A cybersecurity startup that recently moved its headquarters to Austin from New York City has secured fresh capital that will help it hire, both in its new city and remotely.
Votiro said March 30 it raised $11.5 million in a series A funding round led by Harvest Lane Asset Management, a firm based in Sydney, Australia.
Votiro, which operates legally as Votiro Cybersec Ltd., was founded in Israel in 2012 and originally developed on-premise security tools. But it made a significant pivot in 2018 when it moved its HQ to New York City and began focusing on cloud-based, zero-trust security products that extract safe data from documents, such as email attachments, and pass it along, leaving potentially malicious files outside of company or consumer systems. Its application programming interface, or API, aims to eliminate file-borne threats, which have become prevalent in the remote-work era.
CEO Ravi Srinivasan, a longtime Austin tech executive who previously worked at IBM and Forcepoint, joined Votiro in 2021 to help it raise new capital and scale. He said Austin was an easy choice to become home for the company's next chapter.
"It has exactly the range of talent that we're looking for," he said. "We're looking for people with data and identity skills, and Austin is, for the longest time, an identity and data security talented city."
The new funding round is the first fresh capital the company has raised since its formative days in Israel. Fundraising efforts started in late November, Srinivasan said. He noted that, despite an overall downturn in venture capital activity, investments have continued to flow to cybersecurity companies — albeit perhaps with a bit more investor caution.
"The valuation criteria certainly is more focused on growing the business, having an installed base of technology that can scale in the market, focus on bottom line along with the top line," he said. "Not just growth at any cost, but also being able to drive fiscally responsible growth."
On the real estate front, Votiro is starting small: it has has set up a roughly 500-square-foot HQ in an office building at 901 S. MoPac Expy. Execs plan to add more space later in the year.
It has 45 employees globally, about half of which are in the U.S. Its development center is in Israel, along with the company's chief technology officer. It has sales and marketing in Singapore.
Votiro leaders plan to add about 15 more employees in sales, marketing and development, both locally and remotely.
The company did not share specific revenue figures although Srinivasan noted it's generating less than $10 million in annual recurring revenue, adding that Votiro aims to be cash-flow positive in 2024.
"True zero trust content security in the cloud has changed how companies can think about protection from weaponized files," Votiro Chairman Chris Fedde stated. "It's also changed how investors look at Votiro, as the company has now transitioned from strategic partner funding to institutional capitalization."
While Votiro's security API is often used by businesses, the startup has also made its file-cleansing features available to regular consumers.
Srinivasan said he used the startup's "try me" page to produce clean files with all his personal tax paperwork.
"I uploaded them, and it came back saying there were two suspicious objects ... and it cleansed it and delivered a clean file for me to use," he said. "So it's one of those products that's available for anyone to use."
