ThirdWatch: Catching Fraud in E-Commerce the Smart Way

ThirdWatch is an Artificial intelligence-driven startup based in Gurgaon and aims to reduce the fraud that occurs in digital transactions through AI and machine learning. Its platform Mitra prevents fraud in digital, banking, and e-commerce transactions in real time by integrating AI. Its system captures 200+ parameters and flags each transaction in real-time, as red or green. It generates a risk score that defines the riskiness of the transaction. These days companies have little choice and fewer tools to prevent Fraud- they consider it as a ‘cost of doing business’.

Most firms resort to blunt static rules like blocking all International credit cards, not delivering to certain pin codes and cities, or capping the order size. These macro-level rules cause more harm than they do good, as many genuine orders get lost and customer relationships are damaged.

Company has solved this challenge by replacing manual rules with an AI platform, Mitra which performs automatic screening of all orders and does not reject genuine orders.

This startup was founded in April 2016 by Shashank Agarwal and Adarsh Jain, who had first-hand experience of the issues e-commerce businesses face. Shashank Agarwal (Co-Founder) has been a programmer since the age of 15. He started his first mobile application company at the age of 18 and has been working as an Ethical hacker for over a decade. At just the age of 28, he has a patent pending on Uninstall tracking and holds vast experience in technology innovations.

Adarsh Jain, (Co-Founder) is a 36-year-old IIT BHU (2004 batch) graduate with 12+ years of experience in the technology domain. He has been a part of the Big Data ecosystem and startups since 2008. Adarsh has previously co-founded a location and mobile-based credit card security startup in 2008. With an extensive background and experience, he holds multiple Patents in the technology domain.

A couple of years back, Adarsh was trying to order a TV for his father who resides in Greater Noida, from one of the top 2 e-commerce sites in India. However, the website refused to confirm the order despite being prepaid. When he ordered the same item at his Gurgaon address, it came through. After digging deeper into this issue, they found that fraud/abuse is a colossal problem in e-commerce, costing online businesses huge revenue losses. To deal with the issue, companies have to induce broad rules like blocking certain pin codes/cities/states and/or international credit from ordering, which unfortunately affects genuine users as well.

Given their experience in building Big Data mobile analytics systems, they felt confident that they could solve this problem by using AI and machine learning. Adarsh and Shashank have previously worked together and have known each other for the past 6 years. In their last assignment, they created a Mobile analytics system Rock, which was a huge success in terms of clients and multiple acquisition offers. They have also filed several patents, which made them confident enough to start Thirdwatch.

They have raised funding when they were just two members in team and they are confident that this team will grow at a tremendous rate.

Fraud has become a common nuisance for the entire ecosystem of e-commerce which comprises of merchants, marketplace aggregators, and customers. By helping prevent fraud, Thirdwatch helps everyone in that ecosystem, especially small e-commerce players who are sometimes forced to shut shop due to losses caused by fraud. With a strict NDA and Confidentiality policy, Thirdwatch guarantees complete safeguard of client’s data.

Their clients have provided a positive as they believe in Mitra and its results. They are now expanding their services to companies that suffer from e-commerce frauds across India and East Asia. With a foreseen surge in the e-commerce business scale in India, Thirdwatch asks e-commerce platforms to experience how Mitra works.

They ask businesses to try their product once to see a visible reduction in the number of RTOs, returns and refunds as Mitra will change the way business is conducted over the internet and make it a safer place for sellers.

Being a SaaS Startup, Thirdwatch enjoys good margins on each transaction and aim to breakeven in next 18-24 months.The startup will be going for series A fundraising in couple of months & will be raising around 5-6 Million USD.

For every customer, Thirdwatch has always been a profit center and never a cost center. E-Commerce companies can avail of a free 2 months trial, and can actually validate the benefit we are offering themselves. Said Team.