Cisco's John Chambers invests in Lucideus; eyes IoT space in India

According to sources, Chambers has led the $5-million funding round via his investment firm JC2 Ventures

Setting sights on India’s growing Internet of Things (IoT) space and the burgeoning start-up space, global technology giant Cisco’s Chairman Emeritus John Chambers has invested in Lucideus - a firm offering IT risk-assessment and digital-security services.

This is his second investment in India.

According to sources, Chambers has led the $5-million funding round via his investment firm JC2 Ventures.

JC2 Ventures has so far invested $75 million in 16 companies this year. He plans to invest more in IoT firms from India.

Chambers explained he looks for factors like potential of the solution and the market opportunity as well as the founder/s and what the customers say before investing in a company.

“All these things were there. I have picked up over a 10 per cent share, but do not want to comment on the value.

"I am not a venture capitalist, but more of a strategic advisor. I am a mentor and coach. I invest in early-stage companies,” he said.

The company would use the investment for international expansion.

“The funds will be used to expand its presence in the US as well as existing markets like India,” Lucideus CEO and Co-founder Saket Modi said.

He added the company has seen its revenues growing in triple digits year-on-year, and has been cash flow positive for the last few years.

Lucideus had raised funding in May last year from a clutch of global executives like Google's Rajan Anandan, Facebook Messenger executive Anand Chandrasekaran and FreeCharge's ex-CEO Govind Rajan.

“The funds are being used to strengthen our platform. This would provide more robust security to our enterprise customers that span across banking and financial services, retail and others,” he added.

According to reports, the global cyber security market will be worth $202.36 billion by 2021, up from $135 billion this year.

Last year, Chambers' invested in Uniphore Software Systems, an Indian speech analytics and virtual assistant firm.

The company had said it would utilise the funds to deepen core research driving product enhancement, upgrade its customer service infrastructure, expand its sales reach to newer geographies and recruit new talent to support its growth.

"The company was able to foresee the growing need for deep technology in the area of speech recognition.

"It has innovated ahead of the market to capture this significant opportunity," Chambers had said.

Photograph: Steve Marcus/Reuters