Nexus Ventures-backed Cloud startup Aryaka gets $25M Series C funding

Cloud WAN Optimisation as a Service provider Aryaka, which has offices in the US and India, has received $25 million in Series C funding from venture capital investors. The funding led by InterWest Partners and Presidio Ventures also saw existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Trinity Ventures and Mohr Davidow Ventures investing afresh.

The funds will be used to support the California-headquartered company's market penetration and global reach.

"Market traction has been tremendous as small, mid-sized and larger enterprises realise that networks and applications require a new, more sustainable approach," Ajit Gupta, founder, president and CEO of Aryaka, said in a statement.

He said the present round of funding will enable it to execute its strategy of converting its technology innovation into commercial success.

Founded in 2008 by Ajit Gupta, Rajeev Bharadhwaj and Ashwath Nagaraj, Aryaka, which has an office in Bangalore, counts InMobi, NTT Data, Aruba and Avaya among its key customers.

"Unlike conventional WAN optimisation 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 with unmet needs by redefining the playing field for network optimisation and increasing the overall market size," said Khaled Nasr, partner, InterWest Partners.

Nexus Venture Partners is one of the more active venture capital firms in India focused on early to early-growth stage companies. The VC firm, along with another early stage investor Kae Capital, last month put in $2.1 million in Bangalore-based CloudByte, which sells storage products to large enterprises. Nexus's portfolio companies also include Snapdeal, Unmetric, MapMy India, OLX, Komli and ALtruits, among others.

Cloud-based startups have recently been a big bet for VC investors. MineralTree Inc, a cloud-based secure payments solutions provider, secured $6.3 million in June in a funding led by Fidelity's private equity arm in India. Another US-based startup, CloudOne, also secured $1.7 million from Elevate Ventures and Indiana Angel Network Fund last month.

(Edited by Prem Udayabhanu)