Securly, a company that is aiming to help kids stay safe online at home and in school, has raised $16 million in Series B funding led by Defy Partners. Owl Ventures also participated in this round. Founded by former McAfee engineers Vinay Mahadik and Bharath Madhusudan, Securly has now raised a total of $24 million since being founded.
With this round of funding, Securly is going to accelerate further research and development in K-12 safety. And the company is going to ramp up its sales and support.
Securly’s tools are able to block adult content online and can flag bullying and self-harm messages across emails, web browser, searches, chats, and documents using machine learning algorithms that are constantly being traced by safety specialists.
As the algorithms flag new content that is potentially disturbing, student experts will be able to engage with the alerts and evaluate fuller context behind the flagged activity to eliminate false alarms or reach out to schools, parents, or authorities. Even though the enterprise security market is large, very few companies built by vendors address the needs of parents.
“Securly has built a unified platform that allows everyone from parents and educators, to IT admins, counselors and superintendents to all participate in the students’ online safety and wellness,” said Mahadik — who serves as CEO at Securly. “Each product and service in this platform informs the other, and leverages human-assisted Artificial Intelligence to create a safe future for the kids – something only uniquely possible with Securly.”
Securly currently has more than 2,000 paid school districts using the service. And a similar number of districts are using its free Chromebook filtering and email auditing services. Plus the company has over 500,000 parents on its parent portal and served over 7 million students across 5,000 schools.
“Securly has already achieved significant growth in a substantial and important market,” added Defy co-founder and managing director Neil Sequeira. “Using technology to help keep kids safe online in school and at home is more important than ever. Securly’s software solution is making a meaningful difference and we are thrilled to be partnering with talented founders like Vinay and Bharath.”
