Vehicle cybersecurity firm SecureThings raises $3.5 mn in funding

SecureThings.ai, a start-up that works in cybersecurity of vehicles, has raised $3.5 million in a funding led by Inflexor Ventures

The pre-series A funding also saw participation from 9Unicorns, RPG Ventures, SAB Holdings, and various UHNIs. From Fund II, Inflexor has, since November 2020, invested in six companies, including Atomberg, GramCover, and Vitra.ai.

The company will use the funding for product enhancement, business growth in India and overseas, augmenting the India and US teams, and sales and marketing.

SecureThings.ai, founded by Vishal Bajpai, provides machine learning-based cybersecurity for all vehicles. It has headquarters in California and a research centre in Pune, India.

“With the increasing automation in vehicles, the sources of attacks are ever-expanding. We realized that automotive cybersecurity is unique; it requires not only a focused solution to protect the supply chain but also to rebuild the current protection stack to work in the challenging environment of an automobile,," said Bajpai.

“Coupled with the large-scale adoption of IoT that is expected shortly and the regulatory push by authorities worldwide, we believe that SecureThings has a huge potential," said Venkat Vallabhaneni, Managing Partner, Inflexor Ventures, referring to the term internet of things (IoT).

“SecureThings is bringing the cybersecurity paradigm from the computing world to the automotive space and addressing threats at each layer of the connected vehicle. There is a global market to target, and we are excited with the traction that the team is seeing,” said Sandeep Singhal, senior Advisor Avaana Capital and ex-MD Nexus Venture Partners.

Key Venture, led by Nidhi Saraf, acted as the sole advisor for the round.