Automotive cybersecurity startup SecureThings.ai has raised a $3.5 million funding in a pre-Series A round led by tech-focused VC fund, Inflexor Ventures, along with Accelerator fund 9Unicorns, RPG Ventures and SAB Holdings.
A few UHNIs including Shirish Shankhe (Senior Partner, McKinsey India), Karan Maheshwari (Maheshwari Family Office), Javed Tapia (Chairman, Clover Infotech) and Manish Bharti (CRO, CoreStack) also participated in the current round.
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 Bajpai, Founder & CEO of SecureThings.ai, “Connected vehicles are highly prone to cyberattacks, and this has led regulators across the globe to prescribe stringent norms for the same. This round of funding will help strengthen our customer base in India & APJ, which continue to be strategic and 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.”
On backing SecureThings.ai, Rajesh Mane, Partner at, 9Unicorn said, “With the increased demand for EV’s security for charging stations, battery swapping technologies and the EV connected ecosystem will see a huge demand for cybersecurity. SecureThings with its 360o protection is well geared to meet these needs with its new age solutions. Quite excited to be an early backer of such a revolutionary startup.”
Venkat Vallabhaneni, Managing Partner, Inflexor Ventures, “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.”
Key Venture acted as the sole financial advisor for the transaction. On this Nidhi Saraf, Founder of Key Venture, said, “With growing use of technology in industries such as logistics, passenger transport, ride sharing and usage based insurance; automotive cybersecurity will be a requirement and the backbone for such solutions.”
