Cisco makes first India acquisition, buys Pawaa

Networking equipment giant Cisco took over Bangalore-based IT security firm Pawaa Software Pvt Ltd for an undisclosed amount, making its first acquisition in India.

The entire Pawaa team will join Cisco's software platform group and will be led by Pankaj Srivastava, VP, Cisco, stated a note published on its website.

Pawaa is a security software company that focuses on file and document security. The company offers many products based on its pawaaFILE platform. Pawaa rebranded all its offerings under the "SecurelyShare" brand in 2014.

SecurelyShare is a suite of information security solutions.

Terming it a talent and technology acquisition, Cisco said, "As organisations evolve and look at new ways to improve their business agility, business processes need to be connected and automated. Cisco's automation platforms such as Service Exchange Platform and ServiceGrid are key to enabling this evolution by providing highly secure policy-based data flow between business systems and people. Cisco is acquiring Pawaa to accelerate the data transfer capabilities of these platforms."

Pawaa was founded by Prakash Baskaran, a serial entrepreneur, in 2007. Before launching Pawaa, he founded five technology companies including eResults, Turbo Career Software Services and Springtel in the areas of VoIP services, HR/CRM solutions and B2B marketplaces. He holds an MS from University of Akron and an MBA from Southern Methodist University, Dallas.

Pawaa was part of Cisco Entrepreneurs in Residence (Cisco EIR) in 2014, an incubation programme supporting early-stage business-to-business companies. It supports entrepreneurs working on disruptive technology ideas in the fields of Big Data analytics, cloud computing, enterprise security and smart cities.

According to Baskaran's LinkedIn profile, the acquisition happened in August and he has since been appointed as chief technology officer of security solutions at Cisco.