Hyderabad, India-based identity verification startup Equal has raised $10 million (about Rs 84 crore) in a Series A funding round led by Prosus Ventures (Ashutosh Sharma & Apoorve Goyal), Tomales Bay Capital (Iqbaljit Kahlon), and its founder Keshav Reddy at an $80M post-money valuation.
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The funds will be used to expand operations, form new strategic partnerships, and create a generic framework for improving India’s data-sharing ecosystem.
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Some of the best institutions believe in Equal’s vision to empower Indians, including DST Global (Saurabh Gupta & Arihant Pamecha), Quona Capital (Varun Malhotra), Valiant Capital Management (Rishi Dixit & Chris Hansen), Gruhas (Nikhil Kamath & Abhijeet Pai), WeWork India (Karan Virwani), and Blume Ventures (Karthik B. Reddy & Sarita Raichura).
Equal forms a strategic partnership with KP Atluri and OneMoney AA, reinforcing its vision for India’s secure, consent-driven data sharing ecosystem. Equal and One Money are two of India’s largest data-sharing companies. They are excited to create a future in which every Indian and business can confidently control their data.
“Equal will be a venture-funded company with a large bouquet of products. While we are serving businesses currently, there is a possibility that we will get into the consumer space as well,” Keshav Reddy said.
“We are building three major technology stacks catering to different needs of companies—one is banking and financial services, the second is an employment stack, and the third is the consumer tech stack. Those plans are still at an early stage right now, but eventually we will get more regulated,” Reddy said.
Keshav Reddy said that some of the best angels in India support them, including Kunal Shah (CRED), Parth Jindal (JSW), Karan Adani (Adani Group), Kunal Bahl (Titan Capital), Binny Bansal (xto10x), Ravi Kumar (Upstox), Kavitha Subramanian (Upstox), Rohit Bansal (Titan Capital), Ravish Naresh (Khatabook), Harsh Jain (Dream11), Karan Sharma (Avendus), Galina Chifina (RTP), D S Brar (Aragen), Ranu Vohra (Avendus) & more amazing leaders.
Equal is developing a platform that will help businesses streamline their know-your-customer (KYC) processes and prevent fraud, thereby assisting with regulatory compliance through integration with approximately 50 identity databases.
About Equal
Keshav Reddy founded Equal in 2022 with Rajeev Ranjan, who was previously director of engineering at Swiggy. Equal is a world in which access determines everything; you’re either in or out. Where access is the only distinction between the haves and have-nots. Where you are is more important than anything else. It powers IDs for 100 million Indians.
