Editor’s note

If you work in HR in India, you’ve probably felt this pain:

  • A background verification (BGV) that drags on for weeks

  • Confusing “Unable to verify” notes from vendors

  • Education checks stuck because a university won’t pick up the phone

  • Candidates almost losing offers because of careless reports

At HR Jobs Hub, we’ve seen this up close, not just from our community, but from Millow’s own story. One of Millow’s directors nearly lost a prestigious MNC job due to a faulty, careless background check done by a Big 4 firm.

That incident is a big reason Millow exists today, and why we pay attention when they challenge the way BGV is done in India.

In this guide, we’ll break down:

  • Why digital background verification is overtaking “phygital” checks in India

  • What makes Millow’s 12-hour digital BGV report and credit checks different

  • How Millow approaches senior management due diligence and discreet referencing

  • How their tech, document tampering checks and support help HR teams stay compliant and mitigate fraud

We’ll write this from HR Jobs Hub’s perspective as a curator and partner, not as Millow, so you can decide if they belong in your vendor shortlist.

TL;DR – Why We Like Millow for Digital Background Verification

  • From HR Jobs Hub’s vantage point:

    • Digital-first, not paperwork-first: Millow is built around digital background verification in India, using API-led checks, direct verification with authorities, and AI to cut turnaround time and errors vs traditional “phygital” (phone calls, paper, middlemen).

    • 12-hour digital BGV report: For fast-turnaround cases, Millow offers a 12-hour digital BGV report that focuses on checks where digital data is reliable, ideal for pre-joining risk screens, early-stage offers, or mass hiring.

    • Profile Verification & doc tampering safeguards: Their Profile Verification Certificate (India) uses real-time digital verification of identity, employment and education with anti-forgery safeguards, designed to be tamper-proof and delivered in 48 hours.

    • Credit checks as a “better market” than phygital education checks: Millow leans into credit background checks (via bureaus like TransUnion, CRIF and Experian) because credit data is digital, auditable and highly relevant to fraud risk, especially versus manual or phone-based education checks that are often slow and unreliable in India.

    • Senior management due diligence & discreet referencing: For CXO and promoter-level hires, Millow runs C-Suite due diligence, enhanced litigation checks, financial & credit due diligence and discreet reference checks, along with on-ground field investigations.

    • Document tampering & authenticity: Between NAD/university checks for education, identity checks direct with issuing authorities, and anti-forgery protections, Millow is explicitly focused on fake document and tampering detection, not just ticking boxes.

    • Strong service & support: Their site emphasises user experience and fast TAT, and reviews on Trustpilot show a 4.8/5 rating with many 5-star reviews, highlighting responsiveness and clarity.

    • A mission grounded in lived experience: Millow’s founders and directors have personally faced tenant fraud and a botched Big 4 BGV, which explains their obsession with integrity and fairness in background checks.

    If you’re searching for terms like background verification in India, digital background verification, background checks company in India, employee background screening or due diligence background checks, Millow is a serious contender you should know about.

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Table of Contents

The Problem with Traditional Background Verification in India

Most HR teams in India still think of background verification as:

  • Phone calls to HR contacts

  • Physical visits by field agents

  • Email chasers to universities and previous employers

  • PDF reports with vague lines like “Unable to verify”

This “phygital” (half-physical, half-digital) model is:

  • Slow – education and employment checks can take weeks if colleges or managers don’t respond

  • Opaque – you don’t always know how something was verified

  • Hard to audit – no clear digital trail if a candidate later disputes the findings

  • Easy to game – forged experience letters, fake degrees and manipulated mark sheets are rampant in India’s job market.

As Millow points out in its positioning as a background check company in India, the current process has “several loopholes” and needs an overhaul.

From an HR Jobs Hub perspective, that overhaul is happening through digital background verification.

Digital Background Verification vs “Phygital” Checks

Digital background verification in India replaces most manual steps with:

  • Direct integrations and API calls to official databases

  • Digital verification of identity and address (PAN, Aadhaar, voter ID, etc.)

  • Online verification of employment and education where possible

  • Automated validation and anti-forgery checks on uploaded documents

Compared to phygital checks, digital BGV is:

  • Faster – TAT measured in hours or 1–2 days instead of 1–2 weeks

  • More consistent – less dependent on whether an individual picks up the phone

  • More auditable – clear logs of which database or issuer confirmed what

  • Better for candidate experience – fewer intrusive calls, clearer consent flows and much fewer documents required

Millow leans into this model with:

  • A proprietary background check platform built for real-time digital checks

  • AI-enabled BGV designed to “uncover what others miss”

  • Packages that can be fully digital or hybrid, depending on your risk appetite and budget

From our vantage point, that’s exactly where the BGV market is heading—especially for employee background screening at scale.

Who Is Millow? A Background Checks Company Built from Painful BGV Stories

Millow is a background checks and due diligence company based in India, founded around 2017 and serving clients from 50+ countries.

They’ve:

  • Processed 1 million+ verifications for 1000+ companies with 99% report accuracy

  • Built an AI-enabled BGV engine that runs 100+ checks (criminal, court, employment, education, address, cybercrime, world-check, etc.)

  • Earned strong reviews on Trustpilot, with an overall 4.8/5 rating and many clients leaving 5-star feedback on speed and clarity.

But what stands out to us at HR Jobs Hub is why they exist.

On their About page, Millow shares how:

  • A close relative of the founder was cheated in business

  • A director experienced tenant fraud firsthand

  • Another director nearly lost a prestigious job because a Big 4 firm produced a faulty, careless BGV report that did not reflect the actual facts

Instead of just complaining, they built a company to fix the kind of BGV mistakes that almost derailed their own careers and finances.

That “we’ve lived this” factor is part of why we take their authenticity claims seriously.

Millow’s 12-Hour Digital BGV & Why It Matters for HR

From our conversations and partnership, one of the most compelling offerings is Millow’s 12-hour digital BGV report.

Think of it as:

A fast, high-confidence risk screen built on digital data sources that can be turned around in half a day.

Typical use cases:

  • Pre-joining checks when you need to roll out offers quickly but still want to reduce risk

  • Mass hiring (BPOs, gig platforms, delivery, sales) where you can’t wait weeks for full phygital BGV

  • Probation-period hiring where deeper checks can happen later, but you still want an early red-flag filter

Because it’s digital-first, Millow can focus this 12-hour BGV on:

  • Identity checks directly with issuing authorities

  • Basic address, employment, and education checks where digital sources exist

  • High-impact red-flag checks (court, sanctions, watchlists) where data is online

For HR teams that are used to hearing “TAT is 7–10 working days” from BGV vendors, this kind of 12-hour digital background verification is a meaningful shift.

Education Verification in India: Why Phygital Often Fails

Education is where phygital BGV shows its limitations most clearly.

Traditional education background verification in India often relies on:

  • Emails or phone calls to universities/colleges

  • Intermediaries or local agents “visiting” institutions

  • Manual cross-checking of marksheets and degrees

Problems:

  • Fake degrees & marksheets are widely available, and basic document checks can miss them.

  • Many colleges are slow to respond or maintain outdated records.

  • Intermediaries introduce extra layers where authenticity can break.

Modern education verification services in India increasingly depend on:

  • Digital repositories like NAD (National Academic Depository)

  • Direct online verification with universities/boards

  • Secure uploads and anti-forgery checks on documents

Millow’s own Education Check explicitly mentions verifying degrees or marksheets directly with universities/colleges or NAD, not just accepting documents at face value.

From an HR Jobs Hub standpoint, this is exactly why we’re wary of “phygital” education verification that leans heavily on:

  • Phone calls to “examination departments”

  • Third-party letters without a clean digital audit trail

Digital education background verification:

  • Leaves a clear log of which authority confirmed what

  • Is harder to game with forged letters

  • Scales better when you’re doing thousands of checks per year

Millow’s bias toward digital/NAD-based education checks fits the direction we see the market moving. Furthermore, they have just launched a potentially pathbreaking solution to lengthy education checks based on their data and research on education fraud - degree tampering check!

Credit Background Checks: A Stronger Digital Market

One area where we see digital background verification shine is credit background checks.

Millow’s Credit Check offering:

  • Pulls data from credit bureaus such as TransUnion, CRIF, or Experian

  • Provides a color-coded report with score, payment history, delinquencies and risk level

  • Helps companies assess financial risk before hiring or partnering with an individual or business

For certain roles (finance, credit, collections, senior management, vendor onboarding), credit checks:

  • Are fully digital and auditable

  • Have strong fraud-detection value (defaults, overleveraging, patterns of non-payment)

  • Can be turned around quickly

Compare this to phygital education checks in India, which are:

  • Slower

  • Less standardized

  • Sometimes less predictive of on-the-job fraud risk

From HR Jobs Hub’s perspective, it makes sense that Millow views credit background checks as a “better market” for digital BGV:

  • Clear data sources

  • High compliance value

  • Strong fit for their risk & fraud mitigation positioning

We’re not saying “don’t do education verification”—you should. But if you’re thinking about where to lean harder into digital BGV, credit checks are prime territory.

Senior Management Due Diligence & Discreet Referencing

Hiring a CXO or bringing on a founder/promoter is not the same as hiring a fresher.

Millow’s C-Suite & Leadership Due Diligence (CDD) and Integrity Due Diligence (IDD) are built for those high-stakes cases. Their due diligence services cover:

  • Conflict of interest checks

  • Field investigations (discreet on-ground visits)

  • Enhanced litigation checks (civil & criminal)

  • Discreet reference checks

  • Bankruptcy and financial distress checks

  • Global compliance database checks

  • Financial & credit due diligence

This is senior management due diligence, not just employee screening.

For HR and leadership teams, that matters because:

  • A wrong leadership hire can cost crores in value and reputation

  • Traditional employee background screening doesn’t go deep enough into litigation, financial and reputational risk

We like that Millow uses discreet referencing and field investigation here:

  • References are collected carefully and confidentially

  • On-ground checks validate whether a company or founder’s story lines up with reality

If your keyword lens is “due diligence background checks”, “senior management due diligence” or “discreet reference check”, this is the layer you’re talking about.

Document Tampering Checks & Anti-Forgery Safeguards

In an environment where:

  • Fake salary slips

  • Edited PDFs

  • Forged degrees and marksheets

are increasingly common, document tampering checks are no longer optional.

Millow addresses this in several ways:

  1. Profile Verification Certificate (India & International)

    • Real-time digital verification of identity, employment and education

    • Anti-forgery safeguards and tamper-proof proof of credentials

    • Final reports within 48 hours of order completion

  2. Identity checks direct with issuers

    • PAN, Aadhaar, driving licence, voter ID verified directly with issuing authorities

    • Reduces risk of fake or altered ID documents

  3. Education via university/NAD

    • Verification with actual institutional records rather than trusting uploaded PDFs only

Combine that with general best practices for spotting document tampering (metadata checks, format inconsistencies, security features) and you get a BGV partner that’s actually trying to detect tampering, not just store documents.

From HR Jobs Hub’s point of view, this is critical if you’re hiring in high-risk domains (finance, fintech, security, trust & safety, etc.).

Service, TAT and Support: What HR Teams Can Expect

Millow talks a lot about user experience and brand impact, specifically that a bad BGV experience can push candidates to your competitors.

Some things we note:

  • They emphasize “quick TAT” and the goal of taking “days and even hours” out of the BGV process, especially through automation.

  • They highlight bulk BGV support and “set it and forget it” for HR—Millow collects documents directly from candidates via their proprietary platform.

  • Testimonials mention fast-tracking BGV for highly distributed organisations, including those serving Fortune 500 companies.

  • Trustpilot reviews show an “Excellent” 4.8/5 TrustScore with multiple 5-star reviews, praising responsiveness and thoroughness.

Put simply: if you’re searching for an employee background screening partner with near 5-star support, Millow is in that bracket.

Millow’s Own BGV Story: When a Big 4 Nearly Cost a Career

We think this story matters for HR.

Millow shares that one of their directors almost lost a prestigious job at a reputed company because a Big 4 firm submitted a faulty background check report.

That scenario is painfully familiar to many candidates and HR teams:

  • HR trusts a big-name BGV vendor

  • The report contains an error (wrong employer response, misread data, incorrect red flag)

  • HR is forced to rescind offers or start painful exception processes

Millow’s origin story tells us two things:

  1. They’ve seen first-hand how devastating bad BGV can be for candidates and employers.

  2. A big brand name doesn’t automatically mean authentic or reliable background checks.

This lived experience explains their commitment to:

  • Definitive reports, not vague “unable to verify” lines

  • Authenticity over box-ticking

  • Empathy for both the client and the candidate (their words, not ours)

For HR Jobs Hub, that alignment with fairness and authenticity is non-negotiable.

30-Day Plan to Move from Phygital to Digital BGV

If you’re an HR leader or People Ops owner, here’s a simple plan:

Week 1 – Audit your current BGV process

  • List all current checks: identity, education, employment, address, criminal, credit, etc.

  • Note TAT, failure rates (“unable to verify”), and candidate pain points.

  • Identify where phygital methods (calls, paper, unstructured email) dominate—especially in education verification.

Week 2 – Define a digital-first BGV blueprint

For each check, ask:

  • Can this be digitally verified (identity, credit, some education & employment, court records)?

  • Where do you want hybrid (e.g., employment + discreet referencing)?

  • Which roles need senior management due diligence, including litigation and financial checks?

Use that to define:

  • A 12-hour digital BGV package for quick screens

  • A full BGV package for standard hires

  • A C-suite due diligence package for senior leadership

Week 3 – Pilot with Millow

  • Run a pilot with Millow across a mix of hires (entry level, mid-level, senior).

  • Test:

    • 12-hour digital background verification for fast TAT roles

    • Full BGV including education and credit checks

    • Senior management due diligence for at least one leadership hire

Evaluate:

  • Turnaround time vs your current vendor

  • Accuracy and clarity of reports

  • Candidate feedback on the BGV process

  • Support responsiveness (queries, escalations)

Week 4 – Roll Out and Tune

  • Decide which roles get which digital background verification package.

  • Set SLAs with Millow aligned to your hiring cycles.

  • Integrate their platform into your onboarding workflows (HRIS/ATS where possible).

From there, your BGV process becomes:

  • Faster

  • More digital

  • More defensible if a candidate disputes a finding

FAQs: Digital Background Verification, Education Checks & Millow

1. What is digital background verification in India?

Digital background verification in India uses secure data sources, online databases and APIs to verify identity, address, employment, education and other records instead of relying mainly on physical visits and phone calls. This makes checks faster, more reliable and easier to audit.

2. How is digital BGV different from phygital checks?

  • Phygital BGV = mix of manual phone calls, email, physical visits + some digital lookup

  • Digital BGV = primary reliance on verified digital sources (government databases, NAD, bureaus, court databases, OSINT) and automated validation

Digital BGV cuts turnaround time, reduces human error and leaves a much clearer audit trail.

3. Why are education verification processes in India tricky?

Education verification in India is challenging because:

  • Fake degrees and altered marksheets are common

  • Universities may be slow to respond or have fragmented records

  • Manual document checks can miss tampering

Modern education verification services in India therefore rely more on NAD and direct digital verification with institutions, plus anti-forgery checks.

4. What is Millow’s 12-hour digital BGV report?

Millow’s 12-hour digital BGV report is a fast-turnaround package focused on checks that can be reliably completed via digital sources (identity, basic address and employment, high-impact red-flag checks). It's designed as a rapid risk screen for pre-joining or mass hiring, with deeper checks layered later if needed.

5. What is senior management due diligence?

Senior management due diligence (also called executive or C-suite due diligence) goes beyond standard employee screening to include:

  • Litigation and court record checks

  • Financial and credit due diligence

  • Conflict of interest checks

  • Discreet referencing and field investigation

  • Global compliance and sanctions screening

Millow offers these as part of its Integrity and C-Suite Due Diligence offerings.

6. How does Millow handle credit checks?

Millow’s Credit Check:

  • Pulls reports from bureaus like TransUnion, CRIF or Experian

  • Summarises score, payment history, delinquencies and risk level in a color-coded format

  • Helps assess the financial risk of candidates or counterparties in a fully digital, auditable way

7. Does Millow help with document tampering checks?

Yes. Millow’s approach includes:

  • Direct identity checks with issuing authorities

  • Education checks via universities/NAD

  • Profile Verification Certificates with anti-forgery safeguards and tamper-proof outputs

These are specifically designed to catch fake or altered documents more reliably than simple visual inspection.

8. Is Millow only for employee background screening?

No. Millow covers:

  • Employee background verification (BGV)

  • Due diligence background checks on C-suite, founders and promoters

  • Tenant verification, self background checks and profile verification certificates

  • Vendor and franchise due diligence for risk & fraud mitigation

From HR Jobs Hub’s perspective, if you’re actively searching for:

  • background verification in India

  • digital background verification

  • background checks company in India

  • employee background screening

  • senior management due diligence

…Millow deserves a place in your shortlist, especially if you care about speed, authenticity, and not repeating the same BGV mistakes that almost cost their own director his career.

HR Jobs Hub Partner Perks: What You Get by Starting Here

Because of our partnerships, using the HR Software Deals page gives you more than just a list of links.

Depending on the tool, you’ll often see perks like:

  • 🧪 Extended free trials – more time to test with real data and real candidates

  • 💳 Wallet credits or usage credits – so your first month(s) of HR analytics tools, ATS, or HRMS effectively cost less

  • 💸 % discounts on annual plans – helpful if you’re buying for 50, 100, or 500+ employees

  • 🎁 Bonus features or add-ons – extra seats, modules or AI credits included in the trial

You’ll see these clearly labelled as “Perk” on each tool card.

To make sure you actually benefit:

  1. Always click through from our deals page
    👉 HR Software Deals & Credits – HR Jobs Hub

  2. Mention HR Jobs Hub (or the specific perk) if you speak to a sales rep.

  3. Use the trial period intentionally—load sample data, onboard a pilot team, and push the tool hard.

The more this community uses those links, the more leverage we have to keep negotiating better deals and new tools for HR leaders like you.

So next time you catch yourself Googling “best HR tools” or “human resource management software for small business”, skip a step and start here instead:

Your future self (and your HR team) will thank you.

Until next time,

Kay, HR Jobs Hub

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