At 16, when teenagers usually like to play and enjoy their lives, getting into the professional phase is no easy feat. But the personality we are interviewing today did it and touched the glory of success as a result of his hard work. He is Shahid Hanif, an entrepreneur with a visionary idea to revolutionize the digital world, reforming how businesses handle security and risk management operations. He’s a Co-founder and CTO of Shufti Pro, one of the world’s leading and fastest-growing IDV service providers.
It is even difficult to work on an innovative idea when it is not a norm in the market, but Shahid’s visionary approach changed the conventional security and risk management processes. He transformed the traditional KYC into a fully automated and AI-powered process. Eventually, Shahid’s ingenious concept made his company one of the leading identity verification providers worldwide, currently serving 240+ countries and territories with 17+ IDV and KYC products.
Shahid has been a technophile since childhood, showing a deep passion for electronics and tech. In 2015, the hype of AI was at its peak. At that time, he was completing his Master’s. Shahid noticed that AI is revolutionary and can do things beyond human capability. One day, while working on his university project about KYC and IDV, he noticed that the conventional method had many inefficiencies. It took weeks or even months to pass the customers’ verification, and the results weren’t as per the safety standards, forming a significant loophole in the KYC process.
Shahid Hanif knew artificial intelligence could reduce the authentication time to minutes, provide more accurate results than the manual method, and eliminate human errors. Therefore, he incorporated artificial intelligence and machine learning into the KYC, taking a game-changing step in the industry.
Eventually, Shahid Hanif founded Shufti Pro, one of the few KYC providers of that time, utilizing AI-based identity and document verification to provide businesses with a KYC solution offering lower authentication time, superior accuracy, eliminating human errors, and compliance with regulatory authorities. His idea behind Shufti Pro was different and innovative: to revolutionize how businesses performed KYC and eliminate online fraud from the industry without affecting customer experience during the authentication process.
From what started as a small company, now, Shufti Pro has partnered with 1,000+ global enterprises, serving in 240+ countries and territories. The company offers all kinds of KYC and KYB services, including IDV, Risk assessment, OCR, and AML screening. Recently, Shufti Pro has launched e-IDV, becoming one of the few IDV providers to utilize government-issued e-IDs for KYC verification.
Shahid said he faced many challenges, tough times, and failures. However, he never got disappointed. Instead, he considered them as learning opportunities and continued to work hard. He says that glory is not when you succeed without failing but in rising after falling:
“Only those who dare to fail greatly can ever achieve greatly.”
Readers and entrepreneurs can follow Shahid Hanif on LinkedIn to gain insights regarding his professional career.