SignalX Startup Story: AI-powered Risk Intelligence Platform
📄Company Profiles
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With a vision to build a global counterparty verification platform catering to risk intelligence requirements across industries, Govind Balachandran, Zakir Wahab, and Piyush Arora founded SignalX. SignalX is an intuitive AI-powered Risk Intelligence platform that runs comprehensive risk assessment & credibility verification on any given target - individual or a corporate entity, in just 48 hours. In just 3 years, SignalX has served over 200+ risk and compliance professionals across various domains.
StartupTalky had an Exclusive Interaction with Govind Balachandran, Co-Founder & CEO of SignalX to get insights on the Startup Journey of SignalX. Also to know the business model of SignalX, its funding status, How SignalX started, its future plans & more.
SignalX - Company Highlights
| Startup Name | SignalX |
|---|---|
| Founders | Govind Balachandran (CEO), Zakir Wahab (CFO), Piyush Arora (CTO) |
| Headquarters | Hyderabad |
| Founded | 2018 |
| Total Funding | $750K (Seed) |
| Industry | Regtech, Compliance, Due Diligence, Risk Assessment |
| Website | signalx.ai |
SignalX - About and Vision
SignalX - Industry Details
SignalX - Founders and Team
How SignalX Started?
SignalX - Product/Services
SignalX - Name Meaning & Logo
SignalX - Business Model and Revenue Model
SignalX - Startup Launch
SignalX - Startup Challenges Faced
SignalX - Marketing Strategy
SignalX - Growth
SignalX - Funding and Investors
SignalX - Competitors
Tools used by SignalX to run startup
SignalX - Awards and Achievements
SignalX - Future Plans
SignalX - FAQs
SignalX - About and Vision
SignalX is an intuitive AI-powered Risk Intelligence platform that runs comprehensive risk assessment & credibility verification on any given target - individual or a corporate entity, in just 48 hours. It provides detailed financial, legal, compliance, and reputational analyses on potential clients, vendors, business partners, investment targets, and all counterparties and third parties. SignalX enables businesses to build trust and transact faster. The platform is used by Risk, Audit, Valuation, Compliance, and Forensics teams across industries.
The long-term vision of SignalX is to build a global counterparty verification platform catering to risk intelligence requirements across industries.
"We want to evolve and be recognized as a trusted RegTech and Compliance brand across the globe." says Mr. Govind Balachandran, Co-Founder & CEO, SignalX
SignalX - Industry Details
In a broader sense, SignalX operates in the domain of credibility verification and risk tech technologies which cuts across Regtech, Fintech, LegalTech, ComplianceTech, GRC, and more. There have been massive investments by the Big4, Compliance Firms, and Law Firms into forensic technologies. GRC as a domain is expected to be at 60B USD over the next 5 years. The team at SignalX is hoping to play a meaningful role in this space.
Chayanika Goswami
SignalX - Founders and Team
Govind Balachandran (CEO), Zakir Wahab (CFO), and Piyush Arora (CTO) are the founding team of SignalX. Govind looks after the sales, marketing, and delivery ops of the business. Zakir looks into finance, compliance, hiring, and other ops. Piyush looks into product and engineering.
"We have been working together for many years now. It was a no-brainer decision to start together. We met each other through our previous ventures" Govind added.
Govind Balachandran | Co-Founder & CEO, SignalX
Govind Balachandran has over 7 years of experience in marketing and product development. At SignalX, his prime focus is on growth and New Business acquisition. Previously, he was the Director at Nebulae Software. He also co-founded Kaddy Analytics, a cloud-based analytics platform for stakeholders in the education system. Govind has devised enterprise solutions for forensic and fraud analytics, Edtech, and HRTech verticals and has worked with various Series A and Seed-Stage startups, playing a key role in their growth and product development. Govind holds a Bachelor of Technology (Honors) in Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Economics from IIT Hyderabad.
Zakir Wahab | Co-founder & CFO, SignalX
Zakir Wahab is a serial entrepreneur & a co-founder/CFO at SignalX. He is an alumnus of Andhra University, is an early-stage investor, and brings immense experience across the fields of finance, strategy & e-governance.
Piyush Arora | Co-founder & CTO, SignalX
Piyush Arora heads the technology team at SignalX. As co-founder & CTO, he also looks after product growth & engineering. Piyush is an alumnus of IIT Hyderabad and previously worked at Qualcomm.
How SignalX Started?
It started out wanting to build a simple tool that can help in assessing the credibility of counterparties. The team had known first hand, the challenges faced by risk and forensic teams and their expectations from technology. SignalX has been focused on this objective from day 1 and over time, through many iterations, today it is one of the most comprehensive risk intelligence platforms with analytics that helps you make risk decisions faster and accurately.
SignalX - Product/Services
SignalX runs its proprietary machine learning algorithms to gather data through sources that are publicly available like datasets managed by government agencies, regulators, media journals, and other third parties. Its algorithms assure reduced false positives and ensure the efficacy and accuracy of an extensive research process. SignalX also generates and shares reports with clients in just 2 days, which gives them the edge of speed for the next steps and reduces the extremely tiresome and tedious process of diligence.
SignalX - Name Meaning & Logo
The core value proposition of SignalX is to offer risk signals pertaining to any target whose name is given to the platform - an individual or an entity. Hence the name SignalX.
SignalX - Business Model and Revenue Model
SignalX offers multiple pricing options. Its pay-as-you-go model is quite popular. However, most of its users prefer a subscription service.
SignalX - Startup Launch
"We’ve been creating content on our blogs from day 1. Inbound has been a strong channel for us. Customer referrals are another channel that continues to bring us leads. We have had a strong focus on customer service and retention from the very beginning" says Govind.
SignalX has a strong focus on organic traffic. Some of the content the team created about a year back is performing better month on month. The company is continuously driving improvements to these assets. The brand is a key element for SignalX going forward. Â A risk intelligence platform must be comprehensive, thorough, auditable, and credible. These are some of the values that the customers expect from the company. To develop its PR channel, SignalX has signed up with SSPR.
Vidhi Punamiya
SignalX - Startup Challenges Faced
Having bootstrapped the firm for the first two years, it was required to develop cash flows from month one. Being a new firm in the market, it is very tough to build trust and credibility. Being bootstrapped also makes one conscious of not undercutting the pricing such that it's not profitable to operate. Early on, the team had to deal with situations where they had to develop trust with clients to get them to give SignalX business. Today SignalX has worked with over 200+ compliance and risk teams. So, it's much easier to represent itself in front of newer clients.
The pricing strategy was one of the items that took quite a bit of iteration. The iterations are also difficult since it creates discrepancies between newer and older customers. However, since SignalX has been able to deliver strong value, it has been able to work with the customers in updating the pricing.
SignalX - Marketing Strategy
SignalX is heavy on Organic and Referrals. Email marketing is something it incorporates a lot. The company has received some of the best throughputs from the long-form content it created on its blogs a while back. "We’re still driving continuous improvements on this front" Govind added.
SignalX - Growth
SignalX has served over 200+ risk and compliance professionals across various domains. Its solution has made a mark in Section 29A (IBC) due diligence requirements in the Insolvency & Bankruptcy domain. Its product is also used by the forensic teams at some of the Big4’s.
The company's goal is to build a global counterparty risk intelligence solution that can cater to requirements from across industries, law enforcement, governments, and more. It is adding newer use cases to the platform every quarter. SignalX recently launched Supplier and Partner Risk Intelligence modules to help supply chain or distribution heavy businesses to assess legal, financial, reputational, and compliance risks associated with counterparties.
SignalX - Funding and Investors
Being bootstrapped since its inception in 2018, SignalX received seed funding from 3Lines VC, 9Unicorns, and Hyderabad Angels for $750k in September 2020.
| Date | Stage | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sept 2020 | Seed Fund | $750k | 3Lines VC, 9Unicorns, Hyderabad Angels |
Jeenal Jain
SignalX - Competitors
SignalX's competitors include RDC, Bloomberg, Dun & Bradstreet, Exiger, DueDil, DDIQ, and others.
Tools used by SignalX to run startup
Few tools which SignalX uses to run the startup are - Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, Jira, Hootsuite, etc.
SignalX - Awards and Achievements
- SignalX got recognized by the Government of Telangana
- Winners of EmergeX, Microsoft in the domain of Emerging Technologies
SignalX - Future Plans
SignalX will continue to add more use cases to its platform to cater to a wider set of requirements. The team will be strengthening the ML to bring best-in-class technology for risk professionals. SignalX will also be expanding its database coverage across borders and also forensic analytics to improve fraud and risk signal detections. "We have some exciting features coming up that look at how we fundamentally address credibility verification and manage the risk process." says Govind Balachandran, Co-Founder& EO of SignalX.
SignalX - FAQs
What is SignalX?
SignalX is an intuitive AI-powered Risk Intelligence platform that runs comprehensive risk assessment & credibility verification on any given target - individual or a corporate entity, in just 48 hours.
Who are the founders of SignalX?
Govind Balachandran (CEO), Zakir Wahab (CFO), and Piyush Arora (CTO) are the founding team of SignalX.
How much funding has SignalX raised?
SignalX received seed funding from 3Lines VC, 9Unicorns, and Hyderabad Angels for $750k in September 2020.
Is SignalX Indian Company?
Yes. SignalX is an Indian company headquartered in Hyderabad, India.
Who are SignalX's competitors?
SignalX's competitors include RDC, Bloomberg, Dun & Bradstreet, Exiger, DueDil, DDIQ, and others.
How does SignalX source data for analysis?
SignalX sources its data from datasets managed by government agencies, regulators, publicly available media, and various other third-party datasets. SignalX runs its proprietary machine learning algorithms to reduce false positives and infer meaning. SignalX does not look into any data points that are not made publicly available by the target company or by other parties either through the media or in their regulatory filings.
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