Nexus Venture Partners invests in enterprise security firm Uniken

Pune- and Florida-based Uniken Inc, an enterprise security solutions firm, has received funding from Nexus Venture Partners. Although the investment amount has not been officially disclosed, various media reports pegged it at Rs 30 crore ($4.8 million).

As part of the deal, Nexus Venture's managing director Sandeep Singhal will join Uniken's board.

Uniken was founded in 2003 by Sanjay Deshpande (CEO), Nanjundeshwar Ganapathy (CTO), Prakash Salvi (director - HR, finance and quality) and Nilesh Dhande (pre-sales and customer engagement).

Deshpande holds a master's in Computer Science from University of New Brunswick (Canada). He was earlier a scientist with Tata Research Center. He had also worked at Infosys' mobile computing initiative in Europe.

Ganapathy holds a B Tech degree in Naval Architecture from IIT Kharagpur. He had earlier worked with Infosys' banking product Finacle and led the technology research and development effort in the mobile computing group.

Salvi is a BE in Computer Science from VJTI (Mumbai). He started his career at IMR Global Services Inc (now CGI, Canada). Dhande holds a bachelor's degree in Production Engineering and an MBA from Pune University. Previously, he had worked with Infosys and led various business initiatives at the mobile computing group.

Uniken provides digital solutions to thwart the traditional security threats for enterprises. The company's flagship product REL-ID offers a plug-and-play solution to enterprises and enables the delivery of secure digital experience to its customers, partners and employees across various platforms and devices. It claims that REL-ID has over a million users, including leading banks and financial institutions.

For Nexus Venture, one of the more consistently active VC firms in India, this is the first deal this year. The firm has around $600 million under management with an active portfolio of over 50 companies across technology, internet, media, consumer and business services sectors.

In another deal in the enterprise solutions space, last October Nexus Venture along with Tenaya Capital and Sequoia Capital had invested $25 million in enterprise backup solutions firm Druva.

(Edited by Joby Puthuparampil Johnson)