myGate, a mobile-based security management solutions provider, announced that it has raised Rs 16 crore in its first round of funding led by Prime Venture Partners. The company aims to employ the influx of funds to invest in its technology and scale up the user base to 2 million homes across the top seven metropolitan cities over the next two years. Currently, the company is primarily targeting the gated residential communities.

“Security for gated premises is a multi billion market that is fundamentally under served by often obsolete legacy providers and solutions, myGate provides an outstanding experience for people living in gated communities, allowing them to keep track of their visitors and all the relevant developments in the community with the help of an app,” said Vijay Arisetty, CEO and Co-founder of myGate. The company plans to expand its presence in cities such as Pune, Hyderabad, and Delhi-NCR.

“I came across myGate through a personal experience first and then we sought them out for evaluation. The solution they provide is unique in many ways, but the most attractive part is the addressable market myGate is gearing up for; it’s huge,” said Sanjay Swamy, Partner at Prime Ventures.

The Bengaluru-based company was launched in 2016 and since then the company has validated approximately 24 million visits through the mobile app across 100,000 homes. According to a statement released by the company, over 5,000 guards in Bengaluru use myGate.

myGate is a mobile based app system that comprises of an Android app for security guards and an Android/iOS app for residents ,with regular voice call function as a backup for non smartphone users. Hence all visitor entries and exits are logged in digitally via the system, while providing the resident complete visibility and control.  The app is used by each member of a family to pre-approve, approve or deny a visitor to their residence. The startup is collaborating with telecom players like Vodafone and Jio to provide guards with a separate SIM card with high speed data connectivity.

myGate also offers certain advanced capabilities such as e-intercom (automatic visitor authentication), kid’s safety alerts, staff attendance, infrastructure-free vehicle management, touch-less resident identification, clubhouse access management; management reporting and visitor overstay alerts. Hence, the company through its app-based system seeks to digitise the security system in gated communities, thereby eliminating the need for the conventional security guards with their paper and pen logging of visitors and intercom system.

So far, the startup has also tied up with builders including Sobha, Prestige, Purvankara and Lodha among others so as to deploy their solutions, in addition to which the company is also testing the employment of its solution for other gated premises such as office buildings, school campuses and factory premises. The system operates on a subscription model, wherein the monthly subscription for one gated community can vary from anywhere in the Rs 8000 to Rs 30,000 range on the basis of the number of houses, number of entry and exit gates to monitor etc.

According to a report released by Grant Thornton, the security market in the country is currently an industry with a $6 billion valuation, of which the gated-premises security market (which consists of manual guards and security equipment) is estimated to account for $2 billion. As per the estimates released by myGate, in the top seven cities across the country, there are more than 100,000 gated communities with approximately 35 million residents.

(Picture courtesy: blog.mygate.in)