Infotech Acquires Bengaluru's Zluri to Power a New CIO Analytics Platform

Infotech, the IT research and advisory firm formerly known as Info-Tech Research Group, has acquired Zluri, a Bengaluru-based provider of software-as-a-service (SaaS) management and identity governance tools, in a deal that marks a notable exit for one of India's enterprise software startups.

Financial terms were not disclosed. Solomon Partners advised Infotech on the transaction, which has been completed.

Zluri's application discovery and identity governance and administration (IGA) products will become core modules of Infotech's new CIO Analytics platform. Its application discovery capability will form the foundation for the platform's broader suite of application modules.

From Research Firm to Data Platform

The acquisition reflects a strategic shift at Infotech. The company, founded in 1997 by Joel McLean, who now serves as its chairman, built its business on research and advisory services for chief information officers and IT leaders. Under chief executive Tom Zehren, it is now trying to combine that advice with live operational data drawn from its clients' own technology environments.

That is where Zluri fits. Its software helps organisations discover, manage and govern the SaaS applications their employees use, the identities and access rights attached to them, and the money spent on them. Those are exactly the kinds of data that IT leaders need to make decisions about software budgets, security and vendor consolidation.

"AI and analytics are nothing without the right data," Zehren said, according to StartupTalky.

McLean was more pointed about Infotech's competitive positioning. "IT leaders need advice the legacy advisory firms simply are not willing or able to provide," he said.

Why SaaS Sprawl Became a Business

Zluri was founded in 2020 by Ritish Reddy, Chaithanya Yambari and Sethu Meenakshisundaram, at a time when remote work and cloud adoption were driving an explosion in the number of software tools used inside companies.

Many organisations found that they no longer knew how many applications their employees were using, who had access to what, or how much they were spending. Teams signed up for tools with corporate cards, licences went unused after employees left, and sensitive data flowed into applications that IT had never vetted. That combination of wasted spending and security risk created demand for platforms that could provide visibility and control.

Zluri's products address both sides of the problem. Its discovery tools identify the applications in use across an organisation, while its identity governance capabilities manage who has access to which systems and help companies remove access promptly when roles change or employees leave. Identity governance has become a growing priority for security teams as attackers increasingly target credentials and over-privileged accounts.

The rise of generative AI has added a new layer to the problem. Employees now sign up for AI assistants, writing tools and coding copilots as readily as they once adopted collaboration apps, often connecting them to corporate email, documents and code repositories. Each new connection creates another identity, another set of permissions and another potential route for sensitive data to leave the organisation. At the same time, AI products frequently carry usage-based pricing that can make software bills harder to predict. For CIOs, that combination of security exposure and cost uncertainty has turned visibility into the software estate from a housekeeping exercise into a strategic requirement, which helps explain why an advisory firm such as Infotech would want to own the data layer directly rather than rely on clients to supply it.

Backed by Global Investors

Zluri had attracted backing from a mix of Indian and global venture investors, including Lightspeed, MassMutual Ventures, Endiya Partners and Kalaari Capital. Like many Indian SaaS companies of its generation, it built its product in India while selling primarily to customers in larger international markets.

The deal offers those investors an exit at a time when initial public offerings remain out of reach for most enterprise software startups of Zluri's size, and when strategic acquisitions have become a more common route to liquidity.

What Changes for Zluri

Zluri will continue to serve its existing customers as a standalone Infotech division, according to StartupTalky. The team will remain based in Bengaluru, and the company plans to scale its technology teams there.

Joining Infotech also gives Zluri access to a far larger audience. Infotech says it works with a global community of more than 30,000 IT leaders, a distribution channel that would have taken Zluri years to build on its own.

"Joining Infotech lets us put that data at the heart of how IT leaders make decisions," said Ritish Reddy, Zluri's co-founder and chief executive.

Infotech itself has grown rapidly. The company says it has expanded by more than 340 per cent over seven years, more than quadrupling in size, and now generates more than $300 million in annual revenue.

A Template for Indian SaaS Exits

The acquisition highlights a broader pattern in Indian enterprise software. A generation of companies founded in the late 2010s and early 2020s built strong products for global customers but now face a tougher environment for growth funding and public listings. For many of them, strategic acquisitions by larger international firms are emerging as the most realistic path to an exit.

Such deals can be good outcomes for founders, employees and investors, particularly when the acquirer commits to retaining and expanding the Indian team. They also reinforce India's role as a centre for enterprise software engineering, as global companies acquire not just products but the talent that built them.

The Bigger Bet: Data-Driven IT Advice

For Infotech, the larger strategic question is whether research and advisory firms can successfully reinvent themselves as data platforms. Traditional advisory businesses rely on analysts, surveys and benchmarks. By embedding software such as Zluri's inside client environments, Infotech hopes to offer advice grounded in real usage data, rather than generalised recommendations.

If it works, that approach could give Infotech an edge over larger rivals in a market where CIOs are under pressure to cut software costs, strengthen security and prepare their organisations for artificial intelligence. It could also deepen client relationships by making Infotech's tools part of day-to-day IT operations.

For Zluri's founders, the deal caps a six-year journey from a Bengaluru startup tackling an emerging problem to a core component of a global firm's product strategy. Its success inside Infotech will be measured by how effectively its data can be turned into decisions, which is precisely the promise both companies are now making to the world's IT leaders.