Cyscale, a Romanian startup that develops security solutions for data saved in the cloud, has raised €350K in less than four hours after the company listed on SeedBlink, the largest crowdfunding platform in Southeast Europe. Cyscale succeeded in raising €50K more than the €300K initially targeted.
Cyscale, founded in 2018 by Ovidiu Cical, Manuela Țicudean, Laura Cical and Andrei Milaș, develops protection software solutions for information saved in the cloud and performs risk analysis of this data. Cyscale’s goal is to help companies to be more competitive due to information protection and digitalization. The startup from Cluj-Napoca currently has over 50 B2B clients, most of them belonging to the IT field, and aims to reach over 1000 customers in 2025.
Of this €300K round, €200K came from SeedBlink investors and €100K from the GapMinder VC fund. The funds will be invested over the next 12 months in the development of the technical and marketing and sales team, but also for global expansion, mainly in the US, Germany, England and the Netherlands.
“The clients we have are currently only from Romania, but, recently, we have signed partnerships with large companies to expand on the US market. In Europe, we want to attract customers especially from England, Germany and the Netherlands because these are the countries with a high level of adoption of cloud technology and a very large number of companies. In these European countries we will also expand through partners because they know the local specifics and thus we can grow faster by removing cultural and linguistic barriers”, explains Manuela Țicudean, co-founder and project manager at Cyscale.
The financing round through SeedBlink is the second for Cyscale, with its first, worth €100K, being raised last year. This amount was invested by the GapMinder investment fund following the Techcelerator acceleration programme. The four co-founders also invested about €100K in the two years since the launch of the company.
Cristian Dascălu, co-founder of Techcelerator and partner of GapMinder VC, said: “In Eastern Europe, companies are very reluctant to move their information to the cloud, mainly because of the fear that they may lose data. At the same time, a study from 2019 conducted by the research company Gartner informed us that in 2025 half of the planet’s data volume will be stored in the cloud. The same study stated that in 2025 about 99% of cloud security issues will appear because of the fault of customers. Yes, there is a danger of data loss if the migration to the cloud is not done with the help of security specialists. Cyscale is a start-up that solves this very important problem and we are happy to be with them through a new investment”.
Andrei Dudoiu, co-founder and CEO of SeedBlink, also commented: “We are glad that we can intensify support for innovative startups, now reaching Cluj. The founders of Cyscale are very ambitious and they have global scaling plans for the solution they have developed to a most concerning problem. We welcome the development of the partnership with Techcelerator and GapMinder VC”.
Currently, Cyscale is worth about €2 million, but with the new round of investment, the company’s value rises to €2.3 million euros, according to Cyscale officials. They also expect that in 2023 the value of the company could be €30 million, 15 times higher than at present.
“This very large increase of Cyscale’s value is based on the increase in revenue that will come with the expansion abroad. If in our region people are not very willing to adopt the cloud technology, we can’t say the same about Western Europe or the US. We want to become one of the largest cloud security companies, and this global expansion will help us exceed a value of €30 million in three years”, explained co-founder Ovidiu Cical.
The startup’s future plans also include applying for €2.83 million in European grants under the Horizon 2020 programme, for research and development, and starting in 2021, it aims to register (abroad) three patents in the area of cloud technology.
