Worldr adds another $8 million in seed round, heads East and West

Messaging systems in today’s workplace have become as ubiquitous as email. In some cases, they’ve downright replaced it. Messengers are everywhere, and we’re all using them. And even though they offer end-to-end encryption, the underlying questions remain - who’s doing the encryption, where is the data sitting, who ultimately owns it, and crucially, are these platforms meeting increasingly strict compliance and regulatory issues?

Financial regulators in the US and UK aren’t joking around regarding the use of private messaging applications. The Securities and Exchange Commission, better known as the SEC, has handed out a total of $1.8 billion in fines across 16 US banking institutions. 

Stepping up to the plate to answer this question of data sovereignty, and hopefully make the fines finite is London-based startup Worldr who’s now collected a total of $11 million in seed funding, a number up $8 million since July 2021.

World’s zero trust architecture offers any organisation dealing with sensitive information on a daily basis complete control over who holds and can access, corporate data, conversations, and for-your-eyes-only information.

With corporates seeing an increase of almost one-third more attacks from nefarious actors, we’ve seen a bolstering of the defenses across the board. Worldr plays its part in communication and collaboration platforms, including Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp, Outlook, and Slack. 

The secret sauce? Retain ownership of your data. Worldr’s architecture offers enterprise-level security and compliance by storing all communications and files within the customer’s own environment. 

Bypassing a third-party provider’s own servers allows organisations to retain full ownership of their enterprise data, so employees can continue using the platforms they’ve come to call indispensable without the added risk to their data. 

The new influx of capital will be used to help the company meet a growing global demand and expand its presence West through the opening of a dedicated office in the Big Apple, and East via an office in Dubai.

“Data sovereignty has never been more important. The increase in cyberattacks, data localisation requirements, and scrutiny from regulators mean that it is no longer enough to blindly trust that collaboration platforms are keeping business communications secure and compliant,” explained CEO Max Buchan. “Companies rightfully want control of their data to protect themselves against operational, reputational and regulatory risk. This has not only fuelled demand for our zero trust architecture for Microsoft Teams, but we are also being challenged to apply this solution across an organisation’s entire software environment. This funding will be critical to helping us further this mission and scale to meet the demand.”

Worldr’s additional $8 million in this tranche of the seed funding was led by Molten Ventures, who join existing investors IQ Capital and Playfair Capital. Pretiosum Ventures, Navigate VC, and national security-focused fund MD One Ventures also participated alongside a number of industry specialist angel investors including Alex Walsh (Senior MD, Blackstone), Hussain Baig (ex, Global COO & CIO, HSBC) and John Theroux (ex-Vice Chairman, Bain & Co).

Molten Ventures’ Lenora Ross-Skinner commented, “The move towards zero trust and data sovereignty is becoming critical for any entity which deals with sensitive information. Worldr’s unique product set optimises for privacy, security and data protection with seamless integration into existing enterprise software. Crucially, with Worldr, data is controlled by the enterprise itself, marking an incredibly important step forward in data sovereignty.”