Transforming the cyber security sector
What drove us to invest?
Red Sift is a provider of cybersecurity technology led by experienced co-founders, Rahul Powar and Randal Pinto who had previously built Shazam. They founded Red Sift with the belief that existing cybersecurity products weren’t doing enough to protect organisations from online fraud. Red Sift has had a significant impact on the $6bn cyber security sector. At launch, the founders chose to focus on cybersecurity, in particular email security, because it’s here that the problem is most acute with over £2.3bn lost by companies last year.
Using the Red Sift platform the team created “OnDMARC”, a product which helps businesses to quickly and easily enforce DMARC in an automated, user-centric way. There has been a significant rise in the number of cyberattacks in recent years, and Red Sift has experienced a surge in businesses keen to quickly and securely implement DMARC.
How has the business grown?
We first invested in Red Sift in June 2016, leading the seed round. The company was pre-revenue with a valuation of <£5m. We have participated in each subsequent funding round including the most recent $54 million Series B funding round in February 2022 which valued the business in excess of c.£130 million as it focuses on expanding into the US market. The business has raised $69.8 million to date.
Negotiating a partial exit for our existing investors
The most recent funding round was oversubscribed for new money into the company. This demand led to a unique opportunity for Oxford Capital investors. We engaged with RedSift and new lead investors Highland Capital to begin a secondary exit for the seed stage investors. This enabled early-stage Oxford Capital investors to sell 50% of their shares that had been held for the three year EIS qualifying period, generating gross tax free returns of over 7x capital invested.
We remain invested in the company, which gave both new and existing investors the opportunity to reinvest therefore retaining the potential of further up-side as the company continues to expand globally and into new product areas.