InCountry Raises $7M To Store And Regulate Global Data

The consequences of not adhering to local data protection laws are growing exponentially. Non-compliance in some countries could lead to millions of dollars in fines, potentially crippling fledgling startups. However, that doesn’t mean adhering to country-specific data regulations is immediately easier or cheaper. Laws regulating data are often byzantine in nature and expensive to understand.

Subscribe to the Crunchbase Daily

InCountry, however, believes that adhering to data regulations around the world is a problem scale and smart tech can solve, and it has raised a $7 million seed round from Caffeinated Capital, Felicis Ventures, Ridge Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, and others.

Here’s how the platform works: InCountry will store a company’s data on its servers, taking on the responsibility of ensuring that the storage of data is following local regulation. For instance, if you’re a startup headquartered in Mountain View, Calif. with operations in Cairo, Egypt, InCountry will encrypt and store data in a nearby data center that adheres to Egypt’s data storage requirements.

Right now, InCountry has one data scientist researching and working on understanding country data regulation laws. Alex Castro, the chief product officer, said he feels confident that the company will be able to handle a large volume of requests. InCountry claims that 74 percent of companies operating in the EU still don’t meet data residency requirements.

In light of data scandals both in and out of the U.S., Castro has also seen an increase in the conversation around tech regulation. Those conversations are reportedly translating into a wave of interest from tech companies looking to get ahead of—or at least keep up with—data regulations around the globe. And for investors into InCountry, regulation may be the key to returns.

Illustration Credit: Li-Anne Dias