Storytelling About Trua With Raj Ananthanpillai

William Tincup: [00:00:00] This is William Tincup and you are listening to the Use Case podcast. Today we have Raj on from Tru and we’ll be learning about the business case, the cost benefit analysis, the use case for wise prospects and customers pick Tru. So let’s do some introductions. Raj, would you do us a favor and introduce both yourself and Trua?

Raj Ananthanpillai: Hey, good morning. William. My name is Raj Ananthanpillai. I’m the founder and CEO of a company called Trua. Trua is an all in one digital identity and screening solution company. Primarily targeting HR recruiters safety and security in marketplaces and so on and so forth.

We’ve been around in different forms of companies. Trua is a spin off of another company called Endera, which was a spin off of another company called Zinfoden. We’ve been in that business for over 20 years.

William Tincup: And are we within the four walls of the U. S.? Are we doing international?[00:01:00]

Raj Ananthanpillai: Right now we are predominantly in the United States.

William Tincup: And do… Oh, go ahead. No, finish your thought.

Raj Ananthanpillai: No, but it’s like fishing in Pacific Ocean. It’s a big market.

William Tincup: Yeah and if it’s more specialized, it gets small, which is great because then you can get dominant faster. Do folks put you in the kind of background check, background screening category, or do they put you in a different

Raj Ananthanpillai: category?

We are actually a new generation. If you think about today’s background check industry, 99 plus percent is regulated. That means they have to adhere to F. C. R. A. Rules and F. T. C. And E. O. C. All kinds of regulations. We are the very first solution that is non regulated in the sense that, it’s an all in one, as I said digital identity and screening solution, right?

Streamlines background checks and fraud prevention processes for HR department. The beauty of that is it eliminates because [00:02:00] of the data is first verified by the candidate. It eliminates dispute and adverse action process, further reducing regulatory burden and legal risk for companies and HR departments.

William Tincup: A few questions. One is, I love that you, managing risk, managing fraud, managing, because that’s been, that’s historically been why we use background checks in the first place. So I want to make sure I understand this is pre hire. And if so, do you ever foresee this being post hire, meaning something that goes and continues on with employees?

Raj Ananthanpillai: One of the things is funny you should ask because our other company, Endera, has been in the post hire workforce risk management. We’ve been around for five plus years, and we’ve got fortune 50 companies using our software for post hire. One of the Questions that came along and say, Hey, you guys do it very well, [00:03:00] and it’s a non regulated approach.

You have anything for pre hire because we could not use that for pre hire because the consent and the review of the data was not performed by the individual. So between that and all of the breaches that was going around back in, 2017 18 timeframe, we started putting our heads together to develop this new platform called Truer, which first That’s the consumer or the individual or the applicant verify the data.

So through a score, we call it, is always current, like a FICO score. Okay, it’s always current, so you don’t have to do post hire risk or pre hire. You don’t have to deviate that. So you start from recruiting all the way to, full life cycle of the employer, employee. Or the candidate, right? So that’s how we do it.

It sounds

William Tincup: I don’t know if it is or isn’t, but it sounds what’s something that could be done on blockchain, where… Again, everything is verified again, eliminating the fraud, but I don’t want to go [00:04:00] too far down the rabbit hole if it’s not, if it’s not blockchain now

Raj Ananthanpillai: Or, your work, it took the words out of my, our our technology, our system is built on a blockchain ledger because we use the security features of the blockchain ledger.

So here’s what it is, right? We let the true or primarily is built with privacy and data protection. It adheres to stringent data privacy and consumer protection laws and

William Tincup: regulations. And they get to control that, whether or not they gave access to that

Raj Ananthanpillai: or not. Yep. Ensuring the personal information is handled appropriately and secured.

That’s cool. So the way we approach to data minimization, only the necessary information is collected, minimizing the risk of data breaches or identity theft. It powers the individual to verify it. That way there is no dispute. For HR managers, so giving them full control over the level of information that they want to share.

For example, if you are in the gig economy and for trust and safety, [00:05:00] they’re, hey, they’re looking for just criminal information, right? You just share the criminal information. You don’t need to share any civil infractions or civil issues or any other information that you have. Because typically what happens in a traditional background check, you get a 30, 40, 50 and then the HR department has to sift through all of that and it could be a hot potato because, every state has different regulations.

Think about it, right? California, New York, and, all kinds of regulations say, hey, if this is a type of misdemeanor or a felony, you cannot use that for any hiring if it’s more than five years old or 10 years old, depending on the state statutes and so on and so forth. So we have taken all of that and codified and put into the system, which is saying, okay, we have a three dimensional decision matrix for every event that individual has says, okay, time type of event or [00:06:00] recency.

And then we map the sentencing guidelines and also the state statutes and federal statutes and say, okay, what does this state say? Oh, you can use this. I’m just using this as an example. This person had a shoplifting event six years ago, right? In certain states, you cannot use that if it’s more than two years old.

So we apply all of that morass that people have to go through and say, okay, this is the curated event that adheres to all of the state regulations and laws. And then you can, and by the way, the consumer has already verified it and then you can use it. So the hiring becomes fast and then say, okay.

And in the gig economy, as there are 60, 65 million people in the gig shared economy. They’re looking for jobs, they’re changing jobs every two months, three months. They have to constantly keep giving this, so they could have this in their wallet if necessary, and then say, hey, I already have my stuff, [00:07:00] and here’s my criminal verification, here’s my professional license verification, if that’s what, education verification.

And so on and so forth. One of the things that we saw was there are a lot of static stuff in an individual, like your degree, your credentials in a professional license, and so on and so forth. They are predominantly static. Other than for renewals or or disbarment and things like that, but predominantly started.

But still, every time you look for a job, they do a background check, they have to check that over and over again. Why? It’s a huge nonsense, in my opinion. Only thing that changes is your court record. You could be arrested. You could have some issues and so on and so forth. So we focus on some of those data and we call it deterministic data, right?

It means it is for sure belongs to you. That is what we always work on That’s why most of the if you look at billions of dollars of legal Litigation that’s going on is because of these due process and wrongful [00:08:00] attribution of data to a certain individual Keep going. We cleaned that all up. That’s why we got five plus patents on these things.

And we’ve been doing this for over 20 years. Just. Trying to determine the data that belongs

William Tincup: to the individual. A few questions. Let’s start with keeping up with the data. Is there certain things that the the individual that has to keep up with? If they change their cell phone or their address or maybe they change their mind on different permissions, et cetera.

And is there certain data that’s just already mined from, outside outside data sources?

Raj Ananthanpillai: Yeah, it is always current, right? Right up front. We disclose everything and it’s current. And then when you share this data, by the way, none of the underlying data is ever shared. That’s what is we put it in a block chain.

All of the raw data that nobody can touch it except you as an individual. And then. What is shared is, hey, you don’t have, like a true [00:09:00] score, for those who want to look at that, it’s in our website trueame. com. It’ll show you, hey, this is the score, okay, this says, okay, one or more criminal event, if necessary, and if you click on it, it’ll tell you, oh, it was a minor misdemeanor or whatever it is, jaywalking, right?

You can make that decision if you want. And the individual has turned that feature on. They can turn it off any time and for every share. Oh, okay.

William Tincup: Got it. Yeah.

Raj Ananthanpillai: It’s not just all in one. Every time they want to share with an employer or somebody else they can do that. The first time, they need to be sponsored by somebody in this case usually because today it’s all B2B, so they get sponsored by a company and then they can take it with them for the rest of their lives.

And it’s always current. And if they change their phone number or email or whatever it is, they’re all verified and then updated. So

William Tincup: I think you mentioned safety. And if you did, I wanted to ask you does it, do we keep track of [00:10:00] accidents or work claims, et cetera?

Raj Ananthanpillai: It depends, right? We go with all of the deterministic data, objective.

We don’t want to bother with that social media data, because that could be just garbage. Most of it is. Yeah. Somebody could be ranting. That doesn’t mean that person is wrong as something wrong, right? So we look for deterministic data, probabilistic data. We can get to it, right? We have it. But, that needs a little further evolution.

William Tincup: Right. Where do we fit in with the kind of the recruiter workflow? So as they’re going through their process, obviously sourcing, they’re going to find the candidates. Once they find the candidates, then recruiters do their bid. And I’m assuming it’s, this is somewhere in that process. Yeah,

Raj Ananthanpillai: one of two things, right?

As soon as here’s the best part, right? Because it’s a newer product, it’s been in the market. The true score has been in the market for a little over a year. And the true I. D. V. [00:11:00] We just launched just the ID piece alone a month ago, right? Because when we talked to the banks, they said, hey, your identity verification seems to be very compelling.

The reason why we did that was when you are presented with code record, it is so intimate, we want to absolutely make sure you are who you say you are. That’s why we went through that process and then they say, Hey, that ID process or ID verification process, very compelling. And that gave us an idea to just separate that also.

What happens is when, within the employer base, the employer sponsors, let’s say, Hey, the recruiter says we got 50 plus customers right now, but, they say, Hey, I’m going to hire somebody, go get this true or score. And they go through the process and it is shared and they come on board.

That’s the, that’s one process. The second process when they can advertise, for example, this is where the future is. They can advertise that, hey, for this position, I need a bachelor’s degree two years of experience, and a true score of, I’m just making this up, 325 and above, [00:12:00] right? Oh, and that can say, if you want to get your true score, put a link there, and then they get it.

They get the true score and they can be reimbursed for that, obviously. And then they submit the scope, right? If they know if it’s not 325, or let’s say this person had a criminal record 290, they’re not going to apply for the job, right? And then the recruiters have already made it clear. They don’t have to deal with this hot potato.

It’s, oh my God. Because you cannot score Ban the box in 32 or 36 states, right? You cannot ask the candidate if you have a criminal record until and after you offer them a job. Let’s assume you pick a candidate, go through the interview, pick a candidate, spend eight to 10 weeks in trying to come to a candidate or candidate, and then you’ll do a background check and then.

That’s what happened. And then you have to justify, is this criminal record relevant to the job, right? Oh my god, this is so much burden [00:13:00] on HR people, right? Instead, up front, you get it done, right? Hey, you verify and let us know. Boom. Almost all of them will self opt out, hey, I’m not going to be qualified for this job.

So what’s the, what’s

William Tincup: the, what’s the price, Raj, what’s the pricing model, not pricing per se but but I’ve seen these kind of priced out in different ways. Yep. I think the

Raj Ananthanpillai: audience. We are trying to standardize that right today, a background check can go from a cheesy internet search, which is nothing, which is a scam, actually, in my opinion, to a real good.

To, close to 200 depending on what you want to check, want to check driver’s records, MBR, professional licenses, all kinds of stuff, right? We just focus on what I call the 80% case, right? 80% of the employers need the set of minimum criteria. Verify the name, date of birth, social and then address history, seven years address history.

That’ll give you, if this person has moved from one county to another [00:14:00] county, they committed some crime in another county that you’re not aware of. Aware of right. That’s why we collect the address history as well. And then the criminal civil professional license verification and anything else you want to do it.

So that’s all there. It’s depending on the volume and whatnot. It’s, it’s in the 7550 to 75 range depending on.

William Tincup: Dumb question, Raj, but how do we know that person filling that out is actually that person? The reason I ask this question is recruiters will sometimes, tell me about fraud stories where they’re hiring a, an engineer, they’ve taken them through skills tests and all, everything, behavioral assessments, the whole bit, only to find out that the person that was doing all that is not the actual person

Raj Ananthanpillai: that’s going to show up.

Yep. That’s the first day of work. Oh, you mean you, this is a. Perfect example. Most background checks do not do identity verification, right? Actually, in this day and age, when there’s a lot of remote hiring is happening. And they are. Remote hiring, they have their [00:15:00] lookalikes or pictures and, they do show their face once and so on and so forth, right?

And then it’s all a thing. The key to avoid that is perform identity. Today in the background check world, identity verification is an afterthought. What we do is. Right up front, we verify the identity, which is proof their government issued ID, and then we do a liveness detection of the individual. You can’t just say, this is my driver’s license picture, because we say, okay, show us a liveness picture.

We detect the liveness of the individual, and then we verify the social, the date of birth, the address, seven years worth of address history, and then we present it to them. All of their criminal court records or civil court records. And then if they have a license, the requirement, like it’s a driving license, not driving license, professional license for something.

A hairdresser or a C P A or whatever it is, and we verify that and then it’s part of your, And the profile is only macro [00:16:00] attributes are disclosed, none of the underlying information is ever disclosed. And now they say, hey, you were sponsored by, IBM. I’m just using that as an example.

And then go ahead and share it with them. You have verified and you shared with them the affiliation, we make the connection, and the employer gets it, they get a portal of all the people that have true scores, and it gives them a view, quick view of who, if the scores are changing and whatnot, and then that’s how we go through the process.

I love

William Tincup: it. Okay, so let’s do some by side questions for the practitioners listening. One is your favorite or your team’s favorite part of the demo. Thank you. Like you, when you get them to this part of the demo, you know that they’re going to, aha moment, whatever, you know that they’re going to really follow up

Raj Ananthanpillai: with it.

Yeah, it’s a very simple, when we start, oh, you do identity verification. Yes, sir. Okay. Or yes, ma’am. And we do that right off the bat. It’s a very simple process. And then we. Give them a score and say, Hey, you don’t have to rack your brain [00:17:00] because we give you criteria. What is a 320? It’s just like a FICO score.

You know what a 600 or 700 or 800 means, right? And that’s how you design the benefits of the loan or the interest rate and so on and so forth. And we are talking to a very large what I call a job board, for example, right? They want to attach this to all of their candidates on their database.

That way, if they are Talking to employers that say, Hey, I want a, candidates with the 350 and above because this is for financial or the finance department, for example, right? Oh, this is for the shop floor. Okay. I can live with the 320. So we give them the criteria that, hey, you don’t have to worry about all of those things.

If it’s a 290, what does that mean? So it’s just like looking at the score and say, wow, I don’t have to deal with, walking on eggshells. If this person is going to sue me because I didn’t ask this question or I asked them this question or anything, nothing of that [00:18:00] because it is absolutely non regulatory.

And this is especially good for medium and small businesses even more because they can’t afford to have a compliance department. They’re probably a front office person is the 1 of the recruiting and hiring sometimes. So this is even more compelling for some of those. People who don’t have a compliance department, even those who have compliance department, the biggest part is, in fact, I wrote an article for Forbes, you’ll see that you can deduce your business insurance significantly, because that’s where the the hiring practices liability insurance or whatever comes under, it literally goes to zero. That’s

William Tincup: fantastic. Okay. So questions, people buying identity verification for the first time, or maybe not for the first time. What are the questions that they should be asking you and your team?

Raj Ananthanpillai: Hey how does the how do I know the candidate is going through the process?

That’s usually the question that we get, [00:19:00] they sponsor, they send an invite, it’s called an invitation process. They send an invite. Hey. Here’s a link. We are ready to make you an offer. In the meantime, get your true score so we know your background, right? And then, by the way, we protect your privacy and blah, blah, blah.

It’s a good thing. It’s a good attractive tool for attracting candidates. Oh, this employer really respects my privacy. Think about that, right? People usually use this to to penalize or this or that. So you’re actually making it easy. It’s punitive, yeah. Yeah, be making it easy for them to say, okay, this person really respects, I don’t need all of the information because I’m still not an employee.

Yes, when you become an employee, you have to give your social and other personal information to get on the payroll. But until then, you’re walking around with all this hot information and personal data. Look at the employers. Oh, I don’t have to worry about all of that. You don’t have to worry about storing any of that.

So those are all, every step we have. It’s a very simple step. Every step we go [00:20:00] through people say whoa, I don’t have to do this. I don’t have to do that. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. So about five minutes or so, right? And, you send them today and it’s available. Next day, depending on, if you have to go through a paywall state where they take 48 hours to send back some information.

But other than that, most of it, we do it pretty fast

William Tincup: and no cost to the individual, no cost to

Raj Ananthanpillai: the individual. That’s the individual is trying, unless the employer says that we are almost ready to sign up a customer. We’ve been talking to them for a couple of months they have a couple of thousand contractors that, and say, Hey, being part of our platform you have to get your truest score that way. We can, next time when we have a when we send you to different job sites, it’s easy that way. You don’t have to keep doing this over and over again. And it’s a value that for this particular company, because they say, Hey, I am giving you a pre vetted candidate right off the bat at the day to go tomorrow.

It works for both [00:21:00] people, the employer and the candidate.

William Tincup: Because you’ve been doing this so long and without naming names or any of that type of stuff, what are some of the horror stories that you’ve seen or heard of around identity verification?

Raj Ananthanpillai: We have dead people which is why there’s a case study that we did with a very critical infrastructure, a dead person walking around with a dead brother’s identity and the badge.

Wow. At a facility. I’m not kidding. I swear to God. Wow, it’s what they gave us about 50, 000. We did a pilot for them and it just blew my mind. I said, how the heck this can happen. So that’s where there are some people they complain. Hey, my identity is, not going through.

Okay. Is your driver’s license valid? Or is it are you faking somebody else’s right? So they try to pull a fast one sometimes, right? But once you go through this, in general, right? I always believe that in general, people want to do the right [00:22:00] majority. Unfortunately, the society and the environment sometimes screws it up and they, and builds the mistrust.

So I’m a big believer that give the individual the opportunity to own their own data.

William Tincup: In that scenario, Raj, it would be really the ethical dilemma of if that employee was a high performer. Okay, all the things that we stated and covered, but what if we found out that employee was one of our best salespeople, let’s just say, then what do we do?

I know the easy answer is you gotta let them go. You, you

Raj Ananthanpillai: know, Oh, you mean if they had a issue, right? Yeah. Oh, post hire issue. Post hire. Yeah. Yeah. That’s your company policy, right? If your company, HR manual says, I know because this is a good example you brought up, right?

Financial services are a big deal, right? Yeah. So I always tell, right? What are the, what are you most interested in? Financial [00:23:00] compliance, financial issues and so on and so forth. Okay. If somebody gets a DUI, for example, do you care? I always say that, that person probably did a million dollar deal, had a party, right?

And then he got pulled over. You have to make that judgment. That’s right. Arbitrarily, you can’t just say if you have a DEI, you’re out, but regulatory issues could potentially make that happen. Good point. Regulated industry is always an issue. That’s why I am trying, this is a stepping stone, in trying to get the regulators off of these kinds of claims.

The reason why the regulators came in is because, think about it, today, if it was arbitrary, I didn’t know a background checker identity verification. What happens is you’re not part, you as an individual is not part of the process. A employer works with a third party background check company, and then they say, we are going to hire this person.

And they send a link to this person, fill out this form, and then they collect all the personal information. And the employer and the third party are [00:24:00] communicating amongst themselves. You are left out. I say when you are brought into the equation, you can eliminate 3000 pages of regulation. From all the books and save yourself a lot of money, time, effort, and legal risk.

William Tincup: And from the candidate experience perspective, the candidate, and the candidate gets something, they understand what’s going on. They’ve given permission. They feel more yeah, more empowered, more part of the process.

Raj Ananthanpillai: It’s an easy process. Oh, this company really likes me and they’re giving me this option that I don’t have to share all this.

But every time you give out your information, you cringe sometimes. What happens, you enter the process, you’re not getting the job. They still have the data. Yes. And what does the company have to do? Oh my God, they have to retain because EEOC comes and says, Hey, why didn’t you hire this person? That’s right.

In this case, you don’t have to do anything.

William Tincup: Well, Raj, this has been wonderful. Thank you [00:25:00] so much for coming on. I absolutely love what you’ve built and are building. So just thanks for coming on and explaining what you’ve

Raj Ananthanpillai: got going on. Oh, thank you. This is great. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Absolutely.

William Tincup: And thanks for everyone listening until next time.