App security firm Wegilant raises $500,000

BENGALURU: App security firm Wegilant Net Solutions Pvt. Ltd has raised $500,000 to fund its technology expansion, research and development as well as customer acquisition efforts.

Founded in 2011 by Toshendra Sharma, the company which was incubated in the Society for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (SINE), Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, had raised $160,000 in December last year.

The current round of fund raising was led by existing investors including Ravi Gururaj, chair of IT industry body Nasscom's product council, Gaurav Sharma, director Yahoo Inc., Viswanath Ramachandran, former chief technology officer of GupShup Technology India Pvt. Ltd, SINE-IIT Bombay Business Incubator, RippleWave and a strategic investor (an unnamed large global IT security company), the company said in a statement on Thursday. Wegilant's flagship product Appvigil looks for vulnerabilities and threats in mobile apps. "Previously, we were offering app security solutions in the Android environment only and now as a natural business extension, are expanding to iOS and Windows operating systems as well," Sharma said in a statement.

He added that the company is developing more security products on the lines of Appvigil. Gururaj said Wegilant is addressing a growing market in a time when security breaches have become regular occurrences. The Gurgaon-based company is looking to set up offices across other major cities in India. Wegilant said the company was on a hiring spree and had already doubled its headcount from 11 to 22.