Upwind: A US cybersecurity co shares what's in demand now as wars move to the cloud

Bengaluru: US-based cloud security firm Upwind is seeing growing demand from defence and government-linked sectors as cyber warfare becomes a key dimension of global geopolitical conflicts, company executives said during the launch of its India and Asia-Pacific expansion strategy.

“Look at warfare five years ago. Armies used to fight. Today somebody is attacking data centres. That’s where we come into the picture,” said Simarpreet Singh, Country Manager – India & SAARC at Upwind Security, indicating that critical infrastructure and defence-linked organisations are increasingly prioritising cloud runtime security.

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The company, which recently raised $250 million in a Series B funding round, said India is emerging as one of its most strategic growth markets amid rapid cloud adoption, AI deployment and tightening data protection regulations.

India at the centre of APJ expansion

Upwind said its Asia-Pacific and Japan (APJ) expansion will focus heavily on India, alongside Australia, Singapore and Japan, with local SaaS infrastructure, hiring and partner ecosystems being built out in the region.

Gavin Selkirk, VP and general manager for Asia Pacific and Japan region at Upwind, said the company expects aggressive growth from the region under what it internally calls a “double-double strategy” — doubling business over two-year periods.

“In three years, we expect our business (in APJ region) to touch around $30 million Annual Recurring Revenue,” he said, adding that India is becoming one of the company’s priority markets globally.

Executives said investor interest in India’s cybersecurity ecosystem is also rising because of the country’s accelerating cloud transformation and enterprise digitisation.

“One of the amazing things about the Indian market is that cloud adoption here is probably leading much of the world,” said Marc Brown, Director of Solutions Architecture at Upwind. “There are digital-native organisations that have been built directly on cloud infrastructure, and that creates a strong need for runtime visibility and security.”

The company said sectors such as fintech, BFSI, manufacturing and government are emerging as key targets for its India business.

Defence and geopolitical risks driving cybersecurity demand

Upwind executives repeatedly pointed to geopolitical instability, AI-driven attacks and supply-chain vulnerabilities as major demand drivers globally.

Singh said organisations are increasingly worried about large-scale supply-chain attacks, zero-day exploits and AI-enabled cyber offensives.

“There’s a fear around what attackers can now do with AI and zero days,” Gourav Nagar, Head of Information Security and IT at Upwind said. “Attackers are already leveraging AI at a much faster pace than enterprises.”

Company executives said the nature of warfare itself has evolved, with attacks increasingly targeting cloud infrastructure, APIs and runtime environments rather than only physical systems.

Rinki Sethi, CISO at Upwind, said enterprises now need real-time visibility into attacks as threats evolve faster than traditional security systems can respond.

Sethi said AI had significantly lowered the barrier to entry for attackers, while also increasing the speed and scale of cyberattacks, making real-time “runtime” security increasingly important for enterprises.

She added that security teams globally are struggling with an explosion of vulnerabilities and alerts, making runtime monitoring and prioritisation increasingly important.

Pune development centre to support global engineering

As part of its India expansion, Upwind is opening an India Development Center (IDC) in Pune to support its global engineering operations.

The company said the centre will host engineering talent from India working on global cloud security and AI security products.

“Current strength of our engineering team is 10-plus, but we have a strategy to double our engineering team in India this year,” Nagar said during the interaction.

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The Pune centre is expected to work closely on compliance, governance and security engineering use-cases tailored for Indian regulatory requirements including RBI, SEBI and DPDP-related frameworks.

Executives also said the company plans to invest beyond sales operations in India by building local partnerships, supporting cybersecurity communities and hiring graduates from Indian institutions.

Funding boost and global expansion

Founded by Israeli entrepreneur Amiram Shachar, Upwind recently announced a $250 million Series B funding round, taking its total funding to over $430 million and pushing its valuation beyond $2 billion.

The company said it is expanding aggressively across APJ as enterprises rethink cybersecurity strategies amid AI adoption and rising cloud-based threats.