Our Class 02 start-up, SAWO Labs, has raised a second round of funding from StartupXseed, a sector agnostic seed and early stage venture capital fund, to the tune of INR 5.5 crore at a valuation of INR 28 crore. Earlier, they raised pre-seed investment from 100X.VC in September 2020.
stands for Secure Authentication Without OTP. Most online transactions today are secured with one time passwords (OTP) to provide an additional level of security. However, many times, people complain of never receiving OTPs, which makes them repeat the whole login process again. To address this problem, SAWO introduced a customer-centric, standardized and device-based secure authentication solution for apps and websites, removing the need for password authentications and OTPs.
’s Authentication as a Service (AaaS) operates on a pay-as-you-go basis with a pricing plan of 4 paisa per authentication for customers, they undercut competitor pricing that stands at an average of ₹1.53 per authentication. This provides clear financial benefits to customers and allows enterprises to sell at scale. Currently, these services are extended to Indian app publishers and IT/software enterprises deploying authentication for their products. The product has garnered its clients' attention with a near-perfect success rate of 99.7%. It provides easy access to the consumers, improves conversion rates, reduces risks, and is very cost-effective. The platform claims to cut the authentication costs down to a quarter of what businesses currently incur.
Currently, SAWO Labs has a team of 12 people and is serving 17 enterprise clients. With the current investment, the founder of SAWO, Prabhat Sahu, plans to deploy these funds to onboard 350 clients, serve over 65 crore authentication requests, and by doing so, earn a revenue of ₹4.9 crore in the very first year of operations. He is also working on introducing an express checkout feature in the next 18 months. Meanwhile, they're building and increasing the use cases, getting international partnerships, and increasing e-commerce partnerships.
Ninad Karpe, Partner at 100X.VC who were SAWO’s initial investors also noted that “As the first institutional investor in SAWO, we are excited to see the momentum it has received in funding which will fuel its growth trajectory. SAWO has a unique solution to a problem which is faced by consumers across the world. With the funding received by SAWO, it can now scale rapidly in its journey to become a global leader. At 100X.VC, we invested in the vision on SAWO and are delighted to see its progress”. The entire team at 100X.VC is extremely proud of Prabhat’s success and will continue to guide and align with his vision to grow in future.
