Google Acquires Bangalore Based Impermium For $9 Million

Few weeks back, Facebook made it’s first Indian startup acquisition when it bought Little Eyes Lab, for some undisclosed amount. This was the first instance when an Indian startup was able to get Facebook’s attention, and the news was celebrated all over Indian startup arena.

Now, it’s Google’s turn to create ripples across Indian startup scene, as it has acquired Bangalore based Impermium for $9 million. Impermium is a three year startup based in Bangalore and California. Cofounded by Vish Ramarao, Naveen Jamal and Mark Risher, Impermium develops security products for websites.

Mark Risher, in his blog post shared, “When we founded Impermium three years ago, our mission was to help rid the web of spam, fraud, and abuse. As sites gain in popularity, criminals and miscreants are never far behind, and Impermium has worked hard to defend some of the largest and fastest-growing sites,” he added, “By joining Google, our team will merge with some of the best abuse fighters in the world. With our combined talents we’ll be able to further our mission and help make the Internet a safer place. We’re excited about the possibilities.”

While Jamal is based in Bangalore, Vish and Mark are looking after their office in California. All three of them previously worked for Yahoo!, but left the company in 2010 to launch Impermium.

In the past, Impermium has received angle funding to the tune of $9 million from Accel Partners, AOL Ventures, Charles River Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.

Although Google has not disclosed any amount which they have paid to acquire Impermium, but industry observers are pegging this amount to be around $9 million, considering it’s previous venture funding and current valuation.

Bradley Horowitz, Google’s vice president of product for Google+ welcomed Impermium on Google+.

 

Impermium defends websites against account hacking, account compromise and other Internet related threats. As per the company, they use “patented statistical and machine learning models and proprietary threat intelligence from more than 1,500,000 worldwide sites to provide real-time protection for top enterprises around the globe.”

Impermium is currently serving more than 300,000 clients all over the world, including some big names like Tumblr, Pinterest, CNN, ESPN, Typepad and Washington Post.

This latest acquisition of Indian startup by global giant such as Google will definitely boost the startup ecosystem inside India, and will provide better exit routes for existing startups.

2014 is going to be exciting for Indian startups!