[100 Emerging Women Leaders] How Kavitha Kanaparthy’s Solvers is Building Decentralized Identity Solutions

An accident at the age of 16 changed Kavitha Kanaparthy’s life forever. While riding her bike in the fog, she was hit by an oncoming bus. After the incident she suffered from multiple broken bones, amnesia and vertigo.

This ended her plan to become a pilot and Kanaparthi opted for an engineer instead.

Growing up in Gandrai village in Andhra Pradesh’s Krishna district (now NTR district), she recalls her daily life revolving around agriculture, family and education. Her mother, a nurse, and her father, a doctor, started a school in the village for his children to study.

Her sisters chose medicine but Kanaparthi decided to go in a different direction. She immigrated to the US with her family and enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis for a BS in Electrical Engineering.

Road to entrepreneurship

At a time when working with Big 5 companies was the ultimate dream for engineers, Kanaparthi chose to start on her own. She joined DesignNet, a tech startup, in her final semester and continued to build it after completing her course.

“In the beginning, I worked on building and setting up computer networks—on the hardware side, building servers. The safety factor made it easy to convince people. Initially, I took up small projects. We managed to land a big client, Chase Manhattan Bank, which catapulted us into the big league,” she says. Her story.

However, upheaval in her personal life forced her to close the company and return to India. Unwilling to give up on her entrepreneurial ambitions, Kanaparthi built Kafin Consulting, an Internet-based software platform, in 2000 in Bangalore in partnership with firms such as Hitachi, Nortel Networks and IBM.

However, her second startup, which started well, was derailed by a completely different problem.

“We almost took the company to an IPO, but the day I interviewed for the BSE listing in 2001, the Anand Rathi scandal broke and everything came to a standstill. All the listings they approved were withdrawn. I lost a lot of money,” she shares.

Broke but not defeated, she soon returned to the US and joined the FBI as an agent. It was a difficult time for Kanaparthy personally as she was in the middle of a long divorce that began in 2003 and ended in 2015.

“I had to stay in India longer than I expected. With all the losses I was facing, I turned to running, my spouse. I wrote a blog about it and people asked me to organize long-distance races,” she said.

This led her to found GlobeRacers in 2019, which became a turning point for ultra-running in India. From 2009 to 2015, Globeracers held more than 35 races, taking a break only when Covid halted all outdoor activities. Some of the best runners in the country have come out of the Globeracers stable and it plans to take to the trails again in 2025.

Amidst all this, Kanaparthi studied new technologies as well as architecture and design. Her journey culminated in the founding of Solvers in 2021.

Decentralized identity solutions

Solvers is a next-generation decentralized identity creation infrastructure that aims to make decentralized identities universally available.

Kanaparthi elaborated on the concept. “In the current decentralized identity landscape, organizations are providing identity, but we haven’t built a complete end-to-end solution to avoid creating data silos… I aim to address this gap through Solvers.”

With offices in Michigan and Dehradun, Soulverse offers technology-based identity products, including:

• SoulID: A single ID that works to receive both credentials and cryptocurrency.
• SoulWrapper: Ensures interoperability of identity networks.
• SoulScan: Hack-Proof Biometric-First Key Generation.
• SoulWallet: A multifunction wallet that holds both credentials and assets.
• Soulogram: Privacy-Based Authentication in Web3 Ecosystems and Platforms.

“Solvers ensure that data is accessible to anyone anywhere in the world in a highly secure and private manner, rather than becoming siled pockets of information. Simply put, you have all the tools you need to keep your data, share your data and keep your data safe,” she explains.

For example, if someone applies for a driving license in India, they can receive it in their Soul Wallet. If they are traveling to another country and want to apply for a temporary driving license or international driving license there, they can receive it from another government in the same wallet.

Solvers works on products for B2C, B2B and B2B2C sectors. Its revenue model includes subscription to wallet, transaction fees, platform-as-a-service (PAAS) and product API revenue.

In its essence, Solvers provides the right to own and protect one’s data at the individual level.

“For organizations, this will simplify the cost of compliance and operations based on which products they integrate and how they map their transition to blockchain products and services,” she said.

Solvers partners with IIT Hyderabad, TDeFi, Quill Audits and India Blockchain Alliance for research and technology collaboration. Recently, the startup raised $500,000 in a private sale and is seeking a patent for its biometric solution.

Breaking barriers

Kanaparthi admits that being a woman entrepreneur is difficult.

“While we laugh at some of the myths and barriers and focus on the bull’s eye, one cannot ignore the misogyny, barriers and willful withholding of support and resources for women in all industries, geographies and businesses of all sizes,” she said.

Her advice to other female entrepreneurs comes from her own experiences.

“Stand your ground, stay the course and believe that you are no less than those around you and at times better than those competing in your shoes. Build resources if you need to, support those around you by building your own and a network for women. Find an anchor .build and inspire,” she adds.

(Article updated to correct typo.)