Kalaari Capital, an early investor in online retail companies like Snapdeal and Myntra, has backed cloud security startup ParaBlu as a part of its newly-launched seed and incubation programme — KStart. The VC firm has invested Rs 3.4 crore in the startup, founded by former top executives at McAfee and Mindtree.

This is the fourth investment in a startup through the programme, after it was launched in February 2016. ParaBlu was founded by former McAfee India center managing director Anand Prahlad and software firm Mindtree’s senior vice president Ananda Rao Ladi. The company provides intelligent cloud access security broker enabled cloud security solutions for enterprises helping them store business assets safely on the cloud.

“ParaBlu was founded with the singular vision of being the security vendor of choice for all enterprise data outside the firewall,” said Prahlad, President, ParaBlu.

ParaBlu, which is registered in the US with offices in Bengaluru, was founded in 2015.

“As cloud usage continues to increase within enterprises, there is tremendous opportunity ahead for ParaBlu’s unique product,” says Vani Kola, MD, Kalaari Capital.

Besides Parablu, KStart has invested in Active.ai, a customer engagement platform for financial services companies; Affordplan, an alternative finance platform for healthcare services; and Indee, a web video streaming venture.

The venture capital firm is also building out a separate team for KStart, as it recently roped in Muthiah Venkateswaran as a partner for it. Kalaari plans to invest about $20 million (aboutRs 135 crore) as part of KStart in up to 40 startups over the next two years.

Source: The Economic Times