Cybersecurity company Lucideus raises money from ex-Cisco chairman’s VC firm

Indian firm Lucideus Technologies Pvt. Ltd, which provides digital security services for companies, has raised $5 million (Rs 36 crore) from JC2 Ventures, the venture firm of former Cisco executive chairman John T Chambers.

Lucideus founder and chief executive officer (CEO) Saket Modi said the funds will be used for expanding the company’s presence in new markets such as the US and existing markets like India.

Chambers confirmed the investment on Twitter.

A warm welcome to the @JC2Ventures family @Lucideustech! CEO @SaketModi_ and his team just introduced their cutting-edge SAFE technology that could transform the entire cybersecurity industry. Cheers to many years of partnership ahead! https://t.co/pEYtZKKsZZ

— John T. Chambers (@JohnTChambers) October 30, 2018

“The funds are being used to further strengthen our platform to provide more robust security to our enterprise customers that span across banking and financial services, retail and others,” Modi was quoted as saying.

Modi also said that Lucideus’ revenue has grown in triple digits year after year and the company has been cash-flow positive for the last few years.

In May 2017, Lucideus raised an undisclosed amount from a group of angel investors. The investors were Amit Ranjan, chief architect of Digilocker, an initiative launched by the Indian government; Anurag Goel, CEO of Cactus Communication; and Govind Rajan, former CEO of Freecharge. Others included Jonathan Boutelle, former director of technology at LinkedIn SlideShare; Rajan Anandan, managing director at Google India; Rahul Chawla, managing director and head of global markets at Deutsche Bank; and Salil Donde, former executive vice-president at Nasdaq.

Other investors of the company, which provided the security framework for the BHIM app, include Anand Chandrasekaran, director, messenger of Facebook; Amit Chowdhary, director at Motilal Oswal PE, and Sanjay Baweja, chief financial officer of Suzlon Energy.

John T Chambers 

In November last year, John T Chambers picked up a 10% stake in Chennai-based Uniphore Software Systems Pvt. Ltd for an undisclosed amount as part of the speech recognition software firm’s Series B round.

In December 2017, Chambers expressed his interest in working with drone startups in India.

In January this year, Chambers took to Twitter to announce the launch of his venture firm JC2 Ventures. Currently, JC2 Ventures is operational in the US cities of Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, New York, Silicon Valley, and Tempe. Outside the US, the fund is expected to invest in France, Germany and India. 

John T Chambers' son John J Chambers is JC2’s head of growth and strategic marketing adviser. Besides managing internal operations, he evaluates new technologies and opportunities.