Bangalore-based Kaalbi Technologies Pvt Ltd, which operates under the brand ShieldSquare, a SaaS-based solution that protects online businesses against web scraping and malware attacks, has secured $350,000 in angel funding from a group of individuals including Phanindra Sama, Charan Padmaraju and P Sudhakar – all co-founders of bus ticket booking startup redBus.in. The round also saw participation from Matrimony.com’s co-founder Murugavel Janakiraman, Freshdesk co-founder Girish Mathrubootham and Fusioncharts’ founder Pallav Nadhani, besides Samir Sood, former M&A head (South Asia & Australia) at Google Inc. The round was led by Chandu Nair of Chennai Angels, Srini Kopparapu and Sanjay Anandaram, the company said in a press release.
“We will use the funds to build the team, enhance the product and scale up the business,†said Pavan Thatha, CEO and co-founder of ShieldSquare.
ShieldSquare was one of the five startups presented at the recently-concluded Techcircle SaaS Forum 2014.
The startup was founded by siblings Pavan and Rakesh Thatha, along with Vasanth Kumar, Jyoti Kakatkar and Srikanth Konijeti. ShieldSquare protects online businesses against malicious technology-based attacks by competitors and unauthorised third parties, thereby increasing revenues, improving site performance and enhancing customer experience. By differentiating between legitimate and malicious traffic on a site, ShieldSquare helps block automated malicious traffic that steals or damages content on the site. The product analyses millions of traffic requests daily and uses Big Data analytics to identify and help block suspicious, unwanted and abusive behaviour.
The company’s clients include Indiaproperty.com, Shaadi.com, Purplle.com and WeddingPlz.
“Scraping has become a big pain area for all the local search, listings, e-commerce and content portals. Curated quality content is the key value they offer and having it scraped/copied and reproduced elsewhere impacts their business competitiveness,†said Sanjay Anandaram.
“The team comes with strong security background and has done a very good job with the ShieldSquare product. Anti-scraping is a booming space and has huge global opportunity across multiple industries, said Sama.
(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)
