It was 7 a.m. when Benjamin Perkin's parents got an alarming call. The person on the other end of the line identified themselves as a lawyer and said Perkin had killed a U.S. diplomat in a car accident, was in jail, and needed money for legal fees. The lawyer then put Perkin on the phone. "Hey Mom and Dad, I love you. I need this money," he said.

As the number of e-commerce customers is rising, so are the instances of consumer frauds, causing huge loss to online retailers. But, the founders of Gurugram-based start-up ThirdWatch Data Pvt Ltd say their fraud analytics product is bringing down frauds by 30-40 per cent since its launch in December 2017. In recent times, arrests have been made in Hyderabad and Rajasthan for defrauding Flipkart of products worth a few lakhs. Amazon India too has faced consumer frauds. Shashank Agarwal, Co-founder, ThirdWatch, said customer frauds can happen at two levels -- return to origin (RTO) and abuse of promo codes.