For buyers
Author the process. Post the requirement. Approve the result.
A qualification usually means chasing forms over email, waiting on a site visit, and rechecking certificates by hand for every supplier who applies. Lucern turns that into a process you design once, publish, and then approve against, rather than one your team assembles from scratch each time.
Post the requirement
Publish it structured. Suppliers apply the same day.
A requirement carries quantities, specifications, drawings and the certifications you treat as mandatory as fields, not as a paragraph of prose a supplier has to interpret.
Structure does the first filter
Because those are fields rather than prose, a supplier can be checked against them directly, and one missing a mandatory certification is marked as such on your review screen.
Mandatory is visible
Mark a certification as mandatory from the 63 certificate types in Lucern's catalogue. A supplier without it is told before they submit, and you see the gap named on their record.
Applications open the same day
As soon as a requirement is posted, suppliers already on the platform can apply against it.
How much a check is worth
Four tiers, and we say which one a certificate sits in.
Not every certificate has the same authority behind it. Presenting all four tiers as equally strong would make the whole record worth less, so each check is labelled with the tier it belongs to and you can weigh it accordingly.
Company details, statutory identifiers and certifications each go to the body that holds the authoritative record where Lucern can reach it today: the tax system for a GST number, the corporate registry for a CIN, the certifying body for a certificate. Where a check succeeds, the result and the date it ran are attached to the value. Where none can run, the value is labelled with the check it did get.
- Tier 1Accreditation bodiesLive for NABL and ASME; the rest pending
Live today: NABL and ASME, checked against each body's public directory.
Built, waiting on access: IAF CertSearch (account access), BIS (a CAPTCHA) and AWS (its own search is broken). Not built yet: IAQG OASIS, IATF and NADCAP. Until one of these answers, its certificates get the tier 3 document check and are labelled that way.
- Tier 2Government registriesFormat-only until the provider key lands
GST, PAN, MCA21 and Udyam, looked up through a verification provider.
Built, and waiting on the provider's key. Until it lands the check is format and checksum only, which catches a malformed number but does not confirm it against the government's own database, and the record says "format only". The debarment check is not live.
- Tier 3Document cross-checkAI-only, not verified by the issuing body
For certificate types where no registry exposes a lookup at all, and in place of the accreditation bodies above that cannot be queried yet.
The document is read and checked for internal consistency against the standard it claims to meet. You see it labelled AI-only, not verified by the issuing body, because that is exactly what it is.
- Tier 4ManualManual
DRDO and DGQA have no programmatic access today.
Those certificates stay manual and are marked as such on the record until that changes.
When a registry is down
Registries and accreditation bodies go offline. When one does, Lucern does not stop the qualification and does not quietly mark a certificate as verified. It falls through a fixed sequence and records where it landed.
- 01
A fresh registry result is already on file
Verified.
- 02
No fresh cache, but the live check succeeds
Verified, and the result is cached for next time.
- 03
The live check fails, but an earlier result under 30 days old is on file
Shown as unverified (degraded). Not verified.
- 04
The live check fails and nothing usable is cached
Marked manual required.
A degraded or manual result reaches you as a plain banner on the supplier's record, not an error page. It states what happened and lets you accept the degraded result or ask for manual due diligence. The submission is not blocked while a registry is down, and the decision stays yours.
Before it reaches you
What happens to an application before you open it.
By the time a supplier appears on your review screen, five things have already run. None of them are your team's time.
- 01
The documents are read, not filed
Suppliers upload scanned certificates, photographed licences and stamped audit reports. Lucern converts the images to text and pulls out the standard, the issuing body, the certificate number, the scope and the expiry date. These are photocopies and phone photos, not clean digital forms, which is why the alternative to this step is a person reading them one at a time.
- 02
Every answer says how it was checked
Each credential is checked against the authority that issued it wherever that authority can be reached today, and by reading the document where it cannot. A GST number against the tax system, company details against corporate records, a certification against the certifying body. Where a check cannot run, the record says so rather than presenting an unchecked value that looks the same as a checked one.
- 03
The obvious problems never reach your screen
Submissions are compared against known genuine documents and against the firm's own earlier filings. A certificate that expired months ago. An automotive quality standard submitted where an aerospace one is required, which looks near enough identical to an untrained eye. A blank template passed off as real. Figures in one document that contradict figures in another. Each is flagged at the point it arrives, with the reason stated, instead of waiting for a reviewer to catch it at the end of a long day.
- 04
Capability is matched, not keywords
Describe what you need in ordinary words. Lucern matches that against a structured record of what each firm can physically do, built from its equipment, processes, certifications and delivery history. The firms that come back can do the work, rather than being the firms that happen to describe themselves using your words.
- 05
The record does not go stale after you approve it
Certificates expire, audits fall due, financial positions change. Lucern re-checks these in the background and tells you when something a qualification depended on has lapsed. A supplier you approved in March still means something in September, and if it does not you hear about it then rather than during an audit.
Review what comes back
One screen per supplier.
Every answer, where it came from, and which certificates cleared verification, in one place, rather than spread across a folder of email attachments.
Every answer with its source
Each field on the screen shows where it came from: the supplier's profile, a government registry, or an uploaded document you can open and read yourself.
Every certificate says how it was checked
Where a registry check is live, the certificate is marked registry-verified. Where it is not yet, it is marked AI-checked or sent for manual review, never silently accepted.
Approve, reject or request changes from the same panel
The decision happens on the same screen as the evidence behind it. Nobody switches to email to ask a supplier for a missing page.
We are targeting about three weeks for a qualification run this way, against a three to four month manual baseline. That is the number the first pilot is being measured against, not one we have banked yet.
Reading the screen
Four labels, and what each one lets you claim.
Every field on a supplier's record carries one of four labels, shown next to the value rather than buried in a report. They exist so you know which answers you can defend on their own and which need a second look before you sign.
- Autofilled
- Drawn from a certificate, a registry lookup or the supplier's own earlier profile, and untouched since. Open it and you get the document or the lookup behind it.
- Edited
- Autofilled first, then corrected by the supplier. The correction sits on the record next to the value it replaced, so a reviewer can see what changed and decide.
- Supplier-entered
- Typed by the supplier, with no document or registry behind it. Treat it as a claim. The label exists so it never passes as anything stronger.
- Issue
- Fails a validation rule, or the source it rested on no longer supports it. Shown as a problem to resolve rather than passed off as verified.
Governance
Every action recorded. Every decision traceable.
A procurement team has to be able to answer for the file later. Lucern keeps the record that lets it.
- 01
An audit log that cannot be edited
Every verification, every decision and every document opened is written to a log that is append only, so the record cannot be quietly changed after the fact.
- 02
Drawings and specifications open in stages
Sensitive material opens only after an NDA is signed in the browser, and every view is logged to the person who opened it.
- 03
A clear approval trail
Who approved what, and on what evidence, stays attached to the decision, not to a person's memory of a meeting.
What we are building next
Planned, not yet liveInspection, captured properly.
The next layer is intended to reach the factory floor: camera and non-destructive inspection results captured with the reading, the image, the inspector's certification number and the equipment's calibration date, and written into the supplier's record instead of onto a form in a drawer.
None of it replaces the qualified inspector, whose judgement stays final.
Whose process is it
Your qualification process stays yours.
Lucern runs the process you designed. It does not replace it with a standard one, and it does not decide for you. The steps, the mandatory certifications and the approval are yours; Lucern handles the chasing, the reading and the checking underneath them.
Questions
The things procurement teams ask first.
Can we keep the qualification form we already use?
Yes. That is the intended path. Upload your existing XLSX, PDF or DOCX and the parser turns it into structured fields. You review the mapping once and approve it. The form suppliers see is still your form.
What happens when a government registry is down?
The qualification carries on. If the certificate was checked in the last 30 days it is shown as unverified (degraded); otherwise it is marked for manual review. Both are states a buyer can see and act on, not error screens. Nothing silently passes as verified.
Do suppliers pay?
Suppliers do not pay. They join free, build their profile once and reuse it for every buyer. The paperwork burden falls hardest on small suppliers, and charging them to reduce it would defeat the point.
Who pays, then?
Free for suppliers. Buyers pay; pricing is set with each pilot.
Is Lucern only for qualification?
Qualification comes first, and it is what Lucern is built around. Sourcing is included: once suppliers are qualified, a buyer can request quotes against a requirement (an RFQ), compare them, award the work and track the order in the same place. Lucern takes no share of any award or order.
What about documents we cannot share before an NDA?
Requirements open in stages. A supplier sees a scope summary first, the full requirement pack only after signing an NDA in the browser, and restricted drawings only once shortlisted. Every read is watermarked and logged to the individual who opened it.
Where does our data live?
It is stored in Mumbai, in the ap-south-1 region. Our application servers currently run in Singapore, and a few providers process data outside India, such as the AI model that reads uploaded documents. The privacy page lists each of them.
Get started
Run one qualification with us.
Bring the qualification form you already use. We will turn it into a process you can publish and review against, on your own terms.