Empowered, aware consumers can help tackle counterfeit products

Counterfeiting is troubling companies and brands globally. While various techniques are available to stem counterfeiting, generating awareness becomes a core objective for both brands and security solution providers. Bengaluru-based Acviss Technologies, a provider of holographic labels and anti-counterfeiting solutions, believes if the consumer is empowered and made aware of the right solutions and technology, fake products can be nipped in the bud.

Talking about his encounters with counterfeit products, Vikas Jain, managing director of Acviss Technologies, said, “When I moved back from the US, I had a one-and-a-half-year-old son and I couldn’t help but worry about baby products, whether we’ll get genuine stuff or not. While we were traveling, we used baby cream, which we later found out was fake. He had a lot of allergic reactions due to that. We were constructing our home at that time and it turns out plywood is one of the most vulnerable products in India. Traders buy local plywood and put a seal of a brand to sell it.”

The company already had a business of holographic labels. So given his experience, Jain started delving into brand security and anti-counterfeit solutions. He said, “Acviss as a product began in 2020. Our first product was called Uniqolabel, a tamper-proof holographic label that ensures every shipped product bears a unique, verifiable identity. The idea was to cut down on quantified goods.”

“Our focus as a company is on innovation in packaging, and to build new solutions that enable consumers to stay a step ahead of the counterfeiters. Counterfeit products have dug deep into the supply chains and eCommerce. Our idea is to make sure we continuously innovate so that the manufacturers of replica products can’t keep pace. Technology is the differentiator,” he adds.

According to Jain, the company’s anti-counterfeiting journey began with the plywood and furniture segments with its holographic labels. The company then ventured into agri-products. According to Jain, several studies have found that around 30% of pesticides and fertilizers form a massive chunk of fake products sold as original.

“What we did is, we took the existing packaging of a product or a brand, and built a labelless solution,” Jain says. “When I say labelless, what I mean is we study the packaging. We build special models of the packaging that we will incorporate and compare with what’s available in the market to detect small defects that generally get introduced during the manufacturing process of the packaging. The models help us better underline a problem statement, enabling us with enough data to make a non-cloneable security solution.”

Acviss believes in ensuring consumers get what they are paying for. “If a consumer is paying for a particular product, they should get that exact product. Acviss works across the supply chain, preventing product-level fraud and protecting brands from counterfeiting — thus safeguarding their revenues, sales, profits, and, most importantly, brand image,” Jain concludes.