This startup just raised funding to help make your apps more secure

Photo credit: leowolfert / 123RF Stock Photo.

As an app maker, how sure are you about your app’s security? As a user, how big of a concern is security for you? If your answer to those questions is “not so much,” wow, you need to get with the times.

Nearly half of app users expect their apps to be hacked in the next six months.

Nearly half of all mobile finance and health app users expect their apps to be hacked in the next six months, and the same goes for 46 percent of IT decision makers who have insight into such apps, according to a January 2016 report (PDF link) by software security firm Arxan.

What’s more, 50 percent of organizations don’t have any budget allocated for mobile app security, according to a study (registration needed) by IBM and the Ponemon Institute for privacy and security.

This is the challenge that Appknox wants to tackle. The startup can check how secure an app is by testing it in an online virtual environment. All it needs is the app’s URL in the app store. The tech analyzes the app’s vulnerabilities and offers suggestions on how to fix them.

The Singapore-based company has so far focused on clients in India, including payments provider Paytm and ecommerce startup BigBasket. Now it’s looking to tackle the Southeast Asia market, and it’s just raised a pre-series A round worth US$654,000 to do it. The round was led by SeedPlus, a seed-stage venture capital firm that’s been set up by investment firms Jungle Ventures, Infocomm Investments, Accel Partners, and RNT Associates.

The Appknox founding team. Photo credit: Appknox.

Heading Southeast

Appknox will use the funding to expand its offering to Southeast Asia. “There is no doubt that doing business in Singapore or setting up a team here is far more expensive than what it is in India,” co-founder and CEO Harshit Agarwal tells Tech in Asia. The startup has already closed four clients in the region, including online supermarket Redmart and streaming video service Hooq.

The startup acquired 25 new clients in 2015 and now has over 50 clients in India, Singapore, and the United Arab Emirates.

The funding gives the company about six to eight months runway. It hopes to raise its series A toward the end of 2016, in order to launch its product globally.

SeedPlus will be a useful partner for Appknox because of its unique nature, Harshit says. “We have a team of operating partners who have come from companies like Google, Spotify, Evernote, and have a lot of experience in business development, marketing, product, and more.” Their expertise will keep the company going and allow the team to focus on what it does well, he explains.

The need for security