Data Sutram, a fintech start-up founded by three undergraduate electronics engineering students of Jadavpur University, has raised $9 million in a Series A funding round led by B Capital and Lightspeed India.
The company, which is now based in Mumbai, offers fraud detection and regulatory compliance services to the BFSI sector and counts HDFC Bank, Axis Bank, Tata Capital and Muthoot Finance among its clients.
“We leverage AI and external intelligence from over 250 sources to help lenders, payment firms and insurers reduce cyber risk, stay compliant, and drive growth across the customer lifecycle,” Rajit Bhattacharya, Data Sutram’s founder and CEO, told The Telegraph in an interview.
The company was set up in 2018 by chief executive officer Rajit Bhattacharya, chief technology officer Aishik Paul and director Ankit Das, batchmates at Jadavpur University, who graduated in 2019, deciding to skip placements to set up Data Sutram as they realised that “job was not the only path”.
“We were three electronics engineering students — curious about data, unfamiliar with entrepreneurship, and clueless about banking. But we had the time and the liberty to spend it beyond the classrooms. A lot of credit goes to the freedom that JU gave us,” Rajit recalled.
They shifted base to Mumbai — the financial capital of India and the headquarters to top banks of the country in 2021 — where it had found its earliest clients and initial investors.
“Being physically close to the decision-makers in large banks helped us move faster, build trust more easily, and understand the nuances of the BFSI space up close … Over time, Mumbai also allowed us to attract diverse and experienced talent that helped us grow,” Rajit said.
The latest to invest in the venture is Lightspeed India. In a LinkedIn post, Hemant Mohaptra, partner at Lightspeed India, said, “Data Sutram’s AI native stack was the most sophisticated we’ve seen and the customer feedback from very large and traditionally hard-to-crack banks have been nothing short of stellar”.
Data Sutram, as a regulatory technology (reg-tech) fintech company, addresses a key problem in the BFSI sector which has been grappling with rising digital fraud cases that has tripled in the last financial year to ₹36,014 crore in FY25, up from ₹12,230 crore in the previous fiscal year, according to data shared by the RBI.
Frauds occurred predominantly in the category of digital payments, including card and internet, in terms of number, and primarily in the loan portfolio or advances in terms of value.
Private sector banks (PSBs) account for nearly 60 per cent of the fraud cases by numbers, while PSBs’ share in terms of value stands at over 71 per cent as of end-FY25, an RBI report on digital fraud revealed recently.
Data Sutram’s proprietary “Trust Score” profiles transactions to detect frauds in real time.
“Analysing millions of digital footprints to detect patterns like identity theft, synthetic profiles, and collusion, our platform gives institutions a 360-degree view of customers, enhancing risk visibility and confidence,” Rajit added.
This rise in fraud has prompted a strong regulatory push from the RBI, encouraging banks to strengthen their fraud detection, monitoring and reporting mechanisms.
Data Sutram has scaled to over $3 million in annual recurring revenue, working with some of the biggest names in India’s financial ecosystem, according to Rajit.
Following the most recent round of funding, they intend to expand their fraud detection capabilities beyond banking into sectors such as insurance, while gearing up for international growth.
Commenting on their long-term plans, Rajit added, “We want to be the default trust infrastructure for global finance.”