Know your founder before you wire the money.
118 checks on the person behind the pitch — courts, credit bureaus, MCA, GST, AML/PEP, employment and more. Taken with the founder's consent, answered by the founder, delivered within 3 working days.
Per founder, plus GST. No subscription. You pay only when the founder consents and the report is generated.
Most deals never get an integrity check. The ones that do, get it too late.
A traditional background check on a founder costs ₹1–5 lakh, takes two to four weeks, and usually starts after the term sheet. KYF is the 3-working-day check you run first — so your legal, financial and technical diligence is spent on the right founders.
Three steps. You never handle the founder's documents.
You start it, the founder consents, we run it. The founder gets a right of reply and you get everything in one place.
Send a consent link
Enter the founder's name and an email address or WhatsApp number. That's all we need from you — no PAN, no Aadhaar, no documents to collect.
Founder accepts with an OTP
The founder opens the link, sees exactly what will be checked and why, enters their own PAN and mobile number, and accepts with a one-time password. The consent record is stored with the report.
Report in 3 working days, with a right of reply
You get the full report online and as a PDF. One click shares the findings with the founder to acknowledge, dispute or add context — flag by flag. Their responses come back to you consolidated.
Silence is a data point too. A founder who declines consent, lets the link expire or doesn't respond to the findings shows up in your deal view as exactly that.
118 checks on the individual, not just the company.
Companies are easy to look up. Founders aren't. KYF resolves the person — identity, money, courts, watchlists, employment and digital footprint — and ties it back to the entities they're actually behind.
Identity & KYC
27 checksPAN validity and name match, Aadhaar linkage, telecom KYC, date-of-birth consistency across sources, addresses on record, alternate numbers and email identities.
Credit & financial
18 checksExperian and CRIF High Mark scores, active and written-off accounts, worst days-past-due, unsecured share of debt, gold-loan dependence, fresh enquiries, insolvency search, income-tax filing status.
Legal & litigation
11 checkseCourts across district, high and supreme courts, NCLT / DRT / consumer forums, criminal and civil matters, cheque-bounce (NI Act 138) cases, and cases against associated companies.
AML · PEP · sanctions
12 checksPEP lists, OFAC / UN / EU / UK HMT sanctions, RBI wilful defaulters, SEBI / RBI / ED / MCA enforcement, disqualified directors, Interpol and police notices, adverse media with analyst review.
Corporate · MCA · GST
18 checksDirectorships by PAN and DIN, ROC status, currency of financial filings, charges and secured borrowings, litigation against each entity, GST registration and filing status.
Employment
10 checksEPFO employment history and current employer, UAN discovery, declared occupation and income band, cross-checked against what the founder told you.
Vehicles & mobility
11 checksRegistered vehicles and financing, RC-to-owner match, unpaid traffic challans, FASTag registration and movement trail.
Digital footprint & cyber
8 checksData-breach exposure on mobile and email, leaked-credential risk, UPI handle discovery, public professional profile and OSINT corroboration of identity.
Reputation
3 checksConsumer complaints on public forums, company reviews and social sentiment — surfaced, sourced and labelled, never summarised into a score you can't audit.
Every flag gets a right of reply.
A background check without the founder's side is half a check. Share the findings and the founder acknowledges, disputes or adds context to each one — with documents if they like. You see the finding and the response side by side. The finding never changes; the response is appended.
- 1Flag by flag, not one comment boxEach Caution or Adverse item gets its own response, so you know exactly what's disputed and what's accepted.
- 2Consolidated back to youOne notification when the founder submits. Responses, attachments and timestamps land in the report as a Founder's Response addendum.
- 3Time-boxedThe founder has seven days. The deal view shows responded, partial, declined or no response — so a non-answer is visible too.
I was a contract employee at Spectrum from 2019 to 2022, not a director or shareholder. The cases concern the company's management and predate my startup. EPFO exit record attached.
⎘ EPFO-exit-2022.pdfConsent first. Facts, not verdicts.
KYF is built for the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 — and for the founder on the other side of the link, whose trust decides whether the check happens at all.
Explicit, specific, recorded
The consent notice lists every data category and the purpose before the founder accepts. Acceptance is by OTP to the founder's own mobile. The record — timestamp, scope, purpose — is stored with the report and can be withdrawn.
The founder sees what you see
When you share the report, the founder sees the findings and flags — the same facts, the same sources. Your internal notes and deal view stay yours.
One deal, one purpose
Each report is tied to the investment decision named at consent. It isn't resold, pooled or reused for another request. Founders can ask for deletion once the purpose is served.
Aggregator, not adjudicator
Public and bureau records can be incomplete or wrongly attributed. Every finding is sourced and labelled; anything we couldn't verify is shown as Not verified, never hidden. KYF informs your judgement — it doesn't replace it.
One price. Pay per founder.
No retainer, no annual plan, no minimums. Check one founder for a single angel cheque or the whole team before a Series A.
- 118 checks across identity, credit, litigation, AML/PEP, corporate, employment, mobility and digital footprint
- Consent link by email or WhatsApp, OTP acceptance, consent record stored with the report
- Report within 3 working days of consent — online and PDF
- Founder's response loop: share, flag-by-flag reply, consolidated addendum
- Free re-run of any check a source couldn't answer the first time
- Deal view grouping all founders of one company
Funds, platforms and portfolio monitoring
For firms running checks every week, syndicate platforms, and incubators screening a cohort at a time.
- Volume pricing and consolidated invoicing
- Multiple users per firm, shared deal views
- API access to start checks and pull results
- Ongoing monitoring of portfolio founders for new litigation, defaults or watchlist hits
- Custom consent notice and report branding
Received a KYF request from an investor?
It means they're serious. KYF is designed so that you know what's being checked, you control the data that goes in, and you get to answer what comes out.
What happens when you open the link
- You see the full list of what will be checked, from which sources, and the investor it's for — before you consent.
- You enter your own PAN and mobile number. The investor never handles your identity documents.
- You accept with an OTP. The consent is recorded, scoped to this one request, and can be withdrawn.
- If the investor shares the findings, you can acknowledge, dispute or add context to every flag, with documents.
- You can ask for the report to be deleted once the purpose is served.
KYF compiles public and bureau records as they are. If you see something that's wrong, the dispute goes straight to the investor alongside the finding — and we'll show you how to get it corrected at the source.
Things investors ask before their first check
Run the check before the deep dive.
Send a consent link today. If the founder accepts, the report is in your inbox within 3 working days — with their response to anything you'd have asked about anyway.