Indian-Founded Arva AI Raises $3 Million in Google-Backed Funding

Arva AI has successfully raised $3 million in a seed funding round led by Gradient, Google’s early-stage AI investment fund, Gradient. Y Combinator, Amino Capital, Olive Tree Capital, and other prominent fintech angels participated in the round. This milestone marks a significant step in redefining how financial institutions handle business verification using generative AI.

Know Your Business (KYB) verification, a critical compliance process to mitigate fraud and money laundering, has long posed challenges for financial institutions. Traditional KYB methods, which are heavily reliant on manual reviews, are not only time-consuming but also costly. As regulations tighten, banks and fintech companies face increasing pressure to streamline these processes without compromising on compliance standards.

Arva AI’s platform uses generative AI to automate KYB tasks and converts fragmented data from registries, social media, websites, and documents into actionable insights. The system’s advanced fraud detection and data extraction capabilities enable financial institutions to onboard businesses in seconds, which enhances both efficiency and compliance.

Founded in 2024 by Rhim Shah and Oliver Wales in San Francisco, Arva AI was accepted into the Y Combinator program’s winter batch (S24). Shah is also the product advisor of Kastle AI, a YC startup of the 24 batch that brings voice agents to automate and improve customer interaction in the mortgage industry. 

The founding team, including Shah, formerly of Revolut Business, and Wales, a former lead product engineer at Seal, brings deep expertise in fintech and AI. Their knowledge has been instrumental in crafting Arva’s innovative solutions.

“At Arva, our mission is to make business verification fast, accurate, and seamless,” Shah added. “Early adopters of Arva, including leading fintechs like Keep in Canada and Tola in the US, are already reaping the benefits of streamlined compliance.”

The funding will accelerate product development and expand Arva AI’s market presence to meet the growing demand for automated compliance solutions. Arva aims to develop a comprehensive suite of AI tools to handle repetitive, low to mid-risk compliance tasks. This will allow teams to focus on complex decision-making.

Indian Players

A number of Indian companies are already using AI to automate KYB processes. Fintech company Razorpay uses AI to automate business verification for onboarding customers and simplifying KYC and KYB processes. Similarly, Bengaluru-based Signzy, which offers an online identity verification service, utilises AI for the verification process.