PRIVATELY held Pandora Security Labs Inc. is expanding to Singapore, targeting revenues of $1 million in its first year of operations there, CEO Isaac Sabas told the BusinessMirror.
Sabas said in an exclusive interview on Thursday the homegrown company sees its expansion overseas a strategic move since “the demand, maturity and the capacity of companies to buy data security in this Southeast Asian market is higher”, he pointed out.
“Singapore is a strategic location for our expansion because it’s an international hub,” Sabas said. “It’s easy for us to sell or cross sell to other countries. We are looking at the retail, health care, manufacturing and logistics sectors [for customers].”
Pandora will focus on the four sectors “since information security is not their core competency, yet increasingly getting digitalized day by day”, he explained. These sectors are also confronted by a growing cybersecurity threat, especially ransomware and data leak, Sabas added. There is much data security problem among small and medium enterprises (SMEs), according to Sabas.
“We are focusing on the SMEs since they are the bulk of the market.”
There’s a lot of push toward security today since the data privacy is in place and everybody is required to comply, according to Sabas.
“But questions like what products and services to buy and how to implement and operate them entail acquisition of security.”
Sabas said Pandora’s Singapore office will offer assessment, monitoring and safeguarding of a company’s information and communications technology infrastructure.
“We are offering our products combined with the right processes and the right people.”
The opening of a sales office in Singapore would be the company’s first abroad and “more or less the first time to be able to close international customers”.
Most of Pandora’s international customers are nonenterprise, he said. “What we are looking up to now is go to countries where we can sell our enterprise products.”
As Pandora sails overseas, it is willing to unload 15 percent of the company to strategic investors who would not only invest but also get its customers on board, Sabas added.
“We are going there in October to finalize necessary documents,” he said. “By the end of the year, we will be opening our sales office in Singapore. Our headquarters is still in the Philippines.”
Founded in 2012, Pandora is providing security to local customers mainly in the health care and manufacturing sectors, he pointed out. It also has customers in the logistics and retail sectors.
“Locally, we have already hit our targets,” Sabas said. “We are shifting our gears now and looking into utilizing our capital investments to capture international markets.”