BalkanID Closes $8.1 Million Seed Funding Round Amid Surging Demand for its Intelligent Access Governance Platform
AUSTIN, August 25, 2022 By: Subbu Rama
BalkanID, developer of the first AI-powered Cloud Access Governance solution, today announced it has secured an additional $2.36 million in seed financing, bringing the total of its seed round to $8.1 million.
Backed by Uncommon Capital, Afore Capital, Sure Ventures, K2G Tech Fund and others
AUSTIN, August 25, 2022 - BalkanID, developer of the first AI-powered Cloud Access Governance solution, today announced it has secured an additional $2.36 million in seed financing, bringing the total of its seed round to $8.1 million. The round had participation by new investors such as K2G Tech Fund, GIT1K Club, Firsthand Ventures, MGV, NKM Capital and others, along with some existing investors.
BalkanID will use these new funds to accelerate its growth and, if necessary, to buffer the company from market fluctuations as it capitalizes on the demand for its Intelligent Access Governance platform.
“As enterprise companies have shifted from on premises to public SaaS offerings, there have been new unicorn companies in the Identity Access Management area,” said Archi KyoungRok Kong, founding managing partner at K2G Tech Fund. “Now, as there are higher adoptions of public SaaS in enterprise, we believe that traditional on-prem players will be disrupted by a modernized and advanced unicorn startup in Identity Governance and Administration. BalkanID is the best fit in the market.”
BalkanID helps companies identify and remediate potential risks associated with permissions sprawl across their SaaS and cloud landscape, prior to becoming a threat to the business. Its subscription-based Intelligent Access Governance platform leverages data science to provide visibility into risky entitlements and simplifies the access review and certification process using a combination of AI, decision support and workflow automation.
“We invest in companies with the capacity to drive digital transformation regardless of industry or geography and BalkanID checks all the boxes,” said Gaurav Jain, founding managing partner at Afore Capital. “Its elegant, differentiated solution that addresses a well-known, hard-to-solve problem in the access governance space and the company is staffed by a phenomenal team. We jumped at the chance to invest and look forward to participating in its success.”
Since its launch out of stealth in May 2022, BalkanID received SOC-2 Type II Compliance, demonstrating its commitment to the most rigorous security standards for its own operations and handling of customer data. Additionally, the company has on-boarded seven customers since launching out of stealth. The company achieved this in part due to positive industry response to its approach to reducing cloud-native entitlement sprawl.
BalkanID’s ability to make cloud-native access governance intelligent and pain-free enabled the company to raise additional funds when funding sources were drying up,” said Rishi Bhargava, co-founder of Demisto (acquired by Palo Alto Networks) and BalkanID investor. “I’m more confident than ever about BalkanID’s prospects.”
“Many cloud-first companies are mandated to do access certifications and are so overwhelmed by entitlement sprawl that they don’t know where to start,” said Subbu Rama, co-founder and CEO of BalkanID. “We understand this pain because prior to starting BalkanID, the founding team experienced it firsthand in our previous roles. Given the demand for our platform, we seized the opportunity to bring in additional capital so we can support our rapidly growing customer base regardless of the economic conditions.”
