Tech-focused VC fund, Inflexor Ventures, leads the Pre-series A round in automotive cybersecurity startup SecureThings.ai. The current round of 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 aims to utilize the funding towards product enhancement, business growth in India and overseas markets, augmenting the India and US teams, and sales and marketing.
SecureThings.ai, founded by Vishal Bajpai, provides specialized machine learning-based cybersecurity for all automobiles, be it a commercial vehicle, a passenger vehicle, an electric vehicle, or a motorbike. SecureThings.ai’s unique 6-layer protection solution provides comprehensive real-time security to the automotive ecosystem. The company is headquartered in California, USA, and has a large R&D center at Pune, India, to also cater to existing customers in India & APJ market.
Vishal spent over 15 years in various roles at Symantec, where he identified the growing need for automotive cybersecurity. “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.”
“Connected vehicles are highly prone to cyberattacks, and this has led regulators across the globe to prescribe stringent norms for the same. Our highly innovative Cybersecurity solution for EV & 2W in India has seen phenomenal uptake. This round of funding will help strengthen our customer base in India & APJ, which continue to be strategic & essential markets for us and also expand the company’s footprint in the USA market. We are looking for strategic partnerships in other regions as well. We look forward to working with our new investors, who bring in their necessary expertise to help the company scale up.” – Vishal Bajpai, Founder & CEO of SecureThings.ai.
“What drew us to SecureThings was their deep expertise in cybersecurity and its various problem statements; everything ranging from telematics systems to cloud platforms to intelligent automation. The multi-layer solution they are developing will have wide-ranging impacts in the automotive sector in the years to come. 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.
Sandeep Singhal, senior Advisor Avaana Capital and ex-MD Nexus Venture Partners, said, “As the EV revolution transforms our vehicles into ‘computers on wheels’ with connectivity to central servers and personal devices, cybersecurity has become a mission-critical issue. 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.”
Key Venture, led by Nidhi Saraf, acted as the sole advisor for the round.
