Red Sift is a data-driven cybersecurity company that provides an integrated, AI-powered cloud platform to protect organizations from phishing, brand impersonation, and email-based attacks. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Red Sift co-founder and CEO Rahul Powar to learn more.
Rahul Powar’s Background
Could you tell me more about your background? Powar said:
“I’ve always had a keen interest in developing scalable technology. As a founding member of Shazam, I was privileged to launch the first iPhone app back in 2008. After Shazam, I founded Apsmart which was acquired by Thomson Reuters, where I led advanced products and innovation.”
“Today, as CEO and co-founder of Red Sift, I’m focused on making cybersecurity simple, scalable, and accessible, turning complex security challenges into AI powered solutions that protect thousands of organizations worldwide. Our mission is to make the Internet a fundamentally safer place.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Powar shared:
“After two decades of working with massive, noisy datasets and building real-time systems, we saw a common challenge: companies rely on data for decisions yet struggle to unlock its value when it matters most. That insight led us to create Red Sift, with the intention of turning complex data into actionable insight. We focused on cybersecurity, specifically email security, because 90% of attacks start with phishing, and while authentication measures like DMARC can stop domain impersonation, it’s notoriously hard to implement. Together with my co-founder, Randal Pinto, , we launched our market leading software, Red Sift OnDMARC, to make enforcement simple, automated, and user-friendly, helping businesses protect themselves without the complexity or risk. Since then, we have continued to build our AI adoption and distribution at scale, shipping a suite of applications.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Powar reflected:
“One of my favorite moments was when a leader from a major financial services company pulled me aside and said, ‘Since we started using your solutions, we stopped having incidents involving our customers getting defrauded.’”
“We completely changed their approach, from constantly reacting to problems to staying ahead of them. That was a moment that really crystallized for me what we’re doing and the impact this technology can have, especially on real people living their lives. We also worked with the World Health Organization during the peak of COVID to help lock down their systems and stop impersonation attacks. People often say that what we do in cyber is abstract, but we were helping secure information coming out of what was likely the most important source during the pandemic.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Powar explained:
“Our core products are our OnDMARC application, which stops spoofing and phishing emails before they can impact your network by identifying fraudulent emails through IP allow lists and Public Key Cryptography, backed by our powerful LLM, Red Sift Radar. We also provide Red Sift Brand Trust, which leverages Agentic Triage AI to help identify fake domains, executive deepfakes and other impersonations. We recently expanded this offering to cover not only standard websites and domains, but also social media platforms like TikTok, X and YouTube, helping organizations stop phishing attacks and executive impersonations. In addition, we offer expertise across High-Assurance Certificate Transparency Monitoring through Red Sift Certificates and help organizations to discover and build a full and continuously automated system of your external-facing and cloud assets, through Red Sift ASM.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Powar noted:
“As technology, including AI, continues to advance, so does our product. The reality is clear: AI is here to stay and so we’ve leaned into how we can use artificial intelligence to combat the bad actors. When we launched Red Sift, ChatGPT didn’t exist and AI was still in its earliest phases (though I was privileged to be one of the first GPT-3 beta users in 2020). Today, it is at the core of everything we do, streamlining work for cybersecurity professionals and helping defend our networks. It is also becoming a key tenant in how we fight against adversarial AI, which is making impersonations, deepfakes, and phishing scams easier, more plentiful, and more effective than ever before.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Powar cited:
“We have achieved many key milestones in our 10 year history. The launch of OnDMARC in 2017, and signing our first customer, Wise. Our Series A funding in 2019 allowed us to enter the U.S. market for the first time. In 2022, our Series B enabled us to scale up our teams across 17 different countries, ranking 24th on Delottie’s Fast 50.”
“Today we work closely with a wealth of key industry partners, including Cisco, Cloudflare and Microsoft to bring our products and safeguards to many different organizations from small to enterprise. Launching Brand Trust social media monitoring in 2025 draws to a close a strong year for Red Sift and I’m excited for what 2026 will bring.”
Customer Success Stories
Can you share any specific customer success stories? Powar highlighted:
“We work with customers across industries – from legal organizations including Bird&Bird and William Fry, to financial services, life sciences and retail. We are proud of the work we do in every sector. One of the things we have been most proud of is our work with Wise, the international banking transfer service. In just our first 6 months with them, we stopped over 85,000 fraudulent emails, highlighting the deluge of dangerous, scam emails targeting the organization, especially challenging when people trust Wise with their banking information. In addition, our work with charities such as Save the Children allows us to protect vital humanitarian operations, where operating in high-risk regions presents unique challenges.”
“For Holland & Barrett, Red Sift OnDMARC has blocked nearly 15,000 potentially malicious emails. For rapidly growing SaaS organization Zoominfo, OnDMARC banished shadow IT challenges and brought full control under one roof.”
Funding/Revenue
Are you able to discuss funding and/or revenue metrics? Powar revealed:
“Since 2015, we’ve grown through initial seeding, then Series A and in 2022, Series B funding (led by Highland Europe and supported by Sands Capital) raising $54 million. Investment in Red Sift has enabled the continued growth of our innovation and product development, as well as key expansions across the U.S., Europe and APAC region.”
Total Addressable Market (TAM)
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Powar assessed:
“The company is pursuing an estimated $12–13B global TAM in 2025 across its three core categories — paid DMARC (~$2B), Digital Risk Protection (~$5B), and High-Assurance Certificate Transparency Monitoring (~$5B), based on current market sizing studies for each segment.”
“These markets are forecast to grow substantially, implying a combined opportunity in roughly the $25–35B range by the early 2030s.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Powar affirmed:
“One of our biggest advantages comes from our focus on industry partnerships. These partnerships give us something critical – more and better data that gives us the information we need to have best in class AI. Our products use advanced AI agents and LLM-powered tools to automate complex tasks like phishing detection, domain impersonation analysis, and misconfiguration diagnosis—delivering analyst-level insights in minutes, but those AI powered tools are only as good as the data that we have access to.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Powar concluded:
“Outside of my passion for technology is a passion for sustainability. As AI systems move from human-driven prompts to machine-to-machine workflows, the economics of intelligence are shifting dramatically. Every token processed by a large language model consumes compute, money, and energy. At scale, this is no longer a rounding error, it is a strategic and environmental challenge. Over the next year, I’m keen to explore how token efficiency can become a high-level conversation, as enterprises recognize that AI integration inefficiencies translate into millions in operating costs and megawatt-hours of energy consumption.”
“The sustainability issue is impossible to ignore. According to IEA projections, data center electrical demand could nearly double by 2030, driven primarily by AI workloads. That’s equivalent to the annual consumption of an entire nation like Japan. In this context, optimizing schemas and reducing token overhead is not just a technical tweak, it’s an imperative. Every redundant field name is wasted energy, and every inefficiency compounds across billions of tool calls. Companies that embrace LLM-aware API design will not only cut costs but also reduce their carbon footprint, positioning themselves as leaders in responsible AI.”
“At Red Sift, we are always looking into active ways at Sift to reduce our impact on the environment, working with our key partners, Trace.”
