Red Piranha CEO / Co-Founder Adam Bennett (source: Red Piranha)

It took the Bennetts and their team six years to build, test and refine their Crystal Eye technology before they took it to market in 2021. This allowed them to build something from the ground up which can now address the key challenges of cybersecurity.

The first challenge is complexity. There are over 3,200 vendors offering cybersecurity solutions, and historically the focus has been to be very good at one thing. As a result, the average organisation now has 60-70 different cybersecurity solutions in place. That makes it hard to manage but also leads to cracks whenever these solutions don’t work well together or just one breaks down.

Red Piranha describes its solution as a comprehensive platform which is easier to manage, more cost-efficient, safer and future-proof. With this end-to-end approach, the company is riding a major trend in the industry – which is the consolidation of vendors. Gartner predicts that 75% of organisations are on a drive to reduce the number of solution providers. With Red Piranha, they can reduce it to one.

Another important element is the fact that Red Piranha’s technology is Australian-owned and built, which, in cybersecurity, is becoming more and more essential. While it has been long accepted that Huawei security cameras pose a risk to our privacy, cybersecurity firms have been under less scrutiny.

Industry giant Fortinet was founded by two Chinese-born brothers and has faced repeated concerns around having backdoor connections to China. In 2019, it settled a claim, acknowledging that over a 7-year period, it had sold to the US Government products labeled as US security technology which were in fact Chinese-made. Also Kaspersky, the well-known anti-virus software, has faced repeated claims of ties between certain Kaspersky officials and Russian intelligence and other government agencies.

All of this plays into the hands of Red Piranha, which holds a Defense Export Permit by the Australian Department of Defense, allowing it to export its technology to foreign governments. Red Piranha is also one of just two Australian companies in the Cyber Threat Alliance, an exclusive global network of 35 cybersecurity firms, featuring industry giants like Cisco, Fortinet, Hitachi and McAfee.

Certifications held by Red Piranha (source: Red Piranha Investor Presentation)

Finally, the tech just works. The key review and benchmarking tool in the industry, Gartner, sees Red Piranha far ahead of its competition (including Cisco and IBM) across important categories like detection, prevention and firewalls.

Gartner Discovery Pro Matrix showing Red Piranha on top right (source: Gartner)

As a credit to their tech, Red Piranha just won two awards at the 2024 Australian Technologies Competition (ATC) – the award “Critical Tech and Cybersecurity” and also beating 135 other companies to the key award “Australian Technology Company of the Year 2024”.

Executive Director Kane Bennett thinks the combination of all of this is key: “The reason why we have won contracts with the Australian government, including for defense, as well as bluechips like Austal is that our solution is the Swiss Army Knife of cybersecurity. We can offer everything in one place, 100% Australian, 100% safe”.

Scaling into a trillion dollar opportunity

With the technology fully built, licenses, permits and patents in place, and contracts with high-profile corporate and defense customers won, Red Piranha is now entering its commercial scale-up phase.

McKinsey estimated the global cybersecurity to be worth US$150 billion in 2021 and growing 12.4% per year. However, this is just the already supplied market, and the consultancy sees the total addressable market at close to US$2 trillion, as more and more companies are realising the threat.

Given the size of this pie, winning just a small slice represents a major upside for Red Piranha. The Bennetts already knew that they were in an ideal position to win market share. However, until recently the final missing piece was a market-leading sales team.

In July, they landed a major coup by poaching George Boulis from industry giant Fortinet where he was previously APAC Sales Director.

New hire George Boulis (source: Red Piranha)

Mr Boulis brought in a team of sales experts who got straight to work. Red Piranha’s pipeline now sits at just under $100 million (up 50x from before the hire) and the team have already won significant business including Austal, Buckman and Rackspace along with state and federal government contracts – for example, WA police.

Management is confident that this traction will allow them to quadruple revenue in the next two years, landing at around $10 million revenue in FY26, most of which is recurring.

But there are a number of blue sky opportunities, including in India, UAE & Saudi-Arabia, which are large markets where the incumbent US and Israeli products are being shunned.

After almost a decade, it seems that the Bennetts’ hard work is finally paying off.

Kane sees Red Piranha at an inflection point: “George agreeing to join us in itself is a testament to our product and team. We now have everything in place to roll out our technology to a global market. I have never been more excited about our prospects”.

Reach Markets have been engaged by Red Piranha Limited to provide Corporate Advisory Services, including managing investor communications and may receive fees for its services.

Reach Investment Group Nominees Pty Ltd ATF R Markets Unit Trust, a related entity of Reach Markets, holds stock or shares in Red Piranha Limited.