human error and helps companies maintain compliance. We launched in April 2021 and are already working with 150 large corporates in India.
- What was the insight behind creating and launching TraqCheck?
TraqCheck was founded by 3 friends: Armaan Mehta, Jaibir Nihal Singh and Rishabh Jain. We all studied in Los Angeles and saw that the background check industry in America is very technologically advanced compared to India where it is still a very manual and offline industry. At a time when every industry was digitizing and incorporating technology into it, the background check industry had little to no innovation.
There were many challenges to create and scale. First, we were only 22 years old and had no confidence and experience in building a company. We started in my grandmother’s (Jaybir’s) living room and didn’t move into our own office for the first 18 months. It took us about a year to develop the technology and build the product, which was very difficult as data in India is very unstructured and not easily accessible. Another big challenge was that this was March 2020 and the pandemic had just started.
Once the product was ready, we had great difficulty selling our product as we are in the B2B space and all our potential customers were large corporations. Getting meetings with corporations was very difficult and many of them would not take us seriously as we were only 22 years old. However, the reason we started to get a lot of traction is because our product was very good and we were able to sell background checks much cheaper and with a faster turnaround time to our customers.
Our first big client was a very large financial company – Bajaj Capital and it took us nearly 8 months to close that deal. We ran a pilot with them where we screened their entire workforce (4000-5000 employees) and found a high non-compliance rate for pre-approved employees. This impressed them and led us to obtain their entire background check contract. It was a big win for us and we’ve never looked back since. We have also never raised external funding and are fully loaded and have grown the business with our profits.
- What are your plans for expansion and growth? Top priorities for 2023?
Expansion plans for 2023 are to work on fully automating the product and increase our revenue 5x this year while maintaining high profitability. Background checking is currently a service industry and we want to change that and be the first fully technological background check product. We are at 80% to date and plan to fully automate this within the year. We will use artificial intelligence and large language models to achieve the same. The past few months have been exciting for AI as there have been so many new developments and now companies are only limited by their imaginations. We are currently working day and night and using the power of technologies like GPT chat and generative AI to improve our product.
- What types of background checks are most suitable for the Indian market?
Initially, companies only screened their top executives, but today companies like to check the background of every single employee they hire. A bad hire can cost companies far more than an employee’s CTC, and it is paramount that every employee is vetted. Companies will initially focus on background checks for white-collar workers, but as the gig economy grows rapidly, companies are making background checks mandatory for blue-collar workers. Many gig economy startup employees interact with customers physically (drivers, vendors, etc.), so background check compliance is a must.
All components of a background check are extremely important – identity check, criminal record check, education check, employment check, psychometric check, credit check, etc. Checking all these components gives a clear and transparent view of the candidate to HR before onboarding. I wouldn’t be surprised if the government made background checks mandatory for all companies in the near future.
- What is the Importance of Background Verification (BGV) Services for Startups in the Indian Market?
Startups hire in bulk because they have super high growth and also want to hire super fast. They can’t wait 20 days for a background check, and that’s where TraqCheck comes in. We complete most inspections immediately, and a full basic inspection takes a few days. This really supports startups and allows them to recruit candidates quickly. Heavily funded start-ups – especially those raising funds from international companies – must screen all employees as this is mandatory due to regulations. Most of the startups also belong to the gig economy and gig workers are in constant contact with customers and background checks become extremely important in such a situation. TraqCheck uses proprietary algorithms and sophisticated technology to enable Indian startups to facilitate hiring at scale and reduce risk.
- Anything else you’d like to add?
TraqCheck Technology:
First API product:
TraqCheck is “the first application programming interface (API) product” and integrates with any HR system with just a few lines of code.
Companies can view Background Check results within their HRMS and maintain a single technology stack. No different technology stacks would be needed.
Even the Background Check request will be automated and will not require a team of people to submit data.
The API can be customized according to your use case. The algorithm can learn which inconsistencies are relevant according to your hiring policies and infer a logical hire/no-hire meaning within the API.
Machine Learning Capabilities:
- TraqCheck fully automates criminal background checks. The patented identity matching algorithm takes unique identifiers from the applicant like name, address, etc. and instantly scans all criminal records across India and displays a match (if any). AI can match criminal cases in 30 seconds (if data is available).
- The employment verification bot immediately connects with the applicant’s previous employer. AI automatically finds employer’s HR email. Thousands of employment checks can be processed in a second.
- Identity, address, social media and credit checks are fully automated and results are given instantly.
- The fake detection algorithm can instantly detect photoshopped/digitally forged IDs and degrees.
- AI can identify, classify and filter data in a fraction of the time it takes for manual, legacy processes. You can screen applicants faster with fewer resources.
- TraqCheck’s system is end-to-end automated – when data is entered, the system starts producing results.
- The machine is constantly learning and getting smarter. NoHuman / Traditional system can compete with TraqCheck in terms of cost, speed and accuracy
First-to-market features
– Automated Continuous Monitoring – TraqCheck is the only company in India that offers this feature. From the moment the background check is completed, a gap begins to form in your applicant’s record information. Even if you conduct checks annually, you still have no visibility into applicant behavior between checks. If a criminal case arises against the candidate after appointment, the company receives a real-time notification. The algorithm works on the data continuously and tries to find a match.
– Positive Judgment Matrix – TraqCheck’s algorithms can learn which inconsistencies matter, and therefore only those inconsistencies are red-flagged. Modernizing your adjudication process can help your company hire more people with fewer hours of manual adjudication. Our platform only displays reportable records relevant to your hiring decision, reducing risk, bias and human error.
–Open AI Partnership
TraqCheck has partnered with Open AI (world-leading AI researchers based in San Francisco) We have built various features on top of these APIs like – criminal record categorization, computer vision to check current address, etc.