SearchFace was designed first and foremost to improve safety and help users live a more secure life while also enjoying the technological advances and on-demand economy we have today.
SearchFace is a very simple peer-to-peer platform. We connect a feature of someone they cannot lie about — their face — to a few peer-reported questions/answers, providing people with more security about who they are meeting.
Facial recognition is not a new concept; it has been used by law enforcement agencies for at least a decade. SearchFace is now giving the power of facial recognition to the masses. With a prototype complete, SearchFace is well on its way to having the largest selection of faces that users can search and verify. We envision a safer world with SearchFace — will you join us?
Imagine waiting for an Uber at 11pm, heading to a late night party. How comfortable are you with the driver you’ll be getting into the car with? Wouldn’t you want to know a little bit more about him/her? It’s next to impossible these days to know if someone online actually is who they say they are.
People can lie about everything — their name, age, gender, even their self-published profile picture could be a fake.
Imagine being matched on a platform like Tinder or Match — you want to find out more about this person so you check out their Facebook or Instagram, but again, all that information can easily be faked. You’re seeing only they want you to see.
SearchFace exists as a completely independent platform that provides peer-to-peer reviews about the person who you are planning to go out on a date or get in a car with. Based on pre-written comments about the person, one can decide to go ahead on the date, start a conversation, or try to get to know that person more.
Our face is something unique that we cannot lie about. SearchFace puts power and choice in our hands, and gives us a tool to protect ourselves from dangerous situations.
SearchFace is a simple platform with powerful features.
Here’s how it works: You request an Uber, a driver responds, you take a screenshot of his face and load it into SearchFace. You see independant reviews from people who have ridden with that driver in the past. We put the liability onto the user at SearchFace — all users have to electronically sign a document saying the information they provide is accurate from their perspective. By posting a picture of someone else’s face, you agree to these terms and conditions. SearchFace isn’t a place to ruin someone’s reputation, nor a place to protect bad people — we simply provide truth that may not be available elsewhere.
Meet Ashley and Angela.
Ashley is a 28-year-old young professional. Like many of her peers, she uses Uber frequently after 10pm, sometime for night shifts, other times for going out to social events. She is always concerned about her safety and security on these late night pickups, but has to trust the driver’s rating on Uber. Now with SearchFace, she can quickly find peer reviews of the driver by similar users like her from the last 7 days. With comments about the attitude of the driver, his politeness, his professionalism etc., Ashley can decide whether or not she is comfortable taking the ride, or would prefer to find another taxi.
Angela is a 25-year-old working professional who is very busy at work. Due to grueling hours, she hardly finds time to meet guys. So Angela uses Tinder to find and connect with men who live around her. Having had a few bad experiences where the guy has been very rude, impolite, or pushy, she wishes there was a way to find about the person’s general nature and politeness from other girls who’ve dated this guy. But other than Facebook, she can’t seem to get any other information on her date. With SearchFace, she can simply take a screenshot of the person’s face and search it to find reviews about him from other girls that make her comfortable knowing that she won’t be falling into the hands of a jerk, or worse, a sexual predator.
In countries like the US with open sex offender registries, SearchFace can use their APIs to scan our database. Angela could actually scan a Tinder match with the registry to make sure she is not meeting up with a sex offender.
If at any point Angeles gets into trouble on her date or feels threatened, she could use the emergency SOS button to record video which will immediately send to her emergency contact.
The SearchFace web app will launch in July 2016. The Android version will follow soon.
Once we launch, we expect dating and rideshare apps to start taking notice of the major security issues they pose. SearchFace will always be an independent platform for safe reviews, but we can partner with these apps on a later date and provide them with our API, allowing users to complete the SearchFace search all within one app.
Make sure to request access to the business plan tab of this profile for an inside look into SearchFace!
Abhishek is a medical doctor and serial entrepreneur with technology. In 2015, he started his first project called Jethunt, which provides one-way and individual seat booking on private jets. After seeing too many articles on the safety of Uber passengers, people getting into unsafe situations, and a lot of sexual and physical abuse cases, he decided to create a facial recognition app. SearchFace was born.
Manish is an iOS developer with expertise in image processing, augmented reality, and virtual reality. Manish worked with Abhishek on Jethunt as well. Manish holds a Bachelor’s of Technology in Computer Science from the LNM Institute of Information Technology.
Udhav holds a B.Tech in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Calicut. He has nearly 10 years of professional marketing, analytics, and CRM consulting for various companies.
William is the founder of Goeng, a venture capitalist, and a Wharton School graduate.
Siddhartha is a Senior Consultant at PwC India. He holds an MBA in Operations Management from S. P. Jain Institute of Management and Research.