Trillbit

Trillbit develops a proprietary "data over sound" communication technology that uses inaudible ultrasonic sound waves to transmit encrypted digital data between any two devices equipped with a speaker and a microphone. The approach is software-only: customers integrate the Trillbit SDK or API into an app, website or device, with no additional hardware required. Data such as network credentials or authentication tokens is encoded and encrypted, broadcast ultrasonically, then received through a device microphone and decoded by the SDK. The company positions the technology as an alternative to NFC, Bluetooth and QR codes, citing contactless operation without pairing, device and OS agnosticism, offline operation without internet dependency, configurable range from inches to several meters, support for standard encryption schemes (AES, RSA, TOTP) and low power consumption relative to BLE.

The product line comprises Trill Auth for contactless ticketing, payment, access control, kiosk check-in and "audio QR code" use cases; Trill IoT for smart-device setup, provisioning and troubleshooting; and SoundAuth, a passwordless authentication product built on FIDO-conforming passkeys. The company describes its platform as proximity intelligence, with applications cited in retail, smart venues, transportation, TV/radio broadcasting and voice commerce, and states that its protocol is PSD2 compliant. Trillbit markets full-duplex two-way communication as a differentiator versus one-way QR and NFC flows, and notes that sound is naturally confined to a zone, which supports proof-of-presence and proximity verification for delivery confirmation, in-store pickup and ride verification.

Founding story

The company was founded in 2017 by IIT Kharagpur and ISB alumni Bhaskar Deo, Shashikant Burnwal and Mrigesh Parashar. Deo and Parashar, both former acoustic engineers at Schlumberger, conceived the idea while listening to an NPR TED Hour broadcast in a car: a web link mentioned on air could not be recalled later, prompting the question of how to send information from a radio or TV to a phone without pairing or extra hardware. Sound was the first medium they explored, and the name combines "trill" (sound) and "bit" (data). The three co-founders were on three different continents when they started in mid-2017 and subsequently relocated to Bengaluru to build the company; it took roughly eight months to design the technology platform before they began approaching clients.

Business model

Trillbit licenses its data-over-sound capability to other technology companies as a cross-platform SDK and API that they embed in their own apps, websites and devices. Developers sign up through a developer portal, create a project from templates and integrate the SDK; clients can implement their own transport layer and business model on top of the technology. Distribution is through direct integration and co-created products with partner companies.

The SDK is offered free up to 4,000 transactions with no credit card required, indicating a transaction-based usage tier beyond the free allowance.

Traction

Company materials report over 948,492 average downloads per month and more than 6,500 average active users since public launch. Trillbit's technology is used by Chalo for bus ticketing validation on BEST's 3,500+ bus fleet in Mumbai, and it has a partnership with AIoT chipset platform Espressif. The company states it works with several companies in India and the US on device provisioning and device authentication.

Latest developments

In 2022 the company promoted SoundAuth, a passkey-based passwordless authentication product it describes as an industry-first FIDO-conforming solution, and published related material on passkeys. It placed in the top three of the FIDO Alliance global developer challenge alongside Lockdrop (Canada) and Shaxware (Japan).