Horizon3 CEO: Channel key to cracking the APJ cybersecurity market
Singapore is expected to serve as the hub for the ASEAN region following new investments from EDBI and its parent SG Growth Capital.
As the fastest growing cybersecurity vendor, Horizon3’s growth story has been focused on its market fit and built. The AI-Native Proactive Security Company recently announced a US$250 million Series E at a valuation of more than US$2 billion.
In August, the vendor also made a US$20 million investment in its global partner ecosystem. The investment expands channel leadership, enablement, strategic alliances, and go-to-market programs, so partners can continue delivering security their customers can prove, while building high-margin practices of their own.
“What's unique about the cybersecurity business is that cybersecurity is uniquely a channel selling business. What I mean is, outside of the early antivirus products, product-led purchasing is just not a thing in cyber. It's all about last mile trust. You can't take channel sales and bolt it to a direct sales force. You have to build the go-to-market around channel from the jump, which is what we did. That is why we've been able to sustain significant growth at scale in cyber,” Snehal Antani, Co-Founder and CEO of Horizon3 shared with CRN Asia in a recent interview during GovWare and Singapore International Cyber Week 2026.
“All the work we've done to build the channel years ago has set the conditions to have the channel be activated, building pipeline and converting deals as we've scaled up,” he added.
Expansion into Asia
According to Antani, about 75% of the company’s revenue now comes from the US, but Europe and Asia are expected to see stronger contribution. The cybersecurity company recently unveiled that Singapore is expected to serve as the hub for the ASEAN region.
The expansion into Singapore is supported by new investments from EDBI and its parent SG Growth Capital, the strategic investment platform established by the Singapore Economic Development Board and Enterprise Singapore to support companies from early to growth stages.
Leading the region is Gareth Cox, VP of Sales APJ at Horizon3. Cox shared with CRN Asia that his focus is on building the workforce to support the region.
In terms of the opportunity in the region, Antani shared that he is seeing tailwinds in three areas.
“The first area is regulatory driven. Post Mythos AI, everyone is panicked on how to become resilient in this AI cyber warfare era. And the attacker's perspective is super important. Hence, the regulatory kind of machinery is driving significant demand. The second is the threat landscape. This region of the world is getting hotter every day. Looking at the threat landscape, there's a lot more activity happening in this region for a variety of reasons,” he said.
“And I think the third is economic size. Australia, Singapore, Japan, Korea are massive markets. If you enter those markets the right way, you can convert a significant amount of revenue. And in my opinion for APJ, the right way to enter those markets is through strategic capital and top-down,” Antani explained.
For Antani, there is a big contrast in how business is done in Asia compared to the US.
“In the US, I built a business middle-up, mid-market and then moved to enterprise. But I think in APJ, you've got to win enterprise, and you win the rest of the market,” Antani said.
This is also why the channel ecosystem is crucial for Horizon3 as it looks to extend its reach and accelerate its sales cycle.
“Every seller we hire is required to have a significant positive reputation with channel partners in the region. If you look at companies that want to be managed and managed service providers, 70% of companies in APJ want to have a trusted partner wrapping additional services around. And in the past, they've always looked at defensive cybersecurity. And this is now the evolution moving forward to bring on an offensive security control,” Antani added.
MSP opportunity
In Europe, Horizon3 has expanded its partnership with Pax8 to bring the NodeZero Proactive Security Platform to the region’s managed service providers (MSPs) through the Pax8 Marketplace. The expansion enables partners to build recurring security services that help small and midsized businesses understand how attackers could compromise their environments, prioritize corrective actions, and verify remediation.
The European expansion makes autonomous offensive security testing accessible to more MSPs and the businesses they protect. Partners can use NodeZero to deliver initial assessments, support remediation engagements, and establish ongoing testing programs without conducting every penetration test manually.
“For every dollar they make using us to assess their customers, those MSSPs generate $10 to $20 of high margin revenue on top of us by bundling remediation, by bundling and upselling additional security controls that are missing, by bundling incident response retainers, by bundling virtual CISO advisory services. All of that is high margin revenue on top of us, which means we align incentives between my sales team, the MSSP's sales team and the customer's outcomes,” Antani said.
Future plans
With the cybersecurity industry also continuing to see larger vendors acquiring smaller and successful cybersecurity companies, Antani shared that one of the things he focuses on as a CEO is the variables that he has control over.
“I have no control over the corp dev teams at large cyber companies. I do have complete control over IPO readiness. IPO readiness is do I have their revenue metrics, the operational metrics, the financial audited processes and so on and so forth. And so I am maniacally focused on mastering the variables I have control over in the journey for IPO readiness,” he said.
When asked if they were approached to be acquired, Antani said, “If we are attractive to a buyer, then great. I will tell you we are not cheap. I have no incentive or reason to sell and I have complete control over my fate and complete control over my variables. And that's what I focus on,” he stated.