- Thirdwatch will now be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Razorpay
- It will move to Razorpay’s headquarters in Bengaluru
Bengaluru: Payments solution company Razorpay today announced its acquisition of Thirdwatch, an artificial intelligence (AI) start-up based out of Gurgaon which specializes in real-time fraud prevention using machine learning.
The amount of the deal was undisclosed, and the acquisition comes just weeks after Razorpay announced $75 million fundraising in its Series C funding round, led by venture capital investors Ribbit Capital and Sequoia Capital India last month.
Thirdwatch applies AI to fight fraud by utilizing data science, which will now be used to boost Razorpay’s fraud detection mechanism. Harshil Mathur, chief executive of Razorpay, said that the Thirdwatch acquisition will allow Razorpay to prevent 30-40% of online frauds among its merchant base by next year.
Thirdwatch will now be a wholly-owned subsidiary of Razorpay and will move to the company’s headquarters in Bengaluru.
According to estimates by Razorpay, by 2022, the Indian e-commerce industry is expected to reach $150 billion with around 4-5% transactions being fraudulent. Indian e-commerce players might lose over $5 billion to fraudulent transactions by 2020 if plausible fraud detection methods aren’t employed in advance.
“This acquisition is a perfect fit. Our war is against cash, hence we want to address all problems surrounding it through new integrated data science technologies. Fraud has been the albatross around e-commerce companies’ necks for the longest time and we believe through this acquisition we will empower businesses across industries to digitally transform and disrupt, by improving their response and redressal mechanisms of combating fraud,” said Mathur in a statement.
“We’ve always believed in developing technologies that will not just limit e-commerce transactions to be secure and seamless but also make the systems intelligent with real-time insights through AI. A similar commitment was echoed by the Razorpay team and that’s what impressed us and brought us together,” added Shashank Agarwal, founder of Thirdwatch, in a statement.
Established in 2014, Razorpay provides tech payment solutions to over 350,000 businesses. The company said it grew 500% in the last year. It currently powers digital payments for businesses like IRCTC, Airtel, BookMyShow, Zomato, Swiggy, Yatra and Zerodha, among others.
