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Kalon Venture Partners picks up a stake in Sendmarc

Samuel Mungadze
By Samuel Mungadze, Africa editor
Johannesburg, 07 Sep 2020
Clive Butkow, Kalon Venture Partners CEO.
Clive Butkow, Kalon Venture Partners CEO.

Venture capital firm Kalon Venture Partners has invested in cyber security start-up Sendmarc. The value of the deal was not disclosed.

Kalon, an African venture capital fund set up to invest in digital disruptive technology, says with the ongoing cyber threats to businesses, a new alignment and investment towards a safer and more secure e-mail ecosystem has been forged with Sendmarc.

Clive Butkow, Kalon Venture Partners CEO, says Sendmarc is one of the leading cyber security e-mail protection and compliance companies.

“Sendmarc is the type of disruptive technology that solves big business problems in a growing market of cyber security threats faced by businesses,” he says.

Butkow praised the founders of Sendmarc – Sam Hutchinson, Keith Thompson and Sacha Matulovich – who established the company in 2018.

“At Kalon, we firstly invest in people. Sam, Sacha and Keith gave us confidence that they were the right team for this opportunity. This is not their first rodeo and they bring significant experience in building and scaling tech businesses.

“The need for a secure system that ensures ‘business as usual’ is more important than ever before and we are excited about Sendmarc joining our portfolio. Cloning of e-mails and malicious intent is now something a business can have control over, and in doing so, we are indeed part of the solution towards winning the war on cyber threats.”

Sendmarc provides the set-up, implementation and reporting functionality for a global e-mail protection standard known as DMARC. This protocol is designed to give e-mail domain owners the ability to protect their domains from unauthorised use, such as impersonation attacks or e-mail spoofing.

According to Kalon, the purpose and primary outcomes of implementing DMARC are to protect a domain from being used in business e-mail compromise attacks, phishing e-mails, e-mail scams and other invasive cyber threats.

“By accelerating the implementation of DMARC, Sendmarc enables organisations to protect not only themselves, but their customers, suppliers and the whole world from impersonation attacks on the implementing organisation’s domain,” says Kalon in a statement.

Sendmarc CEO Sam Hutchinson explains further: “The need for a secure and safe e-mail environment is of paramount importance today. We are very excited about this new investment partnership and look forward to building a more non-threatening cyber future by making e-mail safe again.”

Hutchinson is also founder of Everlytic, a marketing platform that focuses on enterprise-level marketing in the cloud.

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