India is sprouting startups faster than anywhere else in the world. The flow of venture capital has also picked up momentum. But so far, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) have been few and far between.
Things are looking up, however. In the past one week, three Indian startups were acquired by global players. The latest is Bangalore’s iViZ Security, a SaaS startup that does ethical hacking to test software security.
US-based software security provider Cigital Inc. is acquiring iViz for its patented technologies, according to a company statement.
Yesterday, Tech in Asia reported the acquisition of Mumbai-based The Service Solutions (TSS) by German cloud technology company B2X Care Solutions, and Bangalore-based Marketelligent by Brillio, a software development and technology consultant company from the US.
Founded by two IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) grads, Bikash Barai and Nilanjan De, iViZ holds a few patents in software security testing. “Ethical hacking, in other words ‘Penetration Testing’ is mandatory for compliances like PCI, SOX, HIPAA, ISO-27001, etc. Manual penetration testing is not just costly but also impossible to scale since there aren’t enough humans on earth to test the billions of online and offline applications,” Barai, CEO of iViZ, says. This is the problem that iViZ tackles – “stay one step ahead of hackers by making penetration testing scalable and affordable through product innovations.”
The startup, funded by IDG Ventures, has won awards from University of California-Berkeley, Intel, Red Herring, and National Association of Software and Service Companies (Nasscom) for its products. Currently, it serves about 500 customers.
M&A and strategic advisory group Technology Holdings Worldwide advised iViZ on this acquisition deal.
Last month, Tech in Asia had reported two major acquisitions in India: Nielsen buying Indicus Analytics and Yahoo’s first Indian acquisition: BookPad. Indian startups too have stepped up acquisitions abroad: Zomato acquired Polish food guide Gastronauci, and Wingify from India netted US-based Concept Feedback last month.
According to the latest Nasscom report, India is still lagging behind in M&A deals. So far, there have been only 20 M&A deals in the last three years, amounting to a little over US$1 billion, it says.
See: India is now the world’s fastest growing startup scene with 800 new startups a year
India sees 3 startup acquisitions in a week – the latest is ethical hacker iViZ by Washington’s Cigital
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