‘We want to help as quickly as possible’- IdentityPass CEO after $360k pre-seed funding

Ejike Kanife

Identitypass, a Nigerian digital compliance and security company, which delivers seamless identity verification solutions to businesses in Africa has secured $360,000 in pre-seed funding. The funds will be used by the company for customer acquisition, Research & Development and Team Expansion.  

Reputable investors who participated in the funding round include CCHUB, Medlothian Angel Network, D Global Ventures Fund and other Angel Investors.  

Launched in January 2021 by Co-founders Lanre Ogungbe, Niyi Adegboye and David Obi, Identitypass’s vision is to build a world-class compliance and security infrastructure for Africa which is free from identity theft and compliance bottlenecks. 

The platform does this by providing easy-to-use compliance and data security platform. IdentityPass’ platform allows businesses to easily authenticate and validate the genuineness of a transacting party online through the existing forms of identification.

Lanre Ogungbe, CEO, IdentityPass
Credit: IdentityPass

The modes of identification range from personal traits to government-issued identity cards and every other bit of data that can help uniquely identify individuals and businesses while dealing with People, Money & Data in an easy, secure, and faster way.

Speaking on its expansion plan, Co-founder and CEO of Identitypass, Lanre Ogungbe told Technext that the company aims to help as many companies as quickly as possible.

“We want to help as many digital companies in Africa as quickly as possible and the market will determine which other country to expand to,” he said.

Speaking on how much traction the startup has achieved since its launching, the CEO said IdentityPass has verified millions of individuals and businesses since its launch.

“In the last 3 quarters since we launched, we have verified millions of users and businesses and this growth is largely due to our market approach strategies. The coming quarters’ goal is to launch new products that don’t only keep businesses secured but also secures every internet user in the region.

Lanre Ogungbe

Presently, IdentityPass offers a variety of products that include ID checkers, Identity graphs, Identity forms and biometrics technologies. The startup currently has over 170 businesses onboarded on its platform and hopes to power more businesses in the coming quarters with upcoming verification products.

Niyi Adegboye, Co-Founder
Credit: IdentityPass

Identitypass has also established strategic partnerships to make its product usage kick off in multiple continents such as America and Asia.

Another co-founder, Niyi Adegboye said the team comprises amazing young talents with a thirst to make the internet safe for businesses and individuals to transact.

“We are building an infrastructure for trust for African businesses, and we are partnering with key stakeholders like Governments, other organisations to make this possible. Our aim is to be consistent in offering value to customers and partners as they aim to build the biggest verification solutions/products in the region,” he said.

Since launching this year, the company says it has achieved some milestones such as expanding the team to a size of 15 including a new Chief Marketing Officer, Lala Alakija, getting a support grant from Microsoft for start-ups worth ($120k) and being recognised by 2 international magazine brands as the fastest-growing verification company in Nigeria.

IdentityPass logo

There are several identity verification companies currently operating in the Nigerian space. Many of them are older than IdentityPass. Thus, what gives the startup an edge over its more popular competitors? CEO, Lanre Ogungbe told Technext that his company’s approach is quite unique.

“Our approach to how we make verification happen us different from other competitors. We are a product-focused API company and this shows in how we’ve built our products to make it easier for businesses and developers to use our solutions with or without integrating our API,” he said.

The startup earns its pay by charging a fee for every verification successfully completed.

Speaking on future funding, the IdentityPass CEO says the startup will be ready to seek the next level of funding after it has smashed several milestones it has already set.

“Our current funding was easy to complete because we initially focus on building a great solution and the traction was convincing. We will seek follow-up fundraising immediately after we hit all our pre-set traction milestones,” he said.

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