Orca Security looking to make waves in UK market through expansion of partner network

Cybersecurity vendor recently signed a UK distribution agreement with DataSolutions

Orca Security, an Israeli and California-based cybersecurity vendor, is looking to expand its partner network in the UK to capitalise on what its CEO says is an "explosion" of companies pushing ahead with cloud deployments.

The startup has grown significantly since it was founded in 2019, reporting 1,000 per cent year-over-year sales growth and is now valued at more than $1bn following a Series C funding round led by Alphabet's independent growth fund CapitalG and Redpoint Ventures.

Orca recently signalled its intent to grow in the UK market by signing a distribution agreement with DataSolutions and the company's CEO, Avi Shua, says he is focused on a "channel first approach" to expand the business.

"We always prefer to work with partners, if we can, especially in territories that are not native to Orca," he said.

"We are assigning more and more (partners). The programme, essentially, is dramatically accelerating. We are partner first and we built the organisation within Orca to support partnerships with the goal of adding more.

"The opportunity in the UK is huge. I don't know if it's hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions, but it's huge, because the UK is one of the biggest countries in terms of cloud usage."

The business currently works with roughly half a dozen partners in the UK, a figure which Shua expects to grow noticeably moving forward, adding that Orca is looking to work with a variety of resellers from those delivering large projects to smaller businesses which will refer customers.

Partners can gain access to "compelling product margins, pre-sales support, deal registration, training, co-marketing programmes, and market development funds", the company says.

Orca offers a solution called SideScanning, an agentless, cloud-native security platform which collects data externally. The business has partnerships with AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, meaning its solutions can operate across all three.

Despite reaching a valuation of more than $1bn following several rounds of funding, Shua says an IPO is not something that is in the company's short-term plan.

"Definitely IPOs will happen, but it's not going to happen this year," he said.

"Given the trajectory, we have very good access to capital from the private markets, so this is not a priority. Currently, it will probably happen in a few years once we grow dramatically bigger, then it will make sense, but given the markets and the balance sheet, it's not a priority."