An HS Daily Wire Q&A with IBG's co-founder Raj Nanavati

what was best for that client. Again, we never do. And that differentiates us from some folks in the industry and is definitely a very important selling-point for IBG.

Daily Wire: How do you scout for clients? Or do they find you, through word-of-mouth?

Nanavati: Certainly we benefit from recommendations. But it’s not as if we sit back and wait for the business to flow in. We also have a highly competent sales and marketing staff.

Daily Wire: There is a perception that the greater public is apathetic on biometrics, even resistant to the technology. What is your take on that?

Nanavati: In general, we elicit a very positive response to all the benefits of biometrics. When people use biometric technology, they like it. But there has to be a compelling business case made for it. There may be some inertia — I wouldn’t call it apathy - about picking up what is, after all, a new technology. But also, there may be unrealistic expectations for it. It takes time for full acceptance of any new technology. CD technology was around for years and years before iPod took off. The Internet was around a decade or two before it took off. Nothing happens overnight but this is clearly evolving into one of the most important technologies of this generation. Sales are, after all, approaching $4 billion this year, and expected to more than double in the next five years.

I can see why some people in the industry might be impatient, though. But we always expected it to take a long time for biometrics to take off. In a sense, 9/11 accelerated things artificially. There can’t be very many other examples of a technology becoming a buzzword in a day — stock prices doubling and tripling, and so on. That did happen with biometrics. And it caused — for lack of a better word - confusion in the market. Everyone in the world wanted a biometric system.

Many of those who installed one quickly regretted it. Logan Airport installed face recognition. It didn’t work. Other people rolled out other things. The technology wasn’t ready, but they thought they’d jump in anyway. Initial results were disappointing. So the industry has gone through an unusual maturation process compared to other technologies. But if you look at that first phase 12 years ago, versus today, there’s a lot of excellent biometrics at work out there. There has been very