Blume-backed fintech platform IppoPay acquires Tutelar

IppoPay, a Chennai-based payment gateway firm backed by Coinbase Global, Better Capital and Blume Founders Fund, has acquired risk management startup Tutelar for an undisclosed amount.

Tutelar enables AI-based risk-free onboarding, dispute resolution, KYC fraud detection, transaction fraud detection, mis-selling prevention, etc., for the benefit of not only principals such as retailers and banks, but also intermediaries such as PAPGs (payment aggregators and payment gateways) ), issuers and fintechs and payment processors and exchange networks.

Tutelar was started by former Aggrepay CEO Pradeep Kumar, who has over 20 years of experience in the payments and risk management space. He has also worked with EBS, which was acquired by Worldline. He has also worked in risk verticals at Axis Bank, HDFC Bank and HSBC. Following the acquisition, Pradeep Kumar will join IppoPay as Chief Risk Officer.

“Tutelar was just an idea when Pradeep spoke to us. We worked with him to understand the product and how it is designed as our ambition is to build a full-stack infrastructure offering relevant to banks and other large non-bank players. KYC and transaction fraud detection and risk management is a very critical issue that RBI, NPCI and the industry at large are trying to address. The addition of Tutelar makes IppoPay an important component in the fight against fraud in the payments space,” said Mohan K, CEO of IppoPay.

“We wanted to partner with someone who will help us build on this vision and will take this product global. We believe IppoPay is the right home for Tutelar and they have the chops to help us achieve our vision,” said Kumar.

With this acquisition, the company plans to enter the payment infrastructure game. “Tutelar is our first and a very important addition to the full suite infrastructure stack that IppoPay is building,” said Mohan.

To strengthen its infra arm, IppoPay recently appointed former Billdesk and HDFC Bank official Atish Shelar as head of operations. He joined IppoPay from M2P, a well-known payment infrastructure company.

In 2019, payment aggregator Razorpay announced the acquisition of Thirdwatch, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup specializing in real-time fraud prevention using machine learning.