Data volumes are growing exponentially and expected to hit 175 zettabytes by 2025. For businesses managing this unprecedented growth, ensuring compliance with regulatory initiatives like GDPR and the California Consumer Privacy Act has become a challenge. eXate is the data management solution that enables enterprises to have a single application to manage data visibility and privacy across the data landscape. Companies can now readily capture the value of the data that they possess and share the data internally without getting bogged down by governance concerns, resulting in significant value creation, cost savings, and efficiency.
London TechWatch caught up with CEO and Cofounder Peter Lancos to learn more about the pain point that eXate addresses, the burgeoning data privacy space, and the company’s recent funding round, and much, much more…
Who were your investors and how much did you raise?
eXate raised a Late seed of £2.3m from Outward VC, ING Ventures, and Triple Point Ventures.
Tell us about your product or service.
In the age of data fluidity, eXate is democratising data privacy for organisations by providing a simple embedded solution that automates the technical enforcement of data policies. In turn, businesses can overcome the large-scale challenges created by evolving and complex global data privacy regulations.
eXate’s DataSecOps solution empowers Software Engineers, Data Scientists, Governance Risk and Control, Cyber Security and Operations teams to work together in a single application for safer and easier access, analysis, delivery and governance of data.
APIgator by eXate is a scalable and efficient way to protect data flowing through APIs. It provides a full audit on who is accessing data and who is blocked from accessing data. By applying the Principle of Least Privilege (PoLP), APIgator has been designed to protect sensitive data and ensure only the correct, relevant information is provided to the right people. APIgator eliminates the risk of over-distributing data and allows data policies to be applied centrally.
What inspired the start of eXate?
There is a huge opportunity for organisations to unlock value from their data assets, however, doing this in a secure, compliant way is a problem for many due to changing data privacy regulations around the world and new data infrastructures. To solve this issue, businesses have to invest in costly processes that require a lot of time and resource, often with manual processes or the use of multiple single-point solutions. This can create a barrier to using that data effectively or safely and in the event of non-compliance can result in severe penalties from regulators.
Many of these challenges were experienced first-hand by myself and my cofounder Sonal Rattan during our time as digital business leaders at HSBC, and so we founded eXate in 2018 to address these issues.
How is it different?
eXate is competing with those that tend to do more specific types of data privacy, such as Hazy, Privitar and Very Good Security. By contrast, eXate aggregates multiple types of privacy into one solution and provides central governance and control.
What market you are targeting and how big is it?
We began by targeting financial services, however, the solution is applicable across any industry which holds, process and shares sensitive data internally or externally.
What’s your business model?
Annual license fee.
How has COVID-19 impacted the business?
COVID-19 has had a positive impact on the business, as people look to come to grips with remote working and the challenges of sensitive data associated with this. On the back of COVID-19, we have seen an increase in the adoption of APIs, therefore the demand for our APIgator product has increased dramatically.
What was the funding process like?
As you can imagine funding during a global pandemic is unchartered territory, and we adapted accordingly. eXate was the first investment that Outward VC made without ever meeting the founders in person – everything was done over Zoom.
As you can imagine funding during a global pandemic is unchartered territory, and we adapted accordingly. eXate was the first investment that Outward VC made without ever meeting the founders in person – everything was done over Zoom.
What are the biggest challenges that you faced while raising capital?
Issues relating to the global pandemic, as VC’s wanted to ensure their portfolio companies had sufficient liquidity before making any new investments. This added time and complexity to the process.
What factors about your business led your investors to write the check?
Creating a category-defining solution with regards to DataSecOps – we have initially experienced strong success in the financial services market and investors realise the potential for DataSecOps across a multitude of other industries that share sensitive data.
What are the milestones you plan to achieve in the next six months?
The funding will enable eXate to capitalize on DataSecOps demand by growing its team, accelerating platform development and expanding into new geographies and verticals.
What’s your favourite outdoor activity in London?
Walking, exploring side streets to discover new pubs and restaurants (that we are not allowed to go to anymore), and cheering on the mighty Fulham FC at Craven Cottage!
