SA’s Kalon Venture Partners Invests In Sendmarc, Funds 3 Other Startups In Portfolio

South African email protection startup, Sendmarc, has landed funding of an undisclosed amount from SA-based venture capital firm, Kalon Venture Partners.

The Johannesburg-based VC has also made follow-on investments in three of its current portfolio companies (Ozow, FinChatBot, and Flow) in deals that happened at very points in 2019 but were kept under wraps. However, the deal with Sendmarc was concluded in December last year.

Founded in 2018 by Keith Thompson, alongside co-founders, Sam Hutchinson and Sacha Matulovich, Sendmarc offers, among other things, email protection from phishing attacks and email spoofing.

The startup helps corporates and small businesses to implement the Domain Message Authentication, Reporting and Conformance (DMarc) industry standard for email protection.

Implementing the standard helps protect one’s domain name from con artists and scamsters stealing the domain name and using it to send hoax emails to companies’ clients, suppliers or networks.

Although the process employed by Sendmarc to protect clients can be carried out by the owners of the domain name themselves, the startup handles the burden for those that are not so technically-minded. Sendmarc handles the entire process on behalf of clients, charging between ZAR 450.00 and ZAR 50 K a month for the service.

According to this report, the startup is currently working with 100 companies, covering over 200 domains, though not all are paying customers.

The capital injection from Kalon Venture Partners is expected to boost Sendmarc’s quest to reach up to 200,000 small and medium-sized firms in South Africa.

Having committed fresh investments in three of its older portfolio companies that its CEO, Clive Butkow, describes as startups that are “growing at an incredible rate”, it is understood that Kalon is currently looking at closing three more new deals.

A week ago, Butkow told WeeTracker that the VC has “recently or is in the process of raising capital for four of its companies at close to or more than double the original valuation.“