US based startup TidalScale receives funding from Infosys

Posted on November 12, 2016

India’s software giant, Infosys Ltd., has invested an undisclosed amount to buy a stake in the US based startup, TidalScale. TidalScale has its headquarters in California and was founded by Infosys’s former CEO, Vishal Sikka’s former SAP colleague, Ike Nassi. TidalScale creates computing architecture for customers trying to solve large computing problems. This is Bengaluru – based Infosys’s 10^th investment in a startup from its U.S. $500 million startup fund, but this investment is only the third by Infosys this year. The pace of investments of Infosys on startups has considerably slowed down this year. Read more on Infosys News

IT companies in India like Infosys and Wipro are investing on startups in an effort to get software products based on new technologies, faster into the Indian market to meet the growing and changing needs of their customers. “As a pioneer of Software – Defined Servers, TidalScale provides solutions that are extraordinarily simple to use, requiring absolutely no changes to existing operating systems, databases or applications”, said Ritika Suri, executive vice – president of corporate development and ventures at Infosys. “Among our client base, we see a need for innovative and cost-effective approaches to derive business value from big data and our investment in TidalScale underscores our commitment to our clients to bring innovative new solutions across our platforms and offerings”, Ritika Suri added.

Nassi was the chief scientist at SAP and is credited with having started his Global Business Incubator when Vishal Sikka was the CEO and CTO at Infosys. In addition to being the chairman at TidalScale, Nassi is also on the board of advisors of the non – profit organization, Viewpoints Research Institute, run by Alan Kay, Vishal Sikka’s friend and mentor. Nassi had resigned from SAP on October, 2011. Infosys has been surprisingly cautious in buying startups since last year. When Vishal Sikka was the CEO of the company, he had allocated U.S. $500 million for Infosys to purchase and invest on startups. But this year so far, Infosys has only invested U.S. $33 million on three startups! Besides its investment in two cloud computing startups, Infosys’s Innovation fund has also made minor investments in two data – analytics startups, including Trifacta and Waterline Data Science Inc.

Startups of India today are innovative. They have educated and hard – working people working for them and they provide need of the hour products using the latest software platforms. Investing on innovative startups, which produce the latest software products in demand in the market, using the latest software platforms like cloud computing or big data, is a wise move by Infosys. It can meet the changing and growing demands of its clients and customers using this strategy. The fact that Infosys has invested less on startups this year is debatable. Some would argue that it needs to utilize most of the $500 million fund, which Sikka has allocated for investing on startups, to get maximum benefit and grow in the market. Others would argue that it or for that matter any company, would need to be cautious on making investments and invest on a startup only if it is convinced that it would get returns on its investments. However, its investment on the U.S. based TidalScale is a useful and wise one since TidalScale produces software that are simple to use and require no changes to existing operating systems, databases or applications. The software products developed by TidalScale are also innovative and cost – effective which are in demand in the market. Read more on Startup News