This article first appeared in Boston Business Journal, a sister publication of BostInno.
Boston cybersecurity company Onapsis said on Friday that it has raised a $31 million funding round led by Philadelphia-based private equity firm LLR Partners as it looks to a potential IPO in three to four years.
Existing investors .406 Ventures, Evolution Equity Partners and Arsenal Venture Partners also participated in the funding — the largest single round in the company’s history, bringing the total investment in Onapsis to $62 million. As part of the deal, David Stienes, partner at LLR Partners, will join the company’s board of directors.
Onapsis — currently with 180 employees, 50 of which are in Boston — has plans to grow to a headcount of 210 by the end of the year, company co-founder and CEO Mariano Nunez told the Business Journal.
Although Nunez did not disclose revenue for the company, he said that the company is growing quickly (the firm landed on Deloitte’s 2017 Technology Fast 500). With about 200 Fortune 2000 companies as customers, Onapsis derives about 60 percent of its revenue from the U.S. and about 40 percent from Europe, Nunez said.
Onapsis' subscription-based software allows companies — customers such as KPMG, Daimler and Accenture — to protect so-called business-critical applications such as SAP and Oracle. The applications typically hold sensitive customer and employee information including finances, manufacturing processes and intellectual property.
"If someone attacks SAP, that's the entire company going down," said Nunez. "The risk is just too high to ignore. That's why we're seeing more demand there."
Onapsis is in its own category when it comes to cybersecurity product offerings, Nunez said. Most of the Onapsis' rivals are much smaller, he said, including ERPscan founded out of Russia and Virtual Force Inc. out of Germany.
Nunez said that he's "building a company with a long term in mind" — and that means recruiting talent for a potential IPO in the next "three or four years." Already, Onapsis has attracted two power players with public company experience to serve on its board: J.R. Smith, a partner at Evolution Equity Partners and former CEO of AVG Technologies; and Marcos Galperin, president and CEO of MercadoLibre, an Argentina-based e-commerce company.
The company also recently brought on a new CFO: Gordon Pothier, a former finance executive at Waltham-based Carbon Black, which just announced that it's pursuing an initial public offering of up to $100 million.
