🧠 Why I Prioritize KYC Flows Early in Product Strategy

The Overlooked Step That Impacts Everything

When building digital onboarding experiences, most teams treat KYC (Know Your Customer) like an afterthought — something to tack on right before go-live. But in my experience, KYC is not just a compliance formality. It’s a strategic conversion lever.

During my time at Justdial, we noticed that our onboarding drop-offs were unusually high during the KYC phase. The flow was clunky, slow, and largely manual. We knew we had to rethink the approach — not just fix the UI.

What We Did

We integrated Aadhaar and PAN APIs, and more importantly, implemented smart rejection handling logic. Instead of just rejecting users, we offered immediate feedback and next steps. No more waiting for someone to manually verify documents.

The Result?

✅ 40% faster onboarding
✅ Significant reduction in manual interventions
✅ Higher trust and transparency for users

My Product Thinking

KYC isn't just red tape. It's user trust, activation, and conversion—all rolled into one. By pulling KYC forward into the early product strategy, and designing it as part of the core UX, we avoided last-minute fires and created a better, faster onboarding experience.