It gives us great pride to announce the acquisition of Thirdwatch – an AI-powered company specializing in big data to reduce return-to-origin and fraud orders for e-commerce businesses.
According to industry estimates, the Indian e-commerce industry is expected to reach $150 billion by FY20. Fraud and RTO can result in losses of over $5 billion for these companies, since 4-5% of all orders fall under these categories.
Thirdwatch’s AI-driven solution can empower e-commerce businesses to fight fraud at scale and reduce RTO by a significant margin. Our goal has always been to actively solve business problems through innovative technological solutions that can transform the Indian economy.
The Thirdwatch acquisition will further help us in building core competencies in big data and AI to solve unique business problems across the industry.
Here’s what Razorpay CEO and my Co-founder, Harshil Mathur, has to say about the acquisition.
“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 ecommerce companies’ necks for the longest time and we believe through this acquisition we will empower ecommerce businesses to digitally transform and disrupt, by improving their response and redressal mechanisms of combating fraud.”
He added, “The team at Thirdwatch comes with an exceptional understanding and expertise in AI, machine learning and data sciences and together we envision a future where AI will help e-commerce firms not just combat fraud but maintain a competitive advantage and significantly improve profitability. Together, I believe we can help reduce frauds by 30-40% by next year.”
At the same time, Shashank Agarwal, Founder of Thirdwatch said, “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.”
He added, “Fraud has been one of the largest and longest concerns for e-commerce companies. Most of their systems frequently fail while identifying fraudulent patterns and therefore lack the capability of differentiating between genuine customers and fraudsters. There is a dire need for a data-driven solution to help identify these patterns and reduce losses of any kind, to help the marketplace function at an optimal level. We are really excited to be part of the Razorpay family, and together, we hope to make AI accessible and helpful to every business, amplifying human resourcefulness with intelligent technology”
In India, digital transactions are growing at a fast pace of over 50% every year. While this spells good news for the e-commerce industry, it also means that the threat of fraud and RTO becomes even greater. Indian e-commerce businesses need to nip this problem in the bud and together with Thirdwatch, Razorpay aims to aid them to do just that.
