Vidur

I kept seeing the same thing: identity checks were slow, but the underlying process wasn’t necessarily proving that someone was who they claimed to be.

Hotels were scanning and photocopying IDs. Schools were doing similar checks for visitors and guardians. There was a lot of paperwork, but not much actual authentication.

India already had a digital identity infrastructure and a population comfortable with QR-based interactions.

We wanted to use that familiarity to create a verification flow that was faster, easier to operate, and built around actual authentication rather than simply collecting a copy of an ID.

Rather than designing the system from a distance, we observed how hotels, schools and other facilities actually handled visitors. We watched where time was lost, what staff had to do manually, and what information they needed.

Hotels showed us one set of needs.

Schools showed us another.

The product expanded into visitor management, gate passes, escort passes and one-time passes.

The product wasn’t the only constraint. Scaling identity infrastructure meant navigating regulation, institutional adoption and government dependencies, and eventually required more capital and support than we wanted to commit.

We paused the product rather than pretending those constraints weren’t real.

Building Vidur changed how I think about product strategy.

A good product isn’t just something users want. In infrastructure, you also have to understand the institutions, regulations, workflows, and incentives surrounding the user.