IdentityPass; Highlights
- IdentityPass focuses majorly on KYC, security and authentication
- We have a very experienced and dedicated team focused on what we are building, the future and what we are selling out
- We understood the needs of the market and moulded our product to address those needs, not just following the pattern at which many people in the market were following
- We were not just heavily investing in engineering and technology alone
- Having good revenue and being funded by your customers is the most interesting and sustainable way of raising fund
- Do not joke with laws and regulations, there are so many ways that you can go around it but don’t go off the law
- You can partner with other players already in the market that already has what you want, work with them until you’re able to fly off yourself
What is a business without adequate digital security? It could crumble within the twinkle of an eye.
For this reason, innovators are on the go to ensure the steady growth of big and small businesses, building infrastructure to ensure adequate cybersecurity and deliberating unique ways to make the society better.
Lanre Ogungbe, the Co-Founder of one of such companies, IdentityPass, expatiates the company’s firm standing in making a huge impact within a short period of launch.
From the initial state before delving into the business, to managing and being able to retain the team distinctly, and all there has been to get to this point with tremendous growth plan, Ogungbe takes us on a journey.
When anyone hears IdentityPass, we know it has to do with identity verification; but can you tell us what aspects exactly IdentityPass focuses on?
IdentityPass focuses majorly on KYC, security and authentication. It is a very wide spectrum, so we do not do enrollment or data ID creation. What we do is majorly use the enrolled database, either from government-approved, public or private databases to authenticate, verify and facilitate transactions.
IdentityPass was founded just last year, but your impact has been commendable. How have you been able to pull this off?
I believe it is heavily based on the team. We have a very experienced and dedicated team focused on what we are building, the future and what we are selling out.
Secondly, it is based on the fact that we were humble enough to understand the needs of the market before we quickly got in. We moulded our product to address those needs and not just follow the pattern at which many people in the market were following.
It was quite easy for us to help them out, get them on board as our customers and start serving them from the get-go that we launched.
The third is also related to the team. From the kickoff, we knew the structure we needed to have in place so we were not just heavily investing in engineering and technology alone, we were also more interested in ensuring that the business team is really good, the sales team is solid, customer retention strategies are in place, tracking all our metrics on a daily basis, ensuring that necessary steps are taken when there are red flags, even before customers get to know, ensuring they are not affected.
Unique selling point
From day one when we went into the market we ensured that we had unique selling points. Every single day that we keep growing the market, we see that we are building more unique selling points and more ways in which we are serving the customers.
But we are not heavily focused on just being different, but solving customers problems the way they want it to be solved. Because we do this, it naturally creates that differentiation factor between us and other players in the market.
Our uniqueness ranges from we being the widest data provider to having multiple products that others do not have, to the stability of our products, the custom APIs that we have built any many more.
What were the challenges you faced at the beginning and what are the ones you’re faced with now?
There are multiple challenges, from ensuring that our system is stable enough to grow as fast as our customers are growing. We serve high level customers from banks to startups and other businesses. This comes with us having to grow our infrastructure and grow as fast as possible for us to hold this level of pool that we get from these customers.
With that naturally comes some of the challenges around stability of products to ensuring we work more hours.
Although, the structure that we built from scrap helped us not to have as much challenges as most businesses do, including loss of critical team members. We have been able to manage our team so well and retain a good number of them.
While we value our customers, we also heavily value the people that work with IdentityPass and we try as much as we can to show this to them.
The number of layoffs in companies has been increasing recently and this is blamed on the economic downturn. How has IdentityPass scaled through?
First of all, we recently raised funds even before the economic downturn hit heavily, that was when it was about kicking off. We were lucky enough to have raised at the right time.
But then, I feel if you just raised funds and you’re laying off staff saying it’s because of the economic downturn, then maybe you did not do your risk aversion analysis properly; in business you want to prepare for the worse case scenarios and worse and best times. The economy will not 100% be good or bad every single time.
For IdentityPass, we’ve just been able to manage our team properly and in addition to the initial funds raised, we are also heavily funded by our customers. Our revenues are growing, the numbers are heating up and when you have good revenue and are funded by your customers, that’s the most interesting and sustainable way of raising fund.
So because we have positioned the company from the get-on, to rely more on customers’ revenue, we have been heavily stable.
How have you been able to resolve these challenges, making sure it doesn’t surface again?
The fact that we have a very fantastic team who understands the situation we are in, where we are and where we need to get to, a team who requires less supervision to do their jobs and all I have to do is ensure that things are done properly, resources are enough on ground to execute every single time.
How were you able to pull a team of innovators together?
I don’t have the hack to that but I think one thing that really contributed is the fact that I’ve been able retain good friend from some of them. For instance, I met some of my co-founders in the university and one while I was working and we have been able to maintain a good relationship.
It started from being friends before any other thing and this is the biggest factor while others are secondary.
Also you need to be able to create excitement, communicate what the future looks like for the business to them, giving them a little bit of ownership and also being intentional about their needs, they are not just building this future for the co-founders but for themselves too.
Any other we practice in IdentityPass that has helped us retain our team is transparency. People know what the numbers are. We are not the kind of team where the engineers do not know what the sales look like or what the next growth pattern is; every single person in the team knows all important information, business metrics business members are targeting. We are all involved in making decisions, we do not impose.
Once you’re leading a team and you need them to excel, there are particular traits you just need to learn, you need to do away with unhealthy habits. Consider that they are human beings and be intentional about making things work. For instance, if you can’t control yourself when having a one-on-one with a team member, maybe you get upset easily, then let a co-founder always be present in your meetings so they can step in when such situations come up.
How has it been navigating through business laws and regulations?
From day one, we ensured we had a full legal team whose responsibility was to ensure we meet all our legal requirements every single that.
Again, when we raised our pre-seed fund, we used it to finance so many compliance activities. There are different requirements for the sector that you are operating and you can’t joke with it, there are so many ways that you can go around it but don’t go off the law.
Sometimes, the issue could be that these regulations are really expensive for you to kick off as a startup, that’s where partnership comes in.
You can partner with other players already in the market that already has what you want, work with them until you’re able to fly off yourself.
What traction have you made so far and what are your expansion plans?
Since a year and a half that we launched, we have been able to process over 1.5 million unique verification on a monthly basis, we serve over 400 business who trust us to secure their activities, we have been able to expand our data points in and outside Nigeria. We cover up to 35 different countries already and have raised $3.3 million.
We are really heavy in the west African side, specifically Nigeria, which is currently our biggest market. We serve companies and businesses from different parts of the world, from US to Canada, U.K., Ukraine, India and other countries with companies that have African users.
Other than that, our goal is to keep making it possible for businesses in a particular region to easily move to other regions and be compliant. Our goal is also to keep expanding our data points, which is currently the widest in the space.
In terms of expansion, we are heavily looking at the most advanced economies in the continent first, including Egypt, South Africa, Rwanda, Ghana, and Kenya. Although, we already verify customers in these countries, just like Facebook which is headquartered in San Francisco, but is used globally, that’s how we operate.
With IdentityPass latest funding, the company is launching a new parent brand next week that would house most of the its products; IdentityPass and other KYC, as well as Security products will be under this brand. Fingers crossed.
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