Rohith Reji on Scaling Neokred: 40% Growth, Data Privacy, and Industry Partnerships

In this exclusive interaction with StartupTalky, Rohith Reji, Co-founder and CEO of Neokred, shares insights into the company’s growth and product innovation. He talks about user acquisition trends, the adoption of Blutic for consent management, and Neokred’s role in improving data compliance. Reji also highlights key partnerships across sectors like education, lending, and NGOs, and how they impact revenue and performance.

He sheds light on the company’s collaboration with AIGF for fraud prevention in gaming, and how selective banking partnerships drive product innovation. The insights reflect how Neokred is building secure, scalable solutions to support digital transformation across industries.

StartupTalky: With a large number of profiles verified on your platform, what has been the annual growth rate in user acquisition, and how do you plan to sustain or accelerate this growth in the coming years?

Mr. Reji: With increasing demand for secure digital verification, our platform has achieved robust user growth at an average of 40% over the last two years. To maintain and amplify this, we are working on strengthening strategic partnerships, diversifying API access for more extensive integration, creating solutions tailored to specific industries, validating international markets, and evolving the product constantly. Critical success factors relate to the growth of new business integrations, verification request volume, customer acquisition cost, and market share expansion.

StartupTalky: Blutic, Neokred’s consent management platform, has gained significant attention. What percentage of your existing clients have adopted Blutic, and how has it impacted user trust and data compliance metrics?

Mr. Reji: Given that the basic framework of consent and handling of privacy is given in DPDP rules, Blutic has seen strong adoption. Transparency in data handling directly increases user trust with our clients, and this has made it undeniably clear. At a data compliance level, Blutic has simplified and streamlined processes, leading to an estimated 20% reduction in the time and resources our clients spend on navigating complex data privacy regulations. This efficiency translates to lower compliance costs.

StartupTalky: Neokred’s partnership with AIGF for the Game Bureau platform focuses on fraud prevention and user verification. What challenges do you foresee in its implementation, and what impact do you expect on user trust?

Mr. Reji: Challenges of implementing Game Bureau with AIGF were that of integrating diverse gaming ecosystems, where striking a balance between protection against fraud and offering user convenience must be achieved. We also anticipate the need to adapt in response to evolving fraud tactics in a dynamic gaming backdrop. However, we do expect a rather good positive effect on user trust. Game Bureau will help players rebuild confidence among themselves by enabling a safer and secure gaming environment which will increase player engagement and prevent fraud-related anxieties within the gaming community.

StartupTalky: Neokred has partnered with over 1,000 businesses across sectors such as education, lending, and NGOs. Can you share how these partnerships have directly impacted your revenue growth or other key performance indicators (KPIs)? How do you track success across such diverse industries?

Mr. Reji: Neokred's growth story has largely been facilitated by strategic partnerships with more than 1,000 businesses in education, lending, NGOs, and more. These partnerships have almost directly driven our revenue growth, yielding a strong 30% year-on-year average revenue growth rate. In addition, these partnerships have further driven our respective key performance metrics with substantial growth in the overall transaction volumes through our platforms and active users.

We track the adoption rates of our solutions across sectors, and the number of verification requests or transactions created through the partnerships, and continuously solicit feedback to evaluate partner satisfaction levels. 

This deep and detailed analysis helps us to make sense of how our collaborations affect each industry differently, where we have loss-making areas and how we can enhance each solution to scale and be compatible with their standards and regulations. Indeed, these partnerships go beyond figures; they are about establishing a robust ecosystem that allows Neokred's technology to enable businesses to function more efficiently, securely, and through greater trust.

StartupTalky: Neokred’s selective approach to banking partners emphasises innovation. How has this philosophy shaped your product development or market strategy, especially in terms of strengthening collaboration with key partners?

Mr. Reji: Our product and market strategy have been fundamentally influenced by our strategic, high-level banking partnerships with a focus on driving innovation. We work with innovative banks which provide us with cutting-edge actual technologies and insights that can directly affect our product roadmap. This enables us to devise solutions that meet tomorrow's market requirements, like seamless embedded finance solutions and advanced digital payment frameworks.

An extension to our market strategy is that we are very focused on these novel partnerships, where we can highlight how these strategic relationships will enable us to build greater capabilities and unique value propositions for our clients. By diving into innovation, we attract businesses looking for future-proof solutions, resulting in deeper, more collaborative relationships with our key banking partners and a mutually beneficial ecosystem for growth and technological advancement.

StartupTalky: Blutic plays a critical role in data privacy. How many businesses have adopted Blutic so far, and what measurable impact has it had on their compliance costs or time spent on navigating data privacy regulations?

Mr. Reji: Our consent management platform, Blutic, launched in 2023 as India's first futuristic consent manager for the DPDP Act, has already seen considerable uptake with our clientele, addressing the growing focus businesses have on data privacy. These businesses did so by using our solution, and they have seen a significant decrease in the resources spent on data privacy compliance. This is an efficiency gain that drastically lowers the operational overhead and enables their teams to dedicate their resources to strategic initiatives as opposed to having to navigate complex and changing regulations.

In addition, our platform's management of consent in a centralised and transparent manner has been shown to facilitate and streamline compliance efforts and has improved the efficiency and effectiveness of those efforts, making it easier and less time-consuming to adhere to data privacy requirements.