Wipro Ventures, the $100-million venture capital arm of India’s third largest software exporter, has picked up a minority stake in Pune-based big data startup Altizon Systems Pvt Ltd for Rs 9.78 crore as part of a Series A funding round, a week after cross-town arch rival Infosys parked $4 million in US-based data startup Waterline Data Science.
In total, Altizon has raised about $4 million as part of this round that Wipro Ventures led, with other investors such as Lumis Partners, The Hive and Infuse Ventures also backing the startup. In a filing to stock exchanges, Altizon said that the transaction would be completed by February 10. Altizon, which had revenues of Rs. 30 lakh for the 2014-15 financial year, has developed a big data platform called Datonis that “allows organisations to build connected devices“ and “gain insights from device data.“
“This milestone and the commitment from our investors validates the belief in the growth story of Altizon as a leading innovator in the Industrial IoT space. With this development, we plan to take Altizon’s value proposition globally and continue to invest in our innovation edge around the Datonis platform,“ said Altizon co-founder and CEO Vinay Nathan.
Altizon plans to use the funds to scale up sales and marketing functions both in India and internationally. The latest startup investment from Wipro comes at a time when India’s largest outsourcing firms are aggressively betting on newer technologies, as they face technology disruption in their traditional bread-and-butter businesses due to the advent of technologies such as cloud computing and the Internet of Things (IoT).
Traditional software exporters such as Infosys and Wipro have therefore set aside sizable funds for startup investments, as top outsourcing customers such as Citigroup and Wal-Mart are starting to shift spending away from traditional IT services to newer areas of technologies.
Altizon’s big data platform will align with Wipro’s IoT platform, Altizon said.
Altizon was named as one of the finalists in the Top Innovation category at the ET Startup Awards in 2015.
Source: The Economic Times
