OTPless, an innovative customer identity and access management startup, has raised $3.5 million in its pre-series A funding round. The investment was led by Sidbi, with participation from Venture Highway, FJ Labs, and Piper Serica. This funding marks a significant milestone for the Surat, Gujarat based startup, which aims to disrupt the traditional methods of user authentication and set new standards in the industry. The proceeds bring OTPless’ total raised to $6.5 million. OTPless says that they’ll be put toward expanding the presence globally and service beyond authentication and into authorization — that is, determining the permissions a user has versus simply identifying who they are.
Led by Bhavik Koladiya, Satyam Nathani and Tanmay Sagar, a founding team of fintech unicorn BharatPe, OTPless is transforming the authentication landscape with its unique approach that eliminates the need for One-Time Passwords (OTPs). Instead, OTPless enables users to sign up and sign in on websites and apps via WhatsApp and other methods, offering a seamless and secure authentication experience. This innovative approach not only simplifies the process for users but also provides enhanced security measures, addressing common concerns associated with OTP-based authentication.
Revolutionizing Authentication
In just one year, OTPless has emerged as a game-changer in the identity and access management (IAM) space. The startup offers a comprehensive platform that supports various social sign-in methods, including Google, iMessage, Microsoft, Github, Slack, UPI and modern protocols like Passkeys, Network Auth, Protected SMS and Device fingerprinting. Developers can easily integrate OTPless’s SDKs and APIs, going live within minutes using pre-built UIs or customize from scratch. This flexibility and ease of integration have made OTPless a preferred choice for developers looking to implement robust authentication solutions quickly and efficiently.
OTPless’s platform also includes silent network authentication in partnership with telecom operators, further enhancing the security and user experience. Silent network authentication allows the system to verify a user’s identity without requiring any input from the user, leveraging the mobile network to authenticate the user seamlessly.
More than 5,000 companies and 20,000 developers worldwide use OTPless to authenticate over 30 million users. These companies benefit from higher conversion rates of up to 98%, thanks to the streamlined rule-based smart authentication process that reduces friction for end-users. Additionally, OTPless provides robust security through device-bound and biometric auth, ensuring that users remain protected against unauthorized access, even in the case of phone being lost.
“In addition to it being complicated, it’s resource intensive and error-prone to build in house,” Co-founder, Satyam Nathani, who leads product vision at OTPless shared. “The other thing that really frustrated us was that the core building blocks that all companies use for authentication had really significant security and conversion issues. It struck us that the web has improved in so many ways over the past few decades, but authentication is still stuck in the 1990s.”