Innefu Labs aims to double revenue to Rs 5 crore this fiscal

NEW DELHI:Former batchmates Tarun Wig and Abhishek Sharma teamed up in 2012 to kick-start their venture Innefu Labs with a self-funding of Rs 25-30 lakh.

The startup has made deep inroads into the world of cybersecurity with its patent pending technology and is aiming to double its revenue to Rs 5 crore this year.

Delhi-based Innefu Labs’ flagship product AuthShield is designed to prevent hacking attacks on emails, ERPs, SAP and a wide variety of other applications, using a protocol level decoding engine with voice and face identification capabilities.

PNB Housing Finance recently tied up with Innefu Labs in a bid to tighten security around customer accounts and protect accounts against increasing incidents of hacking.
“Email hacking is an integral part of any hacking attack today and 65 per cent of the top hacking attacks start with a simple credential attack,” said cofounder Wig.

Authshield’s multifactor authentication solution, which is industry agnostic, is currently being evaluated by RBI for multi-factor authentication for emails, the biggest source of confidential data.

As per Innefu Labs, it has about 100 customers ranging from the Indian Army, DRDO, state police departments, intelligence agencies, public sector companies, leading banks and private companies including Mahindra and Mahindra Group.

Cofounder Sharma said: “The major struggle we have faced so far is acceptance in the Indian market. The Indian market is flooded with low quality foreign products peddled by third-party consultants.”

Innefu Labs reported a revenue of Rs 2.5 crore for 2015-16. It is aiming for 100% growth in the current fiscal, having clocked Rs 1.5 crore in the first quarter.

The startup competes with a host of overseas companies such as RSA and VASCO, besides multiple startups in biometrics including US-based Noatta, which provides authentication by scanning the user’s palm.

The major differentiator the company is placing its bets on is facial biometrics and its patent-pending technology which can integrate two-factor authentication across a variety of applications including emails.

“There are a lot of critical applications like emails or ERP which do not typically support twofactor authentication and hence they are inherently left unprotected,” said Wig.

However, the company faces challenges as it seeks to rapidly expand its client base, especially in terms of breaking sales contracts with leading companies. The next step for the company is to expand its clientele across India and to expand to regions such as West Asia and Southeast Asia.