South African-based Sendmarc, based in Johannesburg has raised $7 million in Series A funding round led by Atlantica Ventures.

The startup was founded in 2020 by CEO Sam Hutchinson, Keith Thompson, and Sacha Matulovich on the heels of their former business, Everlytic, a communication platform that helps businesses to send, deliver and track email and SMS communications.

However, Sendmarc went a little further to help reduce the problems associated with impersonation and phishing attacks while providing email protection services.

According to chief strategy officer Matulovich, the company’s technology is based on email authentication methods, such as its Sender Policy Framework (SPF) and the Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC), global email security standards that protect domains against spoofing and that are used by companies such as Google, Microsoft, Meta, LinkedIn, and PayPal. 

Speaking about the platform, Matulovich said “There’s a global standard designed by a consortium of the world’s largest tech companies. Every domain owner has to implement the standard, but it’s difficult to do so. It’s not something you can switch on in your Microsoft or Google. So we’ve built software enabling businesses to access these protocols to stop their emails from being impersonated.”

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This funding round also brings Sendmarc's total funding to $8.5 million since its inception. 

The investment round also saw participation from the likes of Allan Gray, E-Squared Ventures, Fireball Capital, Endeavor Catalyst, 4Di Capital, Endeavor Harvest, Alpha Private Capital, and Kalon Venture Partners - the Johannesburg-based investor that provided Sendmarc with its seed funding in 2020.

The round also introduces Aniko Szigetvari, Atlantica principle and co-founder who now joins the Sendmarc board. Speaking about this, he reveals: "Cybercrime has become a major disruptor of economic activity both in Africa and worldwide, which costs companies and governments billions of dollars annually in financial loss and reputational impact. Atlantica Ventures is supporting African digital security startups and solutions that address this growing issue or pain point. The Sendmarc team is focused on a key area of cybersecurity — email and domain security protection. We are excited to back an exceptional founding team to further support the growth of their product and geographic expansion.”