CYFIRMA Secures $5.5 Mn To Help Companies Prepare For Impending Cyber Attacks

Cybersecurity startup CYFIRMA has raised $5.5 Mn in a Pre-Series B round from Israel’s venture fund OurCrowd and India’s L&T Innovation Fund. 

Goldman Sachs, Zodius Capital, and Z3 Partners are its other existing investors. 

Including the freshly raised funds, the startup has raised a total of about $18 Mn to date. 

The money from the latest fund will be used for product innovation along with penetration into North America, Europe, and the MENA region besides expansion across the SEA market. The funds will also be used for hiring across various verticals and brand development. 

Founded in 2017 by Kumar Ritesh, CYFIRMA is headquartered in Singapore. It also operates across the rest of the SEA region along with the US and the EU. 

Commenting on the funding round, Ritesh said, “We recognise the critical role that Israel plays in the cybersecurity market in delivering groundbreaking technology and OurCrowd has been at the forefront of cybersecurity innovation, with a rich history of making markets and helping create some of the most successful startups in the industry.”

CYFIRMA defines itself as an external threat management platform as it combines cyber intelligence along with attack interface discovery to enable digital risk protection. It uses cloud-based AI and ML-powered analytics that provides a hacker’s view with deep insights into the external cyber landscape, helping clients stay alert about a possible attack.

Increasing digitisation and dependence on technology are directly proportional to the number of cyber crimes. This, in turn, has boosted the reliance of entities on threat management platforms. Last year, in December, cybersecurity startup SafeHouse Tech raised $6 Mn in Pre-Series A funding round.

Last month, yet another Indian firm in the sector Secure Blink raised an undisclosed amount of funding.

Recently, the Government of India has also been very vocal about the possibilities of cyber crimes through different channels. India witnessed 13.91 Lakh cyber security incidents in 2022, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology Rajeev Chandrasekhar informed the Parliament during a session.

During another session, Minister of State for Finance, Pankaj Chaudhary addressed the Lok Sabha saying that several money laundering cases have been reported in the name of crypto exchanges and the Enforcement Directorate is conducting an investigation.

Also, Reserve Bank governor Shaktikanta Das has directed fintech startups to put more impetus on frameworks related to governance, business conduct, data protection, customer centricity, regulatory compliance, and risk mitigation.

A 2022 report revealed by Research and Markets stated that the Indian cybersecurity market was valued at $2.2 Bn in the year FY2021. It further revealed that the market was estimated to grow during the forecast period, FY2023-FY2027, with a CAGR of 8.05% and achieve a market value of $3.5 Bn by FY2027.

SafeHouse, CloudSEK, Prophaze, among others are a few players working in the Indian cybersecurity segment.