Aryaka raises $25 mn in oversubscribed Series C round
Aryaka Networks, a provider of cloud-based WAN optimization and application acceleration solutions, has raised $25 million as part of its Series C round of funding led by Menlo Park, California-based early stage investor InterWest Partners. The round also saw the participation of Sumitomo Corporation arm Presidio Ventures and existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Trinity Ventures and Mohr Davidow Ventures. The latest round takes the total venture capital raised by the Milpitas, California-headquartered company, which has operations in Bangalore, to $54 million.
The Series C round comes on the back of a strong quarter for venture capital investments in the US market. Investors completed deals worth $8.1 billion during the April-June 2012 quarter, representing a 37 per cent growth over the January-March 2012 quarter, according to a quarterly report released by CB Insights. Aryaka had originally intended to raise $15 million in the Series C round, but ended up being oversubscribed on strong investor interest. “We could have actually raised more than $25 million. Investors such as Intel Capital and Nokia Growth Partners were also keen on participating,” said Ajit Gupta, Aryaka president and CEO, in a telephonic conversation with StartupCentral.
Gupta, an IIT Roorkee alumnus and a serial entrepreneur, founded Aryaka in late 2008 with Ashwath Nagaraj, who earlier started three technology startups in the San Francisco Bay Area, and former CTO Rajeev Bharadhwaj (no longer with the company). It currently has around 60 customers and plans to use the fresh funds chiefly to push into new markets. “The US is currently our largest market but we would like to get to a position where the US, Europe and Asia Pacific would account for one-third each of our revenues,” said Gupta. The company wants to hit the $10 million revenue mark in the next 12 months and expects to achieve cash-flow breakeven in two years, he added.
New investors InterWest Partners and Presidio are expected to play a role in enabling the company to expand its markets. The association with Sumitomo (Presidio), for instance, could help in Asian markets such as Korea and China. “Unlike conventional WAN optimization approaches, Aryaka liberates the enterprise by providing a secure, scalable and highly intelligent network in the cloud. Aryaka has identified and is addressing a large market,” said Khaled Nasr, partner, InterWest Partners, in a press release on the investment. The company’s competitors in the multi-billion dollar global WAN optimization market include Blue Coat, Cisco, Citrix and Riverbed.
Mumbai-based Nexus entered the company in September 2010, participating in a $14 million Series A round alongside Trinity Ventures, Mohr Davidow Ventures and Stanford University. Last June, it led a $15 million Series B round, which also saw the participation of Mohr Davidow Ventures and Trinity. Nexus has been taking bets on cloud-based technology startups since 2007 and other investments in the area include CloudByte, Gluster and Cloud.com.
Image courtesy: Aryaka Networks
