Apr 25, 2018
Vidyuth Srinivasan, co-founder and CEO of Entrupy and co-inventor of Entrupy’s patented technology, earned a degree in Journalism while designing and developing video games for Raptor Entertainment. He embarked on a career across a variety of roles including Sales, Business Development, Marketing, PR and filmmaking while working for software giants; Intuit and Microsoft. Entrupy was established in 2012 with co-founders, with a mission of using scalable technologies to enable trust and commerce to combat counterfeits. Entrupy launched in 2016 as an instant authentication service for high valued goods for the resale market. In 1 year, Entrupy has authenticated over 14 million dollars’ worth of inventory for its customers.
[02:08] Entrupy aims to build trust in transactions
[03:21] “Over time, we realized together that, as an industry and across commerce and across trading in the world, there’s a huge problem with counterfeits and that problem pervades almost every single industry.”
[05:48] The co-founders of Entrupy have a solid technology background and realized that they needed to solve the problem of getting instantaneous results regarding imitation products.
[08:21] The technology allows you to scan a product to see if it is authentic
[09:01] Most customers use Entrupy to detect handbags and leather accessories
[09:57] “The fact that we are versatile and scalable means that we have to be looking into expanding into either adjacent or completely horizontal/verticals.”
[10:11] Entrupy is looking to expand their business to compare watches, jewelry, shoes and are working with retailers in Europe
[10:46] Vidyuth never planned to enter the pawn industry until meeting Michael Mack of Max Pawn and then realizing that the pawn business relies on the speed of sales and being able to know if persons selling an item are trustworthy.
[11:46] Most pawnbrokers don’t take handbags because they are unsure of the authenticity of the products
[12:41] “The people who jumped on at first were the folks in the pawn industry”
[14:24] If you take in an item that has been certified as authentic, by Entrupy, and it is confirmed otherwise, Entrupy will give you money for the cost of the item as well as take the item off your hands.
[16:08] Many persons in the pawn consignment business, get their products sold 40-60% faster when they advertise a product with the authentication certificate
[17:02] “Once you have trust as that bottom layer, the buyer gets a good product that’s trustworthy, the seller makes extra money faster, and we make a small cut off that entire transaction”
[17:34] How much of an increase, in the sale of handbags, do pawnbrokers have after using Entrupy? Not all customers focus on handbags, but everyday there are at least 3 to 4 enquiries regarding handbags.
[21:19] What are the biggest tells of counterfeit?
- “Oh, I got this as a gift.” – Why would someone get rid of a gift?
- When people go into a pawn shop acting like they are in a hurry
- If the item or deal is too good to be true, it might be counterfeit
- Coming up with a fake address where they bought the product
[23:52] There are 4 components of the Entrupy technology;
- A handheld microscope is used to take image samples of varying parts of an item
- The images are sent to the handheld mobile app
- Images from the app go to the computers
- And the computer gives a result
[25:01] Visit Entrupy