Cybersecurity
Umesh Padval and Ashish Kakran lead our investments in cybersecurity. With a thesis-driven approach, they pinpoint critical priorities for Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), and they invest in startups protecting emerging enterprise attack surfaces.
Their commitment to their portfolio and company founders goes beyond financial backing - they offer access to their deep operational experience and vast network. Their CISO forum provides founders with unparalleled access to key decision-makers experienced in product and GTM strategies.
Portfolio updates
Ashish Kakran
Principal
Ashish is focused on early-stage cloud, data/ML, and cybersecurity startups. He helps technical founders build lasting companies as a trusted long-term partner. Recent investments include Cohere, Harness, Isovalent, , CyCognito, and more.
Umesh Padval
Managing Director
Umesh is a Venture Partner at Thomvest Ventures focused on investments in the cybersecurity, data infrastructure, AI/ML and cloud infrastructure sectors partnering with founders and CEOs of companies developing disruptive platforms solving key pain-points for CXOs.
Baffle
Baffle is pioneering a solution that makes data breaches irrelevant by keeping data encrypted from production through processing.
Bolster
Bolster builds AI/ML technology to automate the detection, analysis, and takedown of threats across domains, social media, app stores, and the dark web.
Certicom
Certicom was a leading provider of information security software and services for wireless security. Certicom was acquired by Research in Motion in early 2009.
Cotendo
Cotendo was a leading content distribution network (CDN) specializing in accelerating mobile websites. The company was acquired by Akamai Technologies in December 2011.
CyCognito
CyCognito empowers companies to take complete control over their attack surface by uncovering and eliminating critical security risks they didn’t even know existed.
Cylance
Cylance was the first company to apply artificial intelligence, algorithmic science, and machine learning to cyber security. Acquired by BlackBerry.
GuardianEdge
GuardianEdge was a leading provider of endpoint data protection for corporations and government clients. Symantec acquired the company in June 2010.
Lastline
Lastline provided best-in-class malware protection platform to detect and stop advanced persistent threats, zero-day exploits, and evasive malware. Acquired by VM Ware.
Nexabit
Nexabit developed novel switches that can route up to trillions of bits of digital information a second. The company was acquired by Lucent Technologies in June 1999.
Okena
Okena developed leading-edge intrusion detection and prevention software for enterprises. The company was acquired by Cisco Systems in April 2003.
Opaque
Opaque leverages a novel combination of two critical technologies layered on cloud security—secure hardware enclaves and cryptographic fortification.
Qwiet.ai
Qwiet.ai is the modern AppSec platform that brings software developers and security practitioners together.
ShieldX
ShieldX was a cloud-native network security platform delivering a full stack of agentless security controls. ShieldX was acquired by Fortinet in March 2021.
Skyhigh Security
Skyhigh was a Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB) that addresses organizations’ cloud security challenges. Acquired by McAfee in November 2017.
Skyport Systems
Skyport Systems developed Hyper-Secured Infrastructure (HSI) that ensures the security of mission-critical IT and corporate assets. Acquired by Cisco Systems in 2018.
Telivy
Telivy allows Managed Service Providers to automate their clients' cybersecurity risk assessments and reduce over 80% of SecOps workload.