Grant Thornton Bharat Acts as Exclusive Advisor to C3M on its Acquisition by CyberArk

Grant Thornton Bharat led the recently concluded sale of C3M, an emerging multi-cloud cybersecurity firm, to CyberArk, a NASDAQ listed global leader in Identity Security. Grant Thornton Bharat was the exclusive advisor to the shareholders of C3M.

Founded in 2018, C3M developed a cloud security management software that has been used by global enterprises across financial services, insurance, e-commerce and retail adopting cloud-centric business and technology transformations. The company has offices in India and the United States, with its R&D team based out of India.

Karthik Gopalakrishnan, Partner, Lead Advisory at Grant Thornton Bharat who led the transaction said, “With the aggressive adoption of cloud services, businesses require specialist solutions to manage their security posture across multiple cloud environments, and to have granular visibility into identity and access-related activities in the cloud. C3M has built best-in-class technology to address these needs. The acquisition by CyberArk, the world’s largest Identity Security company, was a natural fit.”

Sumeet Abrol, Partner and Head, Lead Advisory at Grant Thornton Bharat said, “The transaction strongly validates global interest in acquiring product capabilities in cyber focused technology platforms. With successive deals across the technology stack in the past 12 months, this further reinforces Grant Thornton’s position as the advisor of choice for unlocking value in this sector.”

Padmanabhan Viswanathan, Founder and former CEO of C3M, and current VP of Cloud Security at CyberArk, said, “All of us from C3M are thrilled about this acquisition. Our mission was to simplify cloud security for enterprises and staying true to that mission enabled us to build a successful global business, helping industry leading security-focused companies manage their cloud security risk and improve their compliance posture. With cloud-related breaches at an all-time high and privileged access being a major cause of concern for enterprises, we see huge possibilities and innovation happening in the Identity Security space. We are happy to be a part of CyberArk’s vision for the future of cloud security – with identity at the core.”

“The acquisition of C3M will further strengthen CyberArk’s existing Cloud Privilege Security offerings with capabilities for identifying security and compliance risks in cloud IAM policies, cloud activity monitoring and threat detection while helping solve visibility and security challenges in public cloud environments,” said Clarence Hinton, Chief Strategy Officer, Head of Corporate Development, CyberArk. “We are thrilled to bring on-board the C3M team who will add talent and experience to CyberArk’s R&D and product teams, further accelerating our development and innovation.” 

Grant Thornton Bharat was recently conferred with two global M&A awards: ‘M&A Firm of the year Award (mid-market category)’ and ‘Cross border deal of the year’ at the recent M&A Atlas Awards 2021. As one of India’s leading transaction advisors, this recognition has further strengthened the efforts of the firm towards shaping a vibrant India and creating gold standards in consulting and advisory.