SOUTH AFRICA – Sendmarc, an email protection and compliance startup, has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from Kalon Venture Partners, a company that invests in and builds a portfolio of high growth technology companies.

Launched in 2018 by Sam Hutchinson, Keith Thompson and Sacha Matulovich, cybersecurity startup Sendmarc provides the setup, implementation and reporting functionality for a global email protection standard known as DMARC. 

This protocol is designed to give email domain owners the ability to protect their domains from unauthorised use, such as impersonation attacks or email spoofing.

The purpose and primary outcomes of implementing DMARC are to protect a domain from being used in business email compromise attacks, phishing emails, email scams and other invasive cyber threats.

Sendmarc is spearheaded by chief executive officer (CEO) Sam Hutchinson, who was also the founder of marketing startup Everlytic, acquired by Vox Telecom in 2016.

The track record of Hutchinson and his co-founders was one of the main reasons for the decision from Kalon Venture Partners to invest.

“At Kalon we firstly invest in people. Sam, Sacha and Keith gave us confidence that they were the right team for this opportunity. This is not their first rodeo and they bring significant experience in building and scaling tech businesses,” said Kalon Venture Partners CEO Clive Butkow.

“Sendmarc is the type of disruptive technology that solves big business problems in a growing market of cybersecurity threats faced by businesses. The need for a secure system that ensures “business as usual” is more important than ever before and we are excited about Sendmarc joining our portfolio.

“Cloning of emails and malicious intent is now something a business can have control over, and in doing so we are indeed part of the solution towards winning the war on cyber threats.”

Hutchinson said the need for a secure and safe email environment was of paramount importance today.

“We are very excited about this new investment partnership and look forward to building a more non-threatening cyber future by making email safe again,” he said.

The Johannesburg-based VC has also made follow-on investments in three of its current portfolio companies (Ozow, FinChatBot, and Flow) in deals that happened at very points in 2019 but were kept under wraps. However, the deal with Sendmarc was concluded in December last year.