Wipro Ventures, the corporate investment arm of multinational information technology services firm Wipro Ltd, has invested in CloudKnox Security Inc., a US-based cloud security-focused company.
Bengaluru-based Wipro said in a statement the investment was part of the larger strategic partnership between the two companies, with a focus on providing a joint security solution to enterprises
Wipro Ventures invested in CloudKnox through its second fund, which has a corpus of $150 million (around Rs 1,060.5 crore). However, it did not disclose the amount it had invested in CloudKnox.
Sheetal Mehta, CIS officer and senior VP for cybersecurity and risk services at Wipro, said the investment and partnership would help give the company first-mover advantage for offering identity and resource-focused security solutions to both governments and large organisations.
“The current market environment is fueling large-scale adoption of multi-cloud and hybrid cloud infrastructures, creating even greater global demand for the CloudKnox platform,” Raj Mallempati, CEO at CloudKnox, said.
California-based CloudKnox was set up by Balaji Parimi. The proposed solution that will be offered by Wipro and underwritten by CloudKnox’s technology will allow clients to gain insights into permissions, identities, and actions across hybrid- and multi-cloud infrastructures.
Other features will include application programming interface-based keys and anomaly detection.
Wipro Ventures floated its second fund in January this year. The corpus is higher than its $100 million first fund, which was launched in 2015. The investment arm of the IT company was set up by Rishad Premji, the son of Wipro founder chairperson Azim Premji.
The company’s strategy has been to invest in promising enterprise software startups and bring their leading-edge solutions to its customers, then-CEO and MD Abidali Z Neemuchwala had said. The new fund shows the company’s “continued commitment” to this strategy, he added.
Wipro Ventures is managed by Biplab Adhya and Venu Pemmaraju. It has so far invested in 16 startups. Most of these startups are based in the US while four are in Israel and one is in India.
Last month, Wipro announced that it had appointed Thierry Delaporte as its new MD and CEO. Until recently, Delaporte was the chief operating officer of Capgemini Group and a member of its group executive board.
