Cybersecurity startup CloudSEK raises US$7mil in Series A funding

• To date, the company has raised a total of US$10 million
• Used for expansion, R&D to combat sophisticated global threat landscape

CloudSEK, a startup which claimed to leverage artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to combat cyber threats, has raised US$7 million (RM29.5 million) in a Series A round led by MassMutual Ventures. 

In a statement, the startup said other investors include Omidyar Network India, 100X Entrepreneur, individual investors Firoz Meeran and Navas Meeran (Group Meeran), and CRED founder Kunal Naresh Shah’s QED Innovation Labs.

Existing investors Exfinity Venture Partners, IDFC Parampara, and StartupXseed Ventures also participated in this round of investment.

The cybersecurity startup said the funds will be used to accelerate its sales and marketing efforts across Asia-Pacific, the Middle East, and North America.

Additionally, it will also ramp up its research and development to combat the increasingly sophisticated global threat landscape, it said.

To date, the company has raised a total of US$10 million (RM42.1 million).

Rahul Sasi (pic), founder & chairman of CloudSEK said the company’s technology focuses on predicting cyberattacks before it occurs by leveraging on its AI platform. 

“To achieve this, we have assembled a world class team of engineers, researchers, and cybersecurity experts.

“This approach has taken us from six customers to more than 100 customers, and we aim to acquire another 300 customers in the next two years,” he claimed. 

CloudSEK said it employs unique data sets, proprietary ML models, and non-intrusive techniques to identify, analyse, and resolve cyber threats proactively.

Given the growing complexity of cyber-attacks, and their far-reaching impact, CloudSEK said it continuously evolves its flagship digital risk monitoring platform XVigil. 

The startup said XVigil currently caters to organisations across verticals, including what the it said are some of the world’s top banks, technology companies, healthcare organisations, and retail giants such as ICICI, NPCI, CRED, Sun Pharma, Reliance, Tokopedia, OLA cabs, and Decathlon.

CloudSEK has also recently claimed to launch the world’s first security search engine BeVigil, which allows users, developers, and researchers to evaluate the security of their applications.

BeVigil is currently free to use and has 10,000+ users and 400+ corporate accounts. With significant community interest, the platform is adding 1000+ unique users per month, it said.

Sourabh Issar, chief executive officer of CloudSEK said “Since our last funding, we have accelerated adoption of CloudSEK XVigil across APAC, Middle East, and North America.

“We have seen great results with our 'Remote First'' go-to-market approach, which we refined and perfected during the pandemic.” 

Issar said the startup intends to use the new funding to rapidly scale up this approach globally and quickly expand to new markets.

The participation of all our investors, in the latest round, is a validation of our approach and direction, he added. 

“CloudSEK is addressing a growing demand for automated assessment, classification and remediation of cyber threats and for transforming large scale security teams to an agile threat-centric approach,” said Anvesh Ramineni, managing director at MassMutual Ventures. 

“The platform’s ability to monitor and manage threats and infrastructure at the enterprise level is world class. We are very excited to partner with Rahul, Sourabh and team on their vision to build the leading AI-enabled platform for cybersecurity,” he added.