Singapore based cybersecurity start-up watchTowr partners with Indian investors to accelerate growth and expand footprint in India

Mumbai, August 2, 2022: watchTowr, a cybersecurity startup headquartered in Singapore has raised $8 million in a pre-series A round with contributions from five Indian angel investors including Saket Agarwal of Onnivation, Gaurav Gupta of Farfetch, Bikram Singh Bedi of Google India, and Gaurav Samdaria of Karza Technologies, alongside global investors, including Prosus Ventures and Vulcan Capital.

India represents the world’s third-largest technology hub with rapid penetration of the Internet. While this has created multiple new business opportunities with high rewards, it has also amplified the threat landscape for cyberattacks and ransomware threats. India reported more than 6.74 Lakh cybersecurity incidents in 2022 till June. This creates significant room for innovation, especially in the cybersecurity services and products sector, which recorded a combined revenue of USD 9.85 billion in 2021. Furthermore, the cybersecurity industry is expected to experience unprecedented growth as more businesses migrate to the cloud to improve efficiencies.

The fund infusion from the Indian investors will help the cybersecurity technology and Attack Surface Management startup to scale its operations in the country, explore fertile market opportunities, and address the rising cases of cyberattacks in the country.    

watchTowr's technology builds a real-time view of an organization’s attack surface in the eyes of an attacker, typically empowering CISOs with a 300-400% increase in attack surface visibility.

Benjamin Harris, CEO, watchTowr, said “In real-time, our technology gives organizations a visibility of how they could be compromised. watchTowr continuously incorporates the latest attacker tactics and techniques into the watchTowr Platform so that CISOs can understand their susceptibility to emerging vulnerabilities and threats in hours, rather than weeks or months.”
 

Over the last decade, organizational attack surfaces have ballooned to include outsourced technology, shadow IT, cloud environments and supply chain risks, to the point where most organizations have simply lost track of their attack surface. Harris says, “When one combines the ballooned attack surface with the ineffective and incomplete security testing approaches that are still utilized today, like penetration testing, organizations are not able to protect themselves adequately, especially when we consider the rapid and aggressive speed of change in cyber security. Attackers know this.”

Saket Agarwal, Founder & CEO, Onnivation, said, “Penetration testing is still a very manual and abstract process, given that most organizations do not have penetration testing as a core competency. A significant lack of awareness also exists regarding the tools and solutions that can assist companies in achieving this. In this context, watchTowr is going to be a game-changer in the Indian cybersecurity industry. With their platform, companies can transform their cyber-defense mechanisms by developing a risk analysis approach that includes continuous monitoring, stress testing, and real-time assessments. This makes threat detection faster and proactive, and thus reduces the time taken to respond to any attack.”

Operational since late 2021, watchTowr has seen high interest for its platform from some of the world's leading banks, financial services, insurance companies (BFSI), as well as ecommerce and technology brands.