Lucideus Tech secures funds from angel investors
2 min read . Updated: 11 May 2017, 04:41 AM IST
PremiumTop executives of Google, Facebook, and former employees of LinkedIn, NASDAQ have invested an undisclosed amount in Lucideus Tech
New Delhii: Top executives of Google, Facebook and former employees of LinkedIn and NASDAQ have invested an undisclosed amount in cybersecurity solutions and services firm Lucideus Tech that offers a “one stop" cybersecurity solution for companies.
“We have raised a couple of million dollars and have used it to design the cybersecurity platform called SAFE (Security Assesment Framework for Enterprises) and have started working on deployment strategies with clients already," Saket Modi, founder and CEO of Lucideus Tech said, without disclosing details of the funds raised.
Modi also said that the company has used some of the funds to start working at the next version of SAFE which will be deployed sometime during the end of the year.
The list of Lucideus’ angel investors includes Amit Ranjan, chief architect of Digilocker, an initiative launched by the Indian government; Anurag Goel, CEO of Cactus Communication; Govind Rajan, former CEO of Freecharge; Jonathan Boutelle, a former director of Technology at LinkedIn/SlideShare; Rajan Anandan, managing director at Google India; Rahul Chawla, managing director and head of global markets at Deutsche Bank; and Salil Donde, a former executive vice president at NASDAQ.
Lucideus Tech, which provides cybersecurity for the BHIM app, has other angel investors such as Anand Chandrasekaran, director, messenger of Facebook; Amit Chowdhary, director at Motilal Oswal PE, and Sanjay Baweja, chief financial officer of Suzlon Energy.
Explaining SAFE, Modi said it was the first cybersecurity platform to “de-jargon" security for CEOs and help them take steps to stop further harm to their company.
“These days there is a new trend under which Venture Capitalists are asking cybersecurity firms to evaluate companies before investing in them," Modi said, adding that Lucideus had received a dozen such requests in the last six months from India and abroad.
“There are major gaps in the field of cybersecurity today especially in terms of threat visibility and risk assessment post a hack attack. There are platforms similar to SAFE but where it is unique is that it can do threat intelligence (both internal and external), suggest actions and provide an analysis in the business context as well," said Felix Mohan, CEO of CISO cybersecurity and former global chief information security officer of Airtel.
He explained that SAFE can help bring down the time of threat recognition from a global average of 240 days as it is a real-time cyber risk management software. Lucideus claims that SAFE can bring down threat detection to 70 odd days.
Jonathan Boutelle, ex-director of Technology of LinkedIn/SlideShare also said that SAFE enables the leadership teams to ensure a firm grip on their cyber risk that in most cases is directly proportional to business risks.
Industry experts who have seen demos of the product also said that “SAFE could be a potential game changer." A CEO of one of the country’s busiest airports said that “the new platform makes a lot more sense at a time when regulators are tightening their grip on cybersecutity."
Another chief information officer of a FMCG company said that the product “if deployed will help him sleep peacefully at night."
According to Modi, SAFE draws threat intelligence from multiple threat feeds all over the world—some of which are paid subscriptions—and its own threat intelligence team of 12. “Some personnel of our threat intelligence team is based out of Palo Alto," he said, adding that SAFE will cost companies between ₹ 3 to 10 crore a year based on a client’s requirement.
