Exfinity Ventures Clocks 13x Return From Cloudsek Partial Exit

Deeptech-focused venture capital (VC) firm Exfinity Venture Partners claims to have partially exited cybersecurity startup CloudSEK, with a 13X multiple on invested capital (MOIC) and a 40% internal rate of return (IRR). 

Speaking with Inc42, Exfinity managing partner Chinnu Senthilkumar said that the partial exit took place in January, when the VC firm sold a portion of its stake in CloudSEK to an existing investor in the startup. 

Despite the stake sale, Senthilkumar said that the investment firm continues to hold a significant portion of its stake in the company and also retains its board seat. 

The VC firm, via its second fund, first invested in CloudSEK during its $1.9 Mn Pre-Series A round in 2018. Exfinity doubled down on the startup by participating in its $7 Mn Series A round in 2021. 

It is pertinent to note that the cybersecurity platform bagged $10 Mn in a mix of primary and secondary deals in its extended Series B round that saw participation from Connecticut Innovations (CI), the VC arm of the US state of Connecticut. This was after it raised $19 Mn in its Series B1 funding round led by US-based cybersecurity company Commvault along with insurance firm MassMutual. 

As per Senthilkumar, the strategic investment by CI was made to accelerate CloudSEK’s entry into the North American market, especially Connecticut, where a number of Fortune 500 companies are housed. 

“This is a classic case of reverse innovation, where you take a solution or an idea and perfect it in this part of the world, India and Southeast Asia. And now you are finding global investors, like MassMutual Ventures and Commvault, which invested in the Series B round. They are also becoming GTM partners and they are talking to the clients in the global markets,” added Senthilkumar. 

Founded in 2015 by Rahul Sasi, CloudSEK is a cybersecurity startup that helps businesses monitor their systems and predict cyber threats through its AI-powered tech stack. Unlike traditional solutions, the startup claims to identify initial attack vectors, the earliest signs of a potential breach such as leaked credentials and exposed APIs.

Since May 2025, CloudSEK has grown over 50%, with 57% of its revenue now coming from international markets, cofounder and CEO Sasi told Inc42. The startup also claims to have crossed $15 Mn in annual recurring revenue (ARR), with the US emerging as its fastest-growing region. 

Exifinity’s Partial Exit Strategy 

Founded in 2014, Exfinity Venture Partners has invested in 40 companies till date. With three funds already under its belt, the investor launched its fourth one in January this year. The latest corpus will look to primarily back B2B startups that can be shipped to global markets. 

“We take a substantial stake in our portfolio companies, typically 10-20%, along with a board seat, and we almost act like a cofounder. Usually these kinds of companies need a lot of support, either in the GTM (go-to-market strategy) or getting the first customer, finding further strategic investors for follow-on investments, and to fly in the global markets,” Senthilkumar said. 

Once its portfolio startup finds its feet, the VC firm follows a partial exit thesis, meaning it doesn’t wait for companies to fully mature before taking an exit. Senthilkumar said that this strategy provides periodic returns to its limited partners (LP). 

Once the LPs have conviction in the exitability of these startups, they are more confident about waiting for substantial upside in the remaining stake, he added.

“If you wait for the company all the way to the end, then it actually becomes a binary outcome that is more predictable,” Senthilkumar said. Instead, Exfinity starts executing partial exits once its portfolio startups start reaching an MOIC of 10 and above. 

Notably, the partial exit from CloudSEK is the latest in a series of exits executed by Exfinity from its seven year-old Vintage Fund II over the past two years. 

Last year, the investment firm exited both AI edge chipmaker Kinara, which was acquired by semiconductor giant NXP, and logistics platform Locus that was acquired by IKEA’s investment arm, Ingka Investments. Prior to this, it also executed a partial exit from martech platform Pixis. 

With this, its Fund II has achieved a DPI of above 1, which means limited partners have already gained back more than their initial investments. 

Exfinity’s Latest Gamble

With the second fund demonstrating healthy returns, Exfinity is now accelerating focus on its future investments. 

Senthilkumar told Inc42 that Exfinity’s Fund III, which marked its final close at ₹500 Cr in 2023, has backed 18 startups to date, including leading Optimized Electrotech’s ₹35 Cr fundraise earlier this week. 

With this, the fund has signed all the first cheques, and will now execute follow-on investments in these startups. Average ticket size of these investments ranged between $2 Mn to $3 Mn. 

As for the recently announced Fund IV, which has a target corpus of ₹1,100 Cr, the VC firm will look at startups operating in sectors like computing, robotics, physical AI, alternate materials, watertech, energy, among others. 

The latest fund plans to dish out cheques in the range of $4 Mn to $5 Mn, and may also participate in Series B or C rounds – a pivot from its earlier strategic focus on pre-Series A and Series A. It will invest in 20 to 22 companies in total through the fourth fund, most of which will be new entrants to its portfolio. It already claims to have 15 investments in the pipeline. 

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