Mobile app security firm Wegilant raises $500K from Ravi Gururaj, other angel investors

Wegilant, a mobile app in the security space, has announced to raise $500,000 from existing investors in its Pre-Series A round of funding. The investors include Ravi Gururaj, Chairman of NASSCOM Product Council; Gaurav Sharma, Director, Yahoo Inc.; Gupshup's Ex CTO Viswanath Ramachandran; SINE-IIT Bombay Business Incubator RippleWave, and a strategic investor (a large global IT Security company). Wegilant will use the fund towards technology expansion, research and development and customer acquisition.

Commenting on the investment, Ravi Gururaj, Chairman, NASSCOM Product Council, said, "Water tight security of your mobile device is no longer a luxury, it is an absolute necessity. News of security beaches are regular events which I expect will increase in frequency and severity. Every major brand has a customer facing mobile experience which they now need to ensure is secure for all their stakeholders. Wegilant addresses this critical growing market need with very innovative and robust products. The Wegilant team exhibits winning combination of domain thought leadership and entrepreneurial passion."

Founded in 2011 by Toshendra Sharma, while he was a first year Masters student in CSE department of IIT Bombay, the company got incubated in Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), IIT Bombay, in August 2014.

Wegilant's flagship product Appvigil is a mobile reputation protection suite for enterprises. Appvigil is based on global patent-pending technologies and looks for security vulnerabilities and loopholes in mobile apps. In layman terms, it helps identify whether a mobile app is hackable or not.

Commenting on the same lines, Toshendra Sharma, CEO, Wegilant, said, "Mobile security is a global issue and our mission is to become a de-facto standard in this space. We would be carrying out the global sales operations from India itself. There is a more focussed effort to constantly evolve the product in the light of new innovations in the mobile security market and black hats market. Apart from Appvigil, our flagship product, the company is developing new security products too. We intend to build a globally admired company by solving customer problems."

Organisations involved in the development of mobile apps can integrate Appvigil in the development lifecycle of the app to resolve all security issues in the development phase itself. Further, mobile phone users can install "Appvigil free app' to check hackability of the mobile apps in their phones and report to the developer in case any loopholes exist. It can also be integrated into Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC).

Lately, the company underwent a major rebranding exercise in an effort to position itself as a thought leader in the mobile security industry. The company has also set up its office in Gurgaon apart from Mumbai to accelerate business expansion. Wegilant also intends to set up offices across other major cities in India. The company has also doubled its team strength from 11 to 22 employees and is on a hiring spree. "Previously, we were offering app security solutions in the Android environment only, and now as a natural business extension, we are expanding to iOS and Windows operating systems as well," said Sharma.