Anti-fraud specialist Pindrop has snagged $35 million in a Series B investment round, which it will use to fund the growth of its voice fraud protection and authentication solutions in the call center.
The company plans to invest in customer support, engineering, sales and marketing staff, and it will also expand across newer verticals, geographies and products.
Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) led the round, along with existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, Citi Ventures, Felicis Ventures, Redpoint Ventures and Webb Investment Network. Somesh Dash of IVP will be joining the board.
“It has been another year of record revenue growth with us signing on several of the largest banks, brokerages and retailers in the US,” said Vijay Balasubramaniyan, co-founder and CEO at Pindrop, in a blog. “What started off as a simple research question (‘Where is this phone call really coming from?’) has burgeoned into the entire field of phone-printing, where we are able to identify individual voice devices just from their audio characteristics.”
Along the way, not knowing the answer to that question has resulted in a 10 billion dollar voice fraud issue across enterprise call centers, he added.
“We are now seeing a large number of organizations that are realizing that their call centers are the weakest link,” he said. “What seemed like forgetful customers repeatedly asking call center agents more questions are now revealed to be sophisticated fraud actors. In several cases they are trying to probe for additional pieces of information to complement their latest data breach.”
Securing the voice channel can be just as critical as concerns over data, he added.
“An elderly lady is checking to make sure her retirement account is still whole,” said Balasubramaniyan. “A millennial is ordering the latest IPhone 6. Come join us as an engineer, as a sales rep, as a customer as we make sure these interactions are trustworthy [and] secure.”