India’s leading background verification firm BetterPlace recently took another major step towards its ultimate goal of improving the safety landscape of the country. The Bengaluru-based company was recently joined by ex-Google India Head Lalitesh Katragadda as its Executive Board member and an investor. With the newest addition to its team of technocrats, platform developers and other technology intensive experts, BetterPlace will be looking to bring transparency and credible information at the fingertips of citizens to address the growing trust deficit within the country.
Widely credited to be the man behind Google Mapmaker, Lalitesh is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and holds a PhD in Robotics from the Carnegie Mellon University. He was previously associated with Google for over ten years and was heading its India operations before moving onto different ventures. Lalitesh is currently serving as an advisor to the Central and Andhra Pradesh governments on several projects related to redesigning fibre grids in order to make high-bandwidth internet available to all at affordable prices.
Lalitesh will look to integrate his extensive technological knowledge with BetterPlace’s disruptive digital technologies, innovative data analytics and application tools to ‘SafePower’ every Indian Citizen. BetterPlace will be aiming to harness Lalitesh’s extensive technological knowledge and practical, on-hand expertise in order to develop complex large scale tech-driven safety solutions.
BetterPlace has been grabbing the eyeballs of a large number of clients in Bangalore since its launch. On requests of its clients, the team verifies the credentials of a person across three categories after acquiring consent. These include personal, professional and social data. The information is then processed by its innovative data analytics and application tools which derive a trust score for the person.
After being rolled out in August this year, BetterPlace services have been lapped up by various firms and startups across segments. Explaining the process behind the idea Mr Praveen Agarwala, the man behind BetterPlace says ‘Out of 100 persons five persons will be wrong elements. We just want to reinstate the element of safety. The idea is to bring people from a lower to higher trust score”.
