Trooly raised $10 million in funding in 2016, and Airbnb has been its customer since 2015.
Airbnb, the leading online hospitality service platform, has announced that it will acquire Trooly, an online background checking start-up founded by three Indian American entrepreneurs.
The acquisition was first reported by Forbes.
Trooly, which is based in California, was launched in 2014 by Savi Baveja, Anish Das Sarma and Nilesh Velvi.
Their goal was to build a platform that offers services that can verify, screen and predict trustworthy relationships and interactions.
“Our machine learning technology synthesizes digital footprints in real time to provide rich insight — well beyond old-school background checks, credit scores, and risk management tools. Instant Trust ratings require minimal customer data input and cost less than $1 per query, with ratings and supporting evidence returned in roughly 30 seconds,” states the LinkedIn profile of Trooly.
Baveja, who is currently the CEO of Trooly, was a senior partner at the strategy consulting firm Bain & Company, and a member of the Bain Board of Directors.
Sarma is the Chief Technology Officer of Trooly, and prior to his stint with the startup, he worked with Google Research, Yahoo Research, Stanford University, and the Indian Institute of Technology.
Nilesh is the Chief Science Officer of Trooly. He was earlier part of Facebook and Yahoo Research. He completed his studies at the University of Washington and the Indian Institute of Technology.
According to Sharma, “We (Trooly) are on a mission to improve trust and enable positive interactions using the power of cutting edge computer science.”
Trooly operates as a consumer reporting agency, using only public and permissible information from online and offline sources by adhering to applicable privacy and data protection laws, including the Fair Credit Reporting Act in the United States.
According to the Fortune report, an Airbnb spokesperson confirmed the acquisition but did not disclose the price or the number of workers involved.
“We look forward to welcoming the Trooly team to Airbnb in the coming weeks,” the Airbnb spokesperson said in the Fortune said. “We’ll continue working together to better facilitate trust between strangers on, off and across the platform – supporting Airbnb’s overall strategy to create the world where anyone can belong anywhere”.
Trooly raised $10 million in funding in 2016, and Airbnb has been their customer since 2015.