Cybersecurity Startup CloudSEK Raises $1.9 Mn For Expansion

Singapore-headquartered SaaS-based cybersecurity startup CloudSEK has raised $1.97 Mn (INR 14 Cr) in a Pre-Series A funding round led by Exfinity Venture Partners and StartupXseed.

CloudSEK, which has an office in Bengaluru, plans to use fresh funds to expand further in India and Southeast Asia and at the same time, evolve its flagship product XVigil.

Founded in 2015 by Rahul Sasi, CloudSEK is a cybersecurity platform powered by machine learning and is being used across financial, ecommerce and transportation sectors. It is now looking to further evolve into sectors like pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals and retail industry.

CloudSEK offers two products: SaaS-based X-Vigil, a unified risk management platform and Cloudmon, to track network and application-related security issues.

The company had raised seed funds in 2015 from M.E. Meeran Foundation, the investment arm of Kochi-based Eastern Group.

Ravi Thakur, Partner, StartupXseed Ventures said, “Looking at their product, clientele and growth rate, they have struck the right chord to crack the business. Moreover, what fascinated us is their way of solving the problem which is very effective and scalable at large along with strong team background and execution capabilities.”

In the wake of rising data breaches, cybersecurity is gaining increased importance across the world, and especially in India, which has the second largest number of Internet users in the world at over 460 Mn, second only to China.

Chinnu Senthilkumar, General Partner & CTO, Exfinity Venture Partners said that the losses due to cyber-related crime, worldwide, are estimated to be upwards of $600 Bn.

He said that more than 500K cyber attacks have been reported in India in 2018.

The cybersecurity space has major players such as Fortinet, FireEye, Symantec, Lucideus, AppsPicket, and others. This year, Lucideus raised $5 Mn, Sequretek raised $3.7 Mn, Network Intelligence raised $4.87 Mn.

The country currently has an estimated 200 such cyber security startups with most of them working in the banking and financial services sector.

In 2017, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had asked all government bodies to spend 10% of their IT budgets on cybersecurity following the worldwide cyber attack by WannaCry ransomware.

According to a report by Marketsandmarkets, the current global spend on cybersecurity is expected to grow to $202.36 Bn by 2021.