UNDERSTANDING VERIFIT’s DUE DILIGENCE BUSINESS

Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, as stated by Isaac Newton’s third law. Every buyer needs a seller and vice-versa. Every marketer needs a customer and vice-versa. Every doctor needs a patient and vice-versa. Every demand needs supply and vice-versa. This is Economics 101. 

In today’ globalized business arena, with production, distribution and supply being conducted all across the world, every business has no choice but to think Global, especially businesses focused on utilizing the full potential of the digital economy. However, as always, just like life itself, there remains risk and uncertainty pertaining to each and every business deal in this world of ours. 

Just like merchants of eras gone by risked losing their fortunes owing to the movement of goods via oceans, and had to make sure they chose the right ship crew and captain, so to do today’s businessmen and businesswomen, need to undertake a comprehensive due diligence of all their business partners, lest the said business ‘partner’ affects business negatively or comes up with a case of financial fraud sometime in the future. 

Today, at Bangalore Insider we spoke to Arvind, the founder of Verifit, who told us about the inherent risks present in business operations today, and how his company is helping businesses of many shapes and sizes, in multiple markets do their due diligence. 

Tell us a bit about Verifit. What is the problem that it is trying to solve?

VERIFIT is one of the emerging providers of risk solutions and due diligence for a wide range of industries. We aim to help the commercial society in making confident and reliable decisions about people, assets, operations, security, investments through investigations, cyber security, due diligence and compliance, physical and operational security, data and information management services. We deal in almost every due diligence service.

Verifit empowers organizations with comprehensive due diligence and intelligent solution to provide data-driven business decisions. We emphasizes on the very idea of being in a safe and authentic corporate and professional environment. So, when it comes to the fraudulent world around us, we try to eliminate those risks where businesses invest into wrong deals & lose all their time & money.  So, here Verifit wants to solve the problem of corrupt and unethical practices that takes place in any possible form.   

How did you come up with the idea for Verifit?

The company, Verifit has emerged out of an incident that took place in my family. A cousin of mine had a big business in import-export. However, due to the lockdown and restrictions, it was on hold for a few months.

It was when my cousin came up with the idea of dealing with masks. Soon he found a seller from Malaysia who was steadily in contact with him from the past 1 and half months.

After a lot of document exchange and conversation, they finally made a deal, and my cousin ordered a small quantity of 3M 8210 masks from him. 

The seller sent him an invoice that cost around four lacs.

The only mistake my cousin made was not getting a background check of the seller. The payment was done, and after making the payment, he approached me. As soon as he sent the invoice to me, I told him it was a suspicious company. And our fears came true when I did a thorough check.

We tried holding the payment, but we couldn’t, and he was baffled by such a colossal amount.

This is how the idea of VERIFIT came to our mind.

How has the response been so far? How many organizations are you currently connected to?

The response so far has been quite positive. As in the Indian market, the services of due diligence is still on its way to rise and yet to develop at a huge & famous platform. Nonetheless, Verifit has witnessed an excellent and considerable response since its inception. We are currently engaged with a few small scale companies and a few renowned clients.  

There seems to be some competition in this field? What differentiates Verifit from the rest of the pack?

Honestly, there is a lot of competition that pertains to the due diligence services provider market and so, we also face competitive challenges that come across our ways. 

Verifit offers a confidential, sound, unbiased perspective and is the ideal complement to the client’s internal resources. We focus on providing value-added services that enhance client business decisions by combining a thorough understanding of technologies, logistics, corporate strategy, and finance with an ability to summarize complex issues into concise, easily understood terms at a reasonable cost.

Does Verifit take complete responsibility for the verification process? For example, once a person has been verified by Verifit, if some discrepancy comes up later with the information of that person, does Verifit take full responsibility?

Yes, Verifit does take complete responsibility for its verification cases. If by any chance we miss the potential risks in our verification process then Verifit takes the pain to compensate the company or client.

How big is the overall verification market in India? Do most companies have their internal teams or they take the services of external players like Verifit?

Due diligence is gradually taking place in the Indian market after becoming popular in the US and UK. 

There are many companies and agencies that have to build their own internal team to scrutinize the relevant detail that lies in due diligence categories but they are very specific & can take very limited actions to investigate, as they don’t have all rights. Therefore companies hire external players as a third party verifier to get proper due diligence, with low risk. 

What are the statistics when it comes to verification? For every 100 companies how many turn out to be fraudulent after due diligence?

If a company is getting investigated which leads to verification of documents & its working method, there comes the role of different statistics for justification & providing accurate results. 

During this pandemic, there is a rise of fraudulent companies. As many businesses have really appealing online presence but in reality they are completely fake. So business, when they come for due diligence service, something definitely would have created doubt in their mind about the presence of another company. Therefore, we can roughly assume that out of 100, 65 companies turn out to be dealing with fraudulent scenarios. 

What is the road ahead, the future plans for Verifit?

Verifit wants to make the world a safer environment for every business. Therefore we are planning to connect globally with almost every business & would try to eliminate the risk of fraud & scams by providing them quality of information with all our due diligence service so that they can protect themselves from fraudulent & would never lose their time & money into wrong deals.

Know a great startup story or want to share your own? Write to us at bhumikka@insidermediacorp.com and we will get back to you. For more updates follow Bangalore Insider on Facebook and Instagram.