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Entrepreneur
6 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Cash Rush: Top Startup Funding Highlights (July 26–Aug 1)
From AI innovations to fintech powerhouses, these startups secured big investor bets this week. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. The startup ecosystem saw a vibrant week of funding activity, with a mix of AI-driven innovations, fintech disruptors, and specialised platforms securing capital to fuel their next growth phase. From cybersecurity and semiconductor intelligence to edtech and gaming communities, these ventures are redefining industries with technology-first approaches and strong investor backing. Here's a snapshot of the week's biggest deals. SAFE – Cybersecurity Risk Quantification SAFE offers cybersecurity risk quantification and management services, enabling organisations to measure, prioritise, and mitigate cyber threats across digital infrastructure. Formerly known as Lucideus, Safe Security safeguards Fortune 500 companies with continuous risk assessments and actionable insights. Inception: 2012 2012 Founder: Saket Modi Saket Modi Based-out: California California Funding Amount: USD 70 Million USD 70 Million Investors: Avataar Ventures, Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, NextEquity Partners, Prosperity7 Ventures, Eight Roads, John Chambers, Sorenson Capital Navi Technologies – Tech-Led Financial Services Navi operates a digital-first financial services platform offering personal and home loans via its NBFC arm, Navi Finserv. Its offerings extend to mutual funds, health insurance, and UPI-based payment solutions, making it a comprehensive financial ecosystem for retail consumers. Inception: 2018 2018 Founders: Sachin Bansal, Ankit Agarwal Sachin Bansal, Ankit Agarwal Based-out: Bengaluru Bengaluru Funding Amount: USD 20 Million USD 20 Million Investors: PhillipCapital, NDX Finserve, Aarpee Group, Ambit Finvest, and others Metaforms – AI Agents for Market Research Metaforms develops AI-driven agents that streamline market research workflows. From automating survey programming to data processing and vendor coordination, the platform enables faster turnarounds and scalability for research agencies. Inception: 2022 2022 Founders: Akshat Tyagi, Arjun S Akshat Tyagi, Arjun S Based-out: Bengaluru Bengaluru Funding Amount: USD 9 Million USD 9 Million Investors: Peak XV Partners, Nexus Venture Partners, Together Fund STAN – Social Platform for Gaming Creators STAN is a mobile-first platform empowering gaming creators, publishers, and communities through live audio, creator clubs, monetisation tools, and brand-led campaigns. It facilitates community building and engagement in gaming culture. Inception: 2022 2022 Founders: Parth Chadha, Rahul Singh, Nauman Mulla Parth Chadha, Rahul Singh, Nauman Mulla Based-out: Bengaluru Bengaluru Funding Amount: USD 8.5 Million USD 8.5 Million Investors: Google's AI Futures Fund, Bandai Namco Entertainment, Square Enix, Reazon Holdings, Aptos Labs, General Catalyst, GFR Fund, T-Accelerate Capital, Pix Capital SixSense – AI for Semiconductor Manufacturing SixSense uses AI to analyse semiconductor production data, detect critical defects, and predict process deviations. Its platform boosts throughput, reduces waste, and shifts manufacturing from reactive inspection to proactive control. Inception: 2018 2018 Founders: Akanksha Jagwani, Avni Agarwal Akanksha Jagwani, Avni Agarwal Based-out: Singapore Singapore Funding Amount: USD 8.5 Million USD 8.5 Million Investors: Peak XV's Surge, Alpha Intelligence Capital, Febe, and others Arivihan – AI-Powered Rural Learning Arivihan delivers personalised, AI-driven learning to students in smaller towns and rural areas. Its platform includes interactive lectures, instant doubt-solving, and tailored study plans for board and NEET exam preparation. Inception: 2024 2024 Founders: Ritesh Singh Chandel, Sonu Kumar, Rushabh Kothari Ritesh Singh Chandel, Sonu Kumar, Rushabh Kothari Based-out: Bengaluru Bengaluru Funding Amount: USD 4.17 Million USD 4.17 Million Investors: Prosus, Accel, GSF Investors – AI for Sales Performance provides a SaaS platform that boosts frontline sales productivity with personalised pitches, contextual coaching, and dynamic content. It serves major enterprises across BFSI, healthcare, consumer goods, and more. Inception: 2022 2022 Founders: Hanuman Kamma, Arun Subramanian Hanuman Kamma, Arun Subramanian Based-out: Mumbai Mumbai Funding Amount: USD 3.47 Million USD 3.47 Million Investors: Equentis Angel Fund These startups highlight how innovation and strategic funding continue to drive transformative solutions across industries.
Time of India
6 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Safe Security raises $70 million for autonomous cyber platform
Bengaluru: Cybersecurity startup Safe secured $70 million in funding, led by Avataar Ventures, with participation from Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital and existing backers such as Eight Roads, John Chambers, and Sorenson Capital. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now It counts Google, Fidelity, T-Mobile, Chevron, and IHG among its customers. With this round, the firm incubated at IIM Bombay raised $170 million so far. "We aim to build what we call CyberAGI, inspired by OpenAI's artificial general intelligence—a system capable of autonomous, human-like intelligence. Our vision is to create a cybersecurity AGI that can proactively detect and mitigate cyberattacks. This system will interact with multiple layers of a business and its security infrastructure to continuously learn, adapt, and respond intelligently," said Saket Modi, cofounder and CEO of Safe. Safe pivoted from services to products and essentially shut down the services business. Its current focus is on building systems of intelligence for decision-making and cybersecurity. It also unveiled an upgrade to its cyber risk singularity platform: the world's first fully autonomous continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) solution, powered by Agentic AI. "When we launched our platform in 2020, we carefully selected a market that would be the foundation of cyber risk management - cyber risk quantification (CRQ). In 2023, we brought the same disruptive mindset to third-party risk management (TPRM) with Agentic AI, and today we're fast emerging as the clear frontrunner. Now, we're applying that same AgenticAI-first approach to our next frontier: CTEM. Each of these domains are critical building blocks in our singular pursuit: achieving CyberAG," he added.
Entrepreneur
7 days ago
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Cybersecurity Leader SAFE Raises USD 70 Mn in Series C Funding
The company also introduced a major upgrade to its Cyber Risk Singularity platform — the world's first fully autonomous Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) solution powered by Agentic AI. You're reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media. SAFE, a leader in Cyber Risk Quantification (CRQ) and autonomous Third-Party Risk Management (TPRM), has raised USD 70 million in a Series C funding round led by Avataar Ventures. Other participants include Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, NextEquity Partners, Prosperity7 Ventures, and existing investors such as Eight Roads, John Chambers, and Sorenson Capital. The funds will be deployed to strengthen SAFE's position in the cyber risk management market and to advance the development of Agentic AI-based reasoning models aimed at achieving CyberAGI. The company also introduced a major upgrade to its Cyber Risk Singularity platform — the world's first fully autonomous Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) solution powered by Agentic AI. "This is a defining moment in our pursuit of CyberAGI," said Saket Modi, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of SAFE. "When we launched our platform in 2020, we focused on Cyber Risk Quantification as the foundation of cyber risk management. Since then, we have expanded into autonomous Third-Party Risk Management and now into Continuous Threat Exposure Management, each critical to achieving our mission." SAFE's CTEM solution is designed to address limitations in traditional tools, which often rely on black-box scoring models and static data aggregation. By leveraging multiple autonomous AI agents, the platform aims to provide transparent and actionable risk insights. Founded in 2012 by Saket Modi, Viditkumar Baxi, and Rahul Tyagi, SAFE originated from an incubation program at the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, the company offers cybersecurity risk quantification and management services, enabling organisations to continuously measure, prioritise, and mitigate cyber risks across their digital infrastructure. SAFE's platform covers CRQ, CTEM, and TPRM, making it one of the few companies to integrate these capabilities into a single system. The firm counts major corporations including Google, Fidelity, T-Mobile, Chevron, and IHG among its clients. Nishant Rao, Founding Partner at Avataar Ventures, noted, "Cybersecurity is now a boardroom and CEO-level priority. What differentiates SAFE is its role as a strategic intelligence layer across the cybersecurity stack, supported by a strong execution track record and consistent triple-digit growth since 2020." With this funding, SAFE's total capital raised surpasses USD 170 million. The company intends to continue expanding its capabilities, building AI-native models, and reinforcing its leadership in autonomous cyber risk management solutions.
Mint
31-07-2025
- Business
- Mint
In rare big bet, Indian VC backs local cybersecurity firm's $70 mn fundraise
Palo Alto, US-based cybersecurity platform Safe Security has raised $70 million in a Series C round led by B2B SaaS-focused investor Avataar Venture Partners. According to Tracxn data, this is one of the largest cybersecurity deals to be led by an Indian venture capital firm. 'With the new funds, we're focused on only one thing: product, product and product," company co-founder and chief executive Saket Modi told Mint in an interview. The round, which saw other new and existing investors pin their money and faith in the company, consisted purely of primary investments and no secondaries–in other words, the money went directly to the startup and no existing shareholder sold any stake. New investors in this round included Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, NextEquity Partners, and Prosperity7 Ventures, while existing investors Eight Roads, John Chambers and Sorenson Capital reiterated their faith in the company with more money. With this fundraise, Safe Security's overall funding has risen to $170 million. While the company's valuation is currently unknown, Modi said that it had 'more than doubled" from their last round, which was a $50-million Series B in 2023. Even back then, the company did not disclose its valuation. Incubated out of IIT Bombay in 2012, Safe Security began with a cyber risk quantification module, which still brings in about two-thirds of its revenue. The rest comes from a new module called autonomous third-party risk management, which it launched in mid-2023. 'In the next one year, I expect our first and second modules to be almost equal," said Modi, adding that a third module is being launched. The third module, according to Modi, would be an agentic artificial intelligence continuous threat exposure management (CTEM) system, which constantly evaluates, assesses and mitigates risks within an organisation's digital environment. Modi said that Safe Security will focus on this new module for the next year. 'We want to stagger it out, but whatever we build, we want to be leading in the market," Modi said. Currently, 90% of the company's revenues come from the US, the UK, and Australia. 'These geographies will continue to be where we get more customers from and we will be investing in go-to-market in these places," he said. Safe Security wants to go public but after a few years of strong growth. 'We should be in a position to be publicly traded in three to four years and when we're nearing that, we can take a strategic call on whether we want to list in India or in New York," Modi said. The company started as a services company named Lucideus but rebranded in 2018 to become product-focused, becoming Safe Security. It caters to Fortune 2,000 companies and generally signs deals that average $175,000. Some of its clients include T-Mobile, SAP, Dell, Chipotle, Canva, Chevron, HP, Google, Netflix, and British Telecom. Small India market Cybersecurity is a complex market, with companies targeting different parts of the value chain. Some that have managed to carve out moats include CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks–which recently acquired CyberArk for $20 billion–FortiNet and cloud security startup Whiz, which was recently acquired by Google for $32 billion. The global cybersecurity market is expected to grow from $234 billion this year to $424 billion by 2030, according to market data firm Mordor Intelligence. Comparatively, the India numbers are small and expected growth is also tepid–from $3 billion in 2025 to $3.4 billion by next year, according to technology research and advisory firm Gartner. 'Indian cybersecurity companies face challenges such as significant price sensitivity among buyers and disqualification due to missing functionality or misaligned pricing expectations," said Apeksha Kaushik, principal analyst at Gartner. 'Clients also cite underutilized existing investments and the added complexity of new solutions as key internal barriers, making it essential for vendors to demonstrate clear value." Jaspreet Singh, Milind Borate, and Ramani Kothandaraman managed to create the only cybersecurity unicorn from India, US-based cloud protection services startup Druva, which was last valued at $2 billion in 2021 after a $147 million Series H round that year. Low investor interest Even the amount of VC and PE deals happening in the sector are few. Between 2020 and 2025, only 29 deals were signed, totalling a puny $195 million, according to data from Venture Intelligence. In the past five years alone, the largest cybersecurity deal also involved Safe Security, which raised $33 million of its $50 million from JC2 Ventures in 2023. The round was led by Sorenson Capital. Even so, foreign companies like Proofpoint, which provides cybersecurity for workspaces like Office 365 and social engineering intrusions, see India as a growing market. The company sees three trends playing out here: the emergence of generative AI, creation of laws like the Digital Personal Data Protection Act and cybersecurity frameworks mandated by regulators like the RBI and finally, enterprise customers looking for more preventive platforms. As a result, the company set up an R&D and threat intelligence centre in Pune this year, hired 250 people and plans to hire more. 'We see India not as an R&D and GCC geography, but as a full-fledged market," said Proofpoint CEO Sumit Dhawan. Currently, most of the company's business comes from the US, which accounts for 72% of its business, with the remaining 28% coming from Western Europe and Australia. Proofpoint is currently in conversation with 50 Indian enterprises. Dhawan said the company has already signed up two of the country's largest BPOs, but declined to name them. 'In my assessment, for the India business to be at par with western Europe, it'll take between 18-24 months," said Dhawan.
News18
31-07-2025
- Business
- News18
SAFE raises USD 70 mn for building CyberAGI
Agency: PTI Last Updated: New Delhi, Jul 31 (PTI) Cyber security firm SAFE has raised USD 70 million in a fresh funding round led by Avataar Ventures for building CyberAGI, the company said on Thursday. Artificial intelligence major OpenAI defines AGI as the next version of AI that may surpass human intelligence. 'SAFE… announced a USD 70 million Series C funding round. The round was led by Avataar Ventures, with participation from Susquehanna Asia Venture Capital, NextEquity Partners, Prosperity7 Ventures, and existing investors including Eight Roads, John Chambers and Sorenson Capital among others," the company said in a statement. SAFE said the total fund raised by the company has reached USD 170 million. Alongside the funding, SAFE unveiled an upgrade to its Cyber Risk Singularity platform that the company claims to be the world's first fully autonomous Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) solution, powered by Agentic AI. 'The capital will be used to accelerate SAFE's dominance in the cyber risk management market and fuel continued innovation to build Agentic AI-native reasoning models to move closer to SAFE's mission to achieve CyberAGI," the the California-based company said in a statement. 'We have over 100 employees in India. Most of our investment will go into India as… almost all our products and engineering is in the country," SAFE Co-founder and CEO Saket Modi said. Google, Fidelity, T-Mobile, Chevron, and IHG are among its customers, SAFE said. PTI PRS TRB (This story has not been edited by News18 staff and is published from a syndicated news agency feed - PTI) view comments First Published: July 31, 2025, 20:30 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
