Meet Atif Azim; Cisco bought his first firm for $74m; second may fetch more

In 2004, network security leviathan Cisco acquired Perfigo for a cool $74 mn, reports Tech In Asia

Atif Azim is an accidental entrepreneur. After his undergraduate at Imperial College, London, he was accepted for a masters in computer science at Stanford, which he gleefully accepted.

“The founders of Google were just six years our senior. Everyone around me was obsessed with building products and changing the world. The energy was contagious,” recalls Atif.

Brience – which had raised US$200 million – was considered a hot prospect for an IPO. But the dotcom crash hit badly and those plans were shelved.

Atif quit shortly after, along with a couple of other people, and started wireless security firm Perfigo.