Cybersecurity firm Lucideus raises $7 mn, valuation nearly doubles to $100 mn

John Chambers-backed cybersecurity firm Lucideus raised $7 million, doubling its valuation to nearly $100 million. The funding round was led by Japan's Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance and Aioi Nissay Dowa, along with venture debt from Western Technology Investment. Both investors are based out of Silicon Valley.

The fresh round is expected to help ramp up the company’s operations in the US, double the engineering and sales teams in the next three months and scale up the company’s Security Assessment Framework for Enterprises (SAFE) platform, which helps businesses measure and mitigate cyber risks in real time.

“Last year, we had triple-digit revenue growth, with a net promoter score (NPS) of 86. We intend to continue growing at that pace next year, too. 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,” said Saket Modi, co-founder and chief executive, Lucideus.

The size of the global cybersecurity market, estimated at $137.63 billion in 2017, is pegged to reach $248.26 billion by 2023, growing at the rate of 10.2 per cent, according to Markets&Markets.

In India, urged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Data Security Council of India has formulated a cybersecurity road map and aims to grow the country’s cyber security products and services industry to $35 billion by 2025, besides creating one million cyber security jobs and 1,000 cybersecurity startups during the same period.

Through his investment firm JC2 Ventures, Cisco Chairman Emeritus John Chambers last year invested $5 million in Lucideus, which also counts former Google India head Rajan Anandan, Facebook Messenger executive Anand Chandrasekaran and former FreeCharge CEO Govind Rajan as investors.

Modi had earlier said the growing understanding of the need for cybersecurity was being helped by the large number of independent board members at companies who could be held personally liable for any data security breach according to most regulations.

“Cybersecurity is one of the top concerns for CEOs globally and SAFE is at the epicentre of solving this problem. Cyber Risk Quantification is a disruptive new category and will become a strategic business enabler in the near future. Lucideus, with its SAFE platform, is uniquely positioned to become a leader in the crowded cybersecurity market,” said Chambers in a statement.