Zango is a company that is training AI agents to read and interpret complex regulations helping financial services automate manual workflows in compliance. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Zango co-founder and CEO Ritesh Singhania to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Ritesh Singhania’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Singhania said:
“I’m the co-founder and CEO of Zango, a regulatory compliance solution that leverages AI alongside trusted subject-matter experts to automate horizon scanning, gap analysis, and marketing compliance for global financial institutions. I have been building compliance products for financial services in the United Kingdom and Europe for almost a decade. I previously co-founded a company called ClearGlass where we built compliance products for asset managers and pension funds.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Singhania shared:
“While at ClearGlass, we were always disintermediated by the consultants, which became a growing frustration. Because our distribution channels were gatekeepers of the business, we were unable to sell directly to end customers.This frustration sparked the idea on how to make these processes better.”
“Through a mutual friend, I met my Zango co-founder, Shashank Agarwal, prior to conceiving the idea for the company. Shashank is a technologist. He built ThirdWatch, a fraud monitoring business he later sold to Razorpay, one of India’s largest B2B payment gateways. Since then, he had been heading trust and compliance for PhonePe, the largest B2C payment businesses in India. In 2024 we decided to partner with each other and build Zango to leverage an AI approach to compliance.”
“Compliance has always been a pain point and a topic of discussion for the board or upper management. Currently, if a company’s product breaks or they want to implement a compliance solution, it has to pay hefty fees to one of the big four consultants to do so. You are constantly applying Band-Aids until the point when you cannot. Our thesis has been: can we actually give businesses peace of mind with experts plus AI agents, so founders and the C-suite can focus on growth and business expansion rather than an audit or a regulatory visit? Now with AI and the capabilities it brings in, we feel like a software and services approach allows us to combat that issue.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Singhania reflected:
“One of my favorite memories so far has been Zango replacing one of the big four consultants for one of our clients. It has validated the direction and a lot of our initial thesis since starting our company, confirming that we are onto something. It shows that companies are looking for ways to use AI in their systems and that a small business like Zango can create a platform trusted by large financial institutions.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Singhania explained:
“We all know that regulations are not black and white; instead, it depends on subjective interpretation and differs for each region. How do we factor that intelligence into our AI modules? We train AI agents to read and interpret regulation with a very high level of accuracy, doing the work compliance professionals are responsible for on a regular basis. For example, if a new policy comes out and you need to understand what gaps that policy creates within your policies and processes, traditionally you would do it in-house or hire a consultant. Zango is able to handle that critical work for businesses at a fraction of the typical time and cost using our AI agents plus humans in the loop.”
“Another example is every time you have to launch a marketing campaign in a regulated business, you need to get it approved by legal and compliance. Four out of five times they reject the first drafts and at Zango we aim to reduce that by almost 80 percent.”
Challenges Faced
Have you faced any challenges in your sector of work recently? Singhania acknowledged:
“One of the biggest challenges we have faced is building trust with financial institutions as a young small business, especially with institutions employing over 5,000 people. When we go into a bank and we say, “you can trust us,” these businesses should feel confident that when a regulator or auditor comes that there won’t be any issues.”
“There are two ways we have been able to overcome that challenge. One way is having lawyers and compliance experts within our team who are working with not only the software, but the clients as well to give them the comfort that it’s not just a platform. Our clients are buying a solution where the AI does 80 percent of the work, but we also have a team of domain experts who have reviewed the work before it reaches the client.”
“The other is through our product as well. Whenever we tell you that this is possibly a gap within your business, we also show you the evidence and the source files. This encourages you to validate the potential gaps for yourself rather than solely trusting what our AI agents are telling you.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Singhania noted:
“While building our platform, we have realized the best way for our technology to evolve is through reinforcement learning. The more our clients have used the product based on their compliance and risk profile, it massively improves the accuracy of our AI agents.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Singhania cited:
“Our biggest milestone has been landing Novobanco as one of our early customers. It is Portugal’s fourth largest bank, and until now they have relied primarily on the big four consultants of the world to support compliance and risk management initiatives. As an early-stage business, it has been rewarding to have built trust with an institution as large as Novobanco.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Singhania highlighted:
“One of our customers was using external consultants for some of their compliance requirements, and they were paying close to a million euros. By using our Zango solution, we were able to reduce that cost by almost a factor of seven.”
Funding
When asking Singhania about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“Recently we raised $4.8 million in a round led by Nexus Venture Partners and other VC firms and individual investors, including South Park Commons, the CEO of Allica Bank Richard Davies, McKinsey’s former head of Financial Services (EMEA) Alan Morgan, and Notion Capital.”
“For a business like Zango, what’s more important than the revenue we make right now is the kind of clients we are working with. We see a path to a million dollar ACV (actual contract value) with each of the clients we work with, which is validated by the trust we are building.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Singhania assessed:
“We are currently working within a $36 billion compliance software market that is expected to grow by 2030 to nearly $66 billion.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Singhania affirmed:
“What differentiates Zango from its competitors is creating a healthy balance of investing in both technology and people. We are not overly investing in technology or research and development for the sake of investing in it. Instead, we recognize a tech platform is not enough for solutions in the compliance and legal space, and you also should have a team of domain experts that can provide the comfort and accuracy each client needs.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Singhania emphasized:
“Our current goal is to continue building relationships and trust with our clients and in other prospective business opportunities. With each opportunity, it helps us build trust in the market. At the end of the day, we want to be able to sell not only to fintechs or mid-sized banks but to the tier-one financial institutions like JP Morgan. That is sort of the journey we are on, working with some of those logos within Europe, and hopefully we will be able to go global very soon.”
Philosophy About AI
What is your philosophy about AI and the way you’re approaching it to be effective? Singhania concluded:
“When working with businesses, you cannot use a generic AI solution. You cannot use the same model for each of the geographies because how you interpret regulation for one regulator in one geography can look very different in another. The UK follows common law while Europe follows case law. All of those nuances have to be baked into the product so the AI can actually work. You want to ensure the technology is doing 80 percent of the job rather than 40 percent, in which case you would have teams or humans doing most of the work. With the models we have developed, we have built the kind of accuracy that allows our team of domain experts to only have to focus on the remaining 15 to 20 percent of the work left. We want to build a business that is far more efficient in terms of the margins we make, and it will only come if the models are actually accurate and do what they say they do.”
