Malavalli pumps Rs 10 cr into Apara

BANGALORE: Storage networking guru Kumar Malavalli would pump in "a short period investment" of Rs 10 crore into Bangalore based Apara Enterprise Solutions, an IT infrastructure solutions and services provider in the area of storage, security and networking.

Of this, Rs five crore has already been invested. Malavalli, who was recently inducted into the Silicon Valley Hall of Fame, would also act as Chairman of the board of Directors of Apara.

Addressing the press, Malavalli said, "Although there are today a number of deployments of SANs worldwide, all of these are happening at Fortune 100 and 200 companies, but not in the Fortune 1000 or 3000 companies. For that to happen, over the next one or two years, we have to take care of the cost. Apara is a step towards achieving that."

Pointing out that the cost for a recovery solution for disaster recovery cost a couple of million dollars today, he said that his ecosystem of companies would help in reducing the cost to "couple of thousands in a short period of time."

The companies in the ecosystem are dealing with various aspects of SAN — from cost and performance of SAN deployments to training of personnel in user companies. Apara, for example, will deal offer education and training in storage including certified courses for leading storage vendors.

"Apara will offer training in storage including certified courses for leading storage vendors and will also act as technical assistance centers for a number of our partners. We are targeting a turnover of Rs 100 crores this year. We hope to be a global company in the near future. Kumar’s expertise will help us in achieving that " said MS Sidhu, Managing Director of Apara.

The company has also inducted two other new directors- Brenda Christensen, Director of the Storage Networking Summit, and GS Ravi, President of Erudite Technologies. Incidentally, it was Christensen who nominated Malavalli for the Silicon Valley Hall of Fame.

While the three new members together would have an equity stake of about 20 percent in the company, the two founders of the company would hold 70 percent equity. Employees would hold the rest (10 percent stake).

With this investment, Malavalli has added Apara to what he calls an "ecosystem" of eight companies that are developing low-cost and high-performance Storage Area Network (SAN) technologies with the aim of taking the technology to the "masses". The co-founder of storage-switch provider Brocade Communications Systems has invested "roughly $ 10 million-$ 12 million" into these nine companies.