[Funding alert] Lucideus raises $7M led by Japan's MS&AD Ventures
The company said it will use the funding to ramp up its operations in the US, double engineering and sales teams in the next three months, and scale its SAFE platform
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Cybersecurity startup Lucideus Technologies said it has doubled its valuation in 10 months following a fresh funding of $7 million led by MS&AD Ventures, the venture arm of one of Japan’s leading non-life insurance companies.
The funding also saw participation from venture debt firm WTI (Western Technology Investment). Both the investors are based out of Silicon Valley.
Lucideus Technologies’s CEO and co-founder Saket Modi
Saket Modi, Co-founder & CEO, Lucideus, said:
“Last year, we had a triple digit revenue growth with a net promoter score (NPS) of 86, and we intend to continue growing at this pace next year. With this intent, we feel this new round of investment has a strategic overlap for our platform to reach out to a larger audience across the world, while continuing to strengthen our leadership across Asia.”
The company said it will use the fresh capital infusion to ramp up its operations in the US, double engineering and sales teams in the next three months, and scale up the company’s platform - Security Assessment Framework for Enterprises (SAFE), a real-time cybersecurity assessment (a number between 0-5) and monitoring platform for enterprises. The product integrates with the existing technology stack to provide a real-time cyber-risk assessment at a macro level across the organisation. This can be broken down into micro-level scoring individually for each asset.
Speaking to YourStory, Saket said:
"MS&AD Ventures is the largest cyber insurance players globally, and the largest cyber insurance underwriter in Japan, and if a insurance underwriter is backing a cyber security scoring and quantification platform, it only adds to the credibility where in the future we plan to marry the underwriting with our cyber risk quantification framework, that is SAFE."
Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) has emerged as a critical category in cybersecurity, and as businesses continue to adopt digital, it is crucial to measure trust in digital. According to Gartner’s top ten security projects for an enterprise in 2019, ‘security rating services’ has featured for the first time, depicting the importance of objectively looking at cybersecurity and this becoming a new market category that Lucideus with its SAFE platform intends to lead.
Jon Soberg, Managing Partner, MS&AD Ventures, said, “We pay close attention and evaluate cybersecurity platforms around the world and we found Lucideus’ solution to be a very comprehensive enterprise solution, quite differentiated from competitors. The SAFE solution has the potential to fundamentally change how businesses and insurers understand, value and cover their cyber risks. Lucideus has enabled Fortune 500 companies to secure their digital journey and their solution can support the largest enterprises as well as SMBs. We are excited to partner with Lucideus and look forward to helping them become one of the trailblazers in cybersecurity, globally.”
The global cybersecurity market size was valued at $137.63 billion in 2017, and is projected to reach $248.26 billion by 2023, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.2 percent during the forecast period, according to Markets&Markets.
IIT Bombay-Delhi-Palo Alto
Incubated at IIT Bombay initially, Lucideus Tech was launched in 2012, and was functioning from its headquarters in New Delhi until last year. After raising Series A funding of $5 million from John Chambers, former chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems last year in November year, the company has now moved to Palo Alto.
However, the company continues to run operations from several offices including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Boston, and Palo Alto. And, with this fresh funding, it also plans to open an office in Singapore very soon, Saket told YourStory. He identifies Lucideus as a global player in Enterprise Cybersecurity Risk Quantification (CRQ) platforms space.
“We shifted our headquarters to Palo Alto earlier this year, and getting two new Silicon Valley based investors after John Chambers strengthens our mission of making SAFE score the de-facto industry standard for measuring and mitigating cyber risks," said Saket.
Upon asking if India is still the priority market, Saket said that India is very high on the priority, and the company now wants to replicate the success in the US. Some of the company's clients in India include ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, Delhi Airport, Mumbai Airport, Tata Sky, and Pizza Hut to name a few.
Saket also claims that with this fresh funding, the company has become the highest valued cyber security startup in India, and will soon enter the 100-million valuation club.
Prior to Series A, Lucideus raised funding in May 2017 from a clutch of global executives like Google's Rajan Anandan, Facebook Messenger Executive Anand Chandrasekaran, and FreeCharge's ex-CEO Govind Rajan.
(Edited by Megha Reddy)
