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Post-covid, the global mobile application market size is growing at a high pace. With the growth of applications, their security concerns have also become high. Regular threat assessments are needed to determine the best approaches to protecting a business against different threats. Appknox offers plug & play mobile app security solution to protect business.
Appknox is a cyber-security platform that helps business with its testing solutions to protect their data and their customer's data from threats. It has been listed in Gartner’s list of top mobile app security testing solutions.
Appknox - Company Highlights
| Startup Name | Appknox |
|---|---|
| Headquarters | Bangalore |
| Industry | Application Security/ Cyber Security |
| Founder | Harshit Agarwal and Subho Halder |
| Founded | 2014 |
| Total Funding Raised | $650K |
| Website | appknox.com |
Appknox - About
Appknox - Industry
Appknox - Founders and Team
Appknox - The Idea and Startup Story
Appknox - Name, Tagline, and Logo
Appknox - Products and Services
Appknox - Business Model and Revenue Model
Appknox - Customer Acquisition
Appknox - Challenges Faced
Appknox - Growth
Appknox - Funding
Appknox - Advisors and Mentors
Appknox - Competitors
Appknox - Tools Used in The Company
Appknox - Future Plans
Appknox - About
Appknox is a Bangalore-based mobile application security platform. It was founded in 2014 to provide mobile application security. They provide innovative security solutions for securing businesses and consumers on a global scale. Several enterprises, developers, and researchers use their security testing solutions to detect threats.
Appknox - Industry
The Mobile App Industry has seen exponential growth amongst millions of consumers who are adopting mobile technology to stay connected. As new technology and innovation are getting advanced, the requirement for security is more critical. Technology is evolving successively, neither traditional nor current methods of security surveillance cut the threats it is coming up with. The future of mobile app security industry calls for forward-thinking in order to be able to combat the innovatively designed attacks on businesses and financial institutions.
The post-COVID 19 global application security market size is expected to grow from USD 6.2 billion in 2020 to USD 13.2 billion by 2025, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 16.1% during the forecast period.
Appknox - Founders and Team
Harshit Agarwal and Subho Halder are Co-founders of Appknox.
Harshit and Subho have been friends since 2008. They were in the same college. Subho, and three other buddies formed their Counter-Strike Clan during the first month of school. They shared rooms after graduation. Harshit worked at a startup while Subho worked at TCS and was a cybersecurity enthusiast. He used to conduct a lot of mobile app security training.
Around December of 2013, they both began talking about launching a mobile app startup that would focus on mobile security. They both started working on the startup and were accepted into JFDI's incubation programme in Singapore. That was the first time they started working full-time on Appknox.
Appknox - The Idea and Startup Story
Around 2014, they could see a trend where Mobile would have become the primary way of consuming internet services. A lot of companies were expanding on the growth of the mobile side and Appknox was going mobile-first. With that, businesses would be worried about their applications' security and founders wanted to solve this for enterprises and businesses. They launched their product in 2016 aiming to keep these businesses' applications secured.
Subho and Harshit knew each other since 2008. They were in the same college and within the first month of college, Subho, 3 other friends, and Harshit had created their Counter-Strike Clan. Post-college they used to share rooms and Harshit used to work at a startup. Subho was working at TCS and was a cybersecurity enthusiast. He used to give a lot of training for mobile app security.
Around 2013 December Harshit and Subho, both started having conversations about starting their own startup. The reason for it being a massive attraction which was developing on the mobile app front, they wanted to exclusively focus on the mobile security side. They started working on the idea and were accepted at JFDI in Singapore for their incubation program. That's when they were officially into working on Appknox full time as their start up.
Arooshi
Appknox - Name, Tagline, and Logo
Appknox was started initially with the name XyScan. Eventually, it was becoming hard to create the brand with it and founders were exploring to rename. They were selected for JFDI, Singapore an incubator and one of the startup Co-Founder helped them with name. It resonated with Fort Knox.
Their Tagline - "Proactive Always" was from the marketing team and the logo was built by a Fiverr designer.
Appknox - Products and Services
Appknox is a leading mobile app security platform, assisting businesses and organisations in securing their mobile apps.
Appknox uses a System + Human strategy to assist organisations secure the security of their mobile applications. They are solving the biggest problem of businesses and enterprises for their apps security.
Using Appknox automated SAST, True DAST, and API level testing, companies can execute an initial level of security test on a mobile application in under 90 minutes.
They can then enlist the help of mobile security professionals to run manual business logical checks on the app.
Appknox - Business Model and Revenue Model
Appknox is a SAAS product where businesses use the Appknox platform for continuous security testing. Appknox business model is pay as you use and unlimited scans using Appknox platform. Appknox also offers enterprise friendly on-premise services.
Appknox works with a lot of channel partners in LATAM, GCC and SEA. They enable their channel partners with pre-sales and post-sales support.
Rishabh Rathi
Appknox - Customer Acquisition
The initial launch of Appknox was a closed Beta that they launched for their first beta users. They had a few of the companies like PayTM, Freecharge, and a few other internet services companies that they had onboarded as their first 10 customers. They used to get connected with them through Tech events and LinkedIn in earlier days. Their first 50 customers were all outbound and that led us to a few media coverages. They detected an issue in Ola in 2016 and spoke about it. This further helped us in getting a few inbounds as well. As they grew from 50 to 100, they strategized their focus from enterprises and Banks.
Appknox - Challenges Faced
They started working with a lot of Internet companies in earlier days and it seemed to be working at the start. Bit the issue they faced was that these were themselves growing companies and required VAPT for probably once a year while they figure other growth parameters. That was not the ICP they could grow a lot as ACV is not very high and also a high level of attrition as a lot of those companies ended up shutting down so was building a leaky funnel for us where CAC is high and LTV is low. They moved to enterprises to cover this and that lead to very little churn for us and eventually, growth started showing.
Appknox - Growth
Appknox operates out of Singapore and India. They are a profitable business growing at 2X YOY. Appknox has major clients in SEA, GCC, LATAM and India. They have channel partners which are majorly MSSPs who offer Cybersecurity services over and above Appknox Platform. Appknox has helped 500+ Businesses to secure their mobile application.
They are looking at building their product expertise by making mobile app security a seamless process. They are looking at growing in the US, Europe, and other regions.
Appknox - Funding
Appknox has raised a funding of $650 K in 2015 from Jungle Ventures.
| Date | Stage | Amount | Investors |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | Seed Round | $650 K | Jungle Ventures |
Appknox - Advisors and Mentors
Key people who advises Appknox team are:
- Tiang Lim Foo - Venture partner, Next Billion Ventures
- Priyam Bose - Global Head -Developer Products, Truecaller
- Prasanna Krishnamoorthy - Partner, Upekkha Catalyst
- Thiyagarajan Maruthavanan (Rajan) - Partner, Upekkha Catalyst
- Sekhar Nair - Partner, Upekkha Catalyst
Appknox - Competitors
Some of the top competitors of Appknox are:
- Datatherom
- Nowsecure
- Appdome
- Redhunt
Appknox - Tools Used in The Company
Tools they use to run their startups are:
- Slack
- Pendo
- Adroll
- Fitbots
- Superbeing
Appknox - Future Plans
Appknox is working for the release of a security dashboard that will help security researchers performing manual testing on mobile applications to use Appknox SAST/DAST and API Scan results to speed up the entire testing process. Along with it, Auto fuzzing for DAST and CI/CD are two other features that they are enhancing to smoothen up the entire security testing process.
FAQs
When was Appknox founded?
Appknox was founded in 2014 at Bangalore.
Who is the founder of Appknox?
Harshit Agarwal and Subho Halder are co-founders of Appknox.
Who are the competitors of Appknox?
Some of the top competitors of Appknox are:
- Datatherom
- Nowsecure
- Appdome
- Redhunt