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Dedoco: A founder’s journey to building next-gen digital trust technology

Dedoco

Thanks to advanced cloud computing, related technologies, and improved data storage capability, digital transaction management is now able to facilitate document-based transactions. This helps accelerate numerous administrative reform and digital transformation processes.

Considering the ingrained and overwhelming usage of paper-based processes in all organisations as well as the growing need for workflow and process automation, the potential market for digital transaction management is massive. According to a report by Grand View Research Inc., the market value for global digital transactions is poised to reach over $61 billion by the year 2030 with a compound average growth rate of around 25.5% throughout 2022 – 2030.

Regardless, organisations still face numerous challenges when transitioning to paperless processing due to heightened security, privacy concerns and threats of cyberattacks. A recent report showed that a total of 108.9 million accounts were breached in the third quarter of 2022, which represented a 70% rise in data breaches globally. And third-party IT service providers are responsible for at least two-thirds of data breaches. 

The rise of Dedoco and its ambition to be the ‘Trust Engine for Documents’

Established in 2020, Dedoco now has offices and teams across Australia, Singapore, Vietnam, Malaysia, Hong Kong and US. After close to 3 years serving some of the major customers including from the government, real estate, banking and financial services sector, the company has also evolved from digital signature workflows to  a broader trust engine that powers a much bigger set of enterprise apps and APIs that include main apps suite including: dSign, dVideoSign, dForm, dCert, and dCreds. And what does it mean to be a Dedoco-issued record? It means that the digital record can be trusted, traceable and verifiable even by a 3rd-party. 

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Extending this Trust Engine proposition is Dedoco’s key value proposition for ‘high-trust’ sectors like public sector, finance and healthcare. When working with these key sectors (the biggest targets for data breaches) and large organisations that require high-trust handling, Dedoco’s technology ensures that the documents reside securely with their clients, while protecting the integrity of their records on-chain. In short, Dedoco helps their largest clients comply 100% on document residency and regulatory requirements, all while still delivering the respective productivity and efficiencies to these organisations via their suite of enterprise apps.

Recently, it also underwent a brand refresh as they continue to expand aggressively into new markets and verticals and understood that the Dedoco brand, website and client experiences should be revolutionised to keep up with the changing pace. Their updated logo, i.e. the three “Dedoco Blocks” in their symbol represents their belief that there are three key building blocks to Next-Gen Enterprise Trust — one where you can Trust, Trace and Verify your important documents and records.

The journey from corporate banker to tech entrepreneur

Dedoco

Daphne Ng, Co-Founder & CEO of Dedoco

Founded by Daphne Ng, Co-Founder & CEO of Dedoco, a former corporate banker, and her co-founder Dr Ernie Teo, Co-Founder and leading their new blockchain division (DeLab), Dedoco has set its eyes set on becoming the number one Web3-based document infrastructure platform with high security and freedom for customers to take full ownership of their documents.

“Prior to the startup space, I was a corporate banker for over 8 years with a major part in the global trade finance space where I was also involved in the early digitisation initiative for e-trade documents and processes. Trade is a vertical synonymous with the need for compliance, heavy documentation, and concerns around incomplete title transfers and fraudulent transactions. Coming from a banking and financial services background, I know that data and document handling is an important part of the risk and compliance handling. While digitalisation is key to transforming the sector, digital documents still need to prove that they can be trusted, and that their chain of custody are traceable and managed securely to comply with data laws,” explained CEO Daphne Ng.

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“Losses as a result of erroneous and fraudulent documents are a $42 billion pain point, according to a recent PWC study. So, we focus on how our Trust Engine can be leveraged to solve the issue of trust in records and transactions across all sectors”, Ng added.  

For Daphne Ng, the journey to launch Dedoco was both challenging and pleasant, full of all the usual ups and downs, enabling her to become the best version of herself and experience extreme pride and joy. Surprisingly, the first product built by the company was actually dCreds, which is for employer-issued credentials that can be used for digital identification and verification, but was relatively overshadowed with the outstanding success of its other enterprise apps including dSign, dForm, dCert and most recently, dVideoSign.

An innovation by Dedoco, dVideoSign is a signing solution with enabled video components. It enhances electronic digital signatures by authenticating and verifying the identity of each participant in a virtual meeting and can be done in real-time.

“For dSign — our DMaaS (document management-as-a-service) app — the learnings were a combination of technical delivery, user design, experience, and use case adoption. I would say that it was both a victory and challenge that our first few customers and partners were large corporations from key sectors including government and banks, which meant that we had the opportunity to iterate and build products that are of enterprise and security grade from the beginning. We are also ISO-certified and government-accredited. In terms of user design and experience, and new product innovation, it is an ongoing exercise for us”, explained Ng. 

An instant hit

With the team’s hard work and dedication, the response Dedoco gained up till today has been highly positive. “Our first customers were from the banking, professional services, and real estate sectors where, during the 2020 COVID lockdown, there was a need to conduct remote transactions and the use of digital tools like ours accelerated as a result. These include workflows for customer KYC and loan agreements, audit, and accounting reports, and real estate transactions,” Ng recounted.

Dedoco has made remarkable achievements in just 2 years, working with over 4300 enterprise users, registering double-digits M-O-M growth; and will end the year with about 60-staff strong. With its proven track record, Dedoco has raised a total of US$7.5m seed/pre-A funding so far including from Vertex Ventures and True Global Ventures and is on track to reach more milestones. “Our brand equity and credibility definitely grew in the last few months. In a little over 2 years, our initial growth was mainly through direct sales and word of mouth. The plan from Q4 this year is to grow through investments in brand awareness and new markets,” commented Ng on Dedoco’s growth. 

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“Dedoco’s DNA is Web3. I believe that Dedoco can lead the way for enterprise Web3 adoption via our suite of enterprise products and solutions. Most importantly, our business is all about trust and how we can help our customers and partners alike build this same trust for their own brands,” shared Ng on what drives her and her team every day to create impact for their customers and partners.

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This article is produced by the e27 team, sponsored by Dedoco

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