Rainbow Tech. to acquire Viman Software

NEW DELHI: Rainbow Technologies, a wholly owned subsidiary of Rainbow

Technologies Inc., USA, has acquired Viman Software. Rainbow, with interests in

anti-piracy solutions and Internet security, has already invested Rs 58 lakh in

the Indian software firm, to hold 34 per cent of its Rs 1.2 crore equity. By

March 1, 2001, Rainbow will increase its stake to 51 per cent and to 100 per

cent by the end of this year.

Elaborating on the importance of having a direct presence in India, Humphrey

Chan, Vice President of Sales, Americas and Asia Pacific, said, "With this

acquisition, we plan to aggressively target the growing Indian software market.

As per Nasscom, the losses from software piracy in India were Rs 900 crore

during 1999-2000. As Rainbow deals in software security and license management,

there is a big opportunity for our company in the software licensing

market."

Why Viman? Chan says that for the last two years, Rainbow had been

outsourcing project development to Viman and found that the company had strong

capability in terms of developing and sustaining a product. The acquisition will

also reduce the development costs significantly for Rainbow and provide an

exposure to the Indian market. The Indian center will be Rainbow's second

R&D center, the other one being in the US.

In the next few months, Rainbow will launch iKey 1000, a portable security

solution for workstations and networks, in India. Apart from setting up its own

marketing team, Rainbow will also be looking at partnerships with PKI vendors

and solution providers.