US giant EMC Corp. (NYSE: EMC) today announced the acquisition of Israeli start-up Kashya Inc. for $153 million in cash. Kashya was founded in 2001 by three entrepreneurs: CEO Michael Lewin, COO Yair Heller and CTO Ziv Kedem, and raised $25 million altogether. Kashya will be integrate into the EMC Software Group and continue operating in Israel.
Kashya means “a problem difficult to solve” in Aramaic. The company develops data replication and protection software for disaster recovery and business continuity. The company has a long line of customers and business partners, including Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) and Unisys Corp. (NYSE:UIS). Kashya’s products specialize in restoring lost data, whether the result of human error or external damage. Based on proprietary technology, Kashya’s solutions provide a response for protecting and retrieving data at large organizations. Second-generation products offer solutions for protecting enterprise data and databases in a simple and easy-to-use manner.
Jerusalem Global Ventures (JGV) was the first fund to invest in Kashya at a very early stage, before the company formulated its initial concept. JGV founding partner Shlomo Kalish said today, “Kashya received offers from larger companies, but rejected them because its board believed in the company and thought the offers did not reflect the company’s potential.”
JGV’s NetLaunch fund, which invested $6 million in Kashya, will make $36 million when the sale is closed. NetLaunch manages $40 million. The exit will enable the fund to make a return for investors. This is a handsome achievement, in view of the fund’s troubles during the hard times after the high-tech bubble burst, and stands in contrast to other venture capital funds founded in 2000, which are still far from making a return on investment.
EMC Software Group president Dave DeWalt said, “Information protection is a chief concern for customers today. By combining Kashya’s rich portfolio of heterogeneous replication software with our industry leading virtualization and continuous data protection technologies, EMC is enhancing the market’s broadest set of capabilities for virtualizing and safeguarding the world’s information.
“Today’s acquisition expands our market and gives us key technology to extend our share of growing and strategic information infrastructure markets. Beyond the complementary nature of its products and partner ecosystem with that of EMC, Kashya represents immediate technology infusion in the areas of storage virtualization, recovery management and heterogeneous replication while bringing key technologies to EMC for future development. Additionally, Kashya’s Israel-based R&D operation forms the core of the new, innovative EMC Israel Software Development Center, creating new center of excellence for EMC software development.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on May 9, 2006
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