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Software is increasingly written — and now operated — by AI. We build the controls that decide what it’s allowed to do. Nirmata created Kyverno, the policy engine that governs Kubernetes for thousands of organizations, and now governs the agents running inside them.

Nirmata

[nir-mah-tah]

noun Indo-Aryan

Nirmata, meaning “creator” in Indo-Aryan languages, empowers the passionate creators shaping our future with the software they need to build a better tomorrow.

Why we exist

So enterprises can say yes to AI.

We are driven to…

  • Help the world trust the software it no longer writes.
  • Make speed and control the same decision, not a trade-off.
  • Give platform and security teams one set of rules they both agree to.

Our Leadership Team

  • Jim Bugwadia

    Jim Bugwadia

    Founder & CEO

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    Jim Bugwadia has 20+ years experience building and leading effective teams and has created software that powers communications systems around the world.

    Jim was among the original architects and business leaders within Cisco’s cloud automation practice, where he helped grow revenues to over $250M. During Jim’s tenure, IDC recognized the practice as #1 in global cloud services.

    Prior to his work at Cisco, Jim led engineering teams at startups including Pano Logic, a desktop virtualization startup recognized for its innovative design by Wired magazine; Trapeze Networks, a wireless pioneer; and Jetstream Communications, a telecom equipment manufacturer. Jim started his career developing C++ software at Motorola for cellular network infrastructure where his team launched the world’s first cellular telephony that used code division multiplexing to optimize radio frequency usage.

    Jim’s passion is to simplify the use of complex systems by providing well designed products that drive mass adoption of new technologies. As software has become mission critical to all businesses, Jim and his co-founders started Nirmata to help enterprises automate the delivery and management of applications. Jim currently develops software in Java, Golang, and Javascript, and is a Certified Kubernetes Administrator who actively participates in Nirmata’s full product lifecycle.

    Over the course of his career, Jim has logged over $1.3B in revenue, 6 patent filings, 8 major product launches, and 29 years experience coding.

    Jim holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Chicago State University and a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

    Jim Bugwadia

    Founder & CEO

  • Ritesh Patel

    Ritesh Patel

    Founder & VP Product

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    Ritesh Patel is co-founder of Nirmata and has 20+ years experience building and delivering enterprise software solutions and has led highly successful software and business development teams. Ritesh began his career in engineering for high tech firms, and has since migrated to the business side of the operation. In his founding of Nirmata, Ritesh sought to bring his broad spectrum of experience to a single previously unaddressed industry problem through the creation of a new business. To Nirmata’s leadership, Ritesh brings a rare skill set incorporating experience with the entire chain of software development activities. This background has contributed to Nirmata’s commitment to empowering all employees to do the hard work required to deliver tools that solve tough problems.

    Prior to Nirmata, Ritesh led business development at Brocade, where he was responsible for defining the firm’s cloud strategy, and oversaw developments that advanced the entire cloud “as-a-service” market. Through cloud and security-related initiatives, Ritesh and his team at Brocade were able to package Brocade’s plethora of IT infrastructure products into enterprise-ready solutions including OpenStack and CloudStack that pioneered widespread cloud computing implementation. In addition to these technical achievements, Ritesh succeeded in creating an extensive partner ecosystem to efficiently match these solutions with urgent customer needs.

    Ritesh has also held key technical positions at Trapeze Networks (where he created industry award-winning products), Nortel, and Motorola. Ritesh holds an MBA from UC Berkeley and a master’s degree in computer engineering from Michigan State University.

    Ritesh Patel

    Founder & VP Product

  • Damien Toledo

    Damien Toledo

    Founder & VP Engineering

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    Damien Toledo is Co-Founder and Vice President of Engineering, overseeing research and development, operations, maintenance, and delivery of Nirmata products. Damien brings over 20 years experience leading global engineering teams and delivering Enterprise grade solutions.

    Since 1998 when he arrived in Silicon Valley from France to pursue the possibilities of US startup culture, Damien has held a number of engineering positions at high tech firms, each of which playing a role in the concept development for Nirmata. Building on lessons learned in management transformation at Jetstream Communications in the early 2000s, Damien built the Meru Networks Network Management team and Network Management solution from the ground up as one of the firm’s original members. Meru Networks went public in 2010 (NASDAQ:MERU).

    Subsequent to his work at Meru, Damien led the transformation of the engineering team at Netscout to build an agile organization. At Netscout, he championed the adoption of Continuous Integration best practices across a team of 200+ engineers and 7 development sites, which resulted in reducing the software release cycles by 300%. While at Netscout and together with Nirmata co-founder Jim Bugwadia, Damien oversaw the adoption of microservices while searching for solutions to operating quickly in the cloud, and developed the foundations for what would become Nirmata.

    Damien holds a master’s degree in computer science from University of Technology of Compiègne.

    Damien Toledo

    Founder & VP Engineering

  • Anubhav Sharma

    Anubhav Sharma

    VP Customers

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    Anubhav is VP Customers. He has 20+ years of experience in building and growing businesses across service provider, enterprise and commercial sectors. He has led functions in business development, product management, marketing, delivery and operations through his career, and most recently served as GM for the $250M Web-scale Services business at Cisco.

    Anubhav is passionate about building new solutions and teams, and growing new market segments. At Cisco, he grew business 30-40% annually for many years while also building new offers, a world class team and a global delivery model.

    Throughout his career, Anubhav has straddled technical, operational and business domains to bring new solutions around real-time analytics, operational assessments and network lifecycle management. Most recently, he was involved in bringing in new offers around recently launched Business Critical Services, a $2.5B business for Cisco. Before leaving Cisco, Anubhav signed off with a $350M multi-year deal built entirely around new solutions and engagement model with an innovative commercial structure.

    Anubhav brings to Nirmata’s product development and organization an extensive experience developing both custom and standard subscription services, which was significantly formed by his time spent building analytics solutions at Cisco. This perspective on building bleeding edge solutions is evident in his business outlook, which recognizes that best solutions are built with the customers, by listening to them and partnering in risk taking when breaking new ground.

    Anubhav holds bachelor’s degrees in both physics and electronics and telecommunications from Mumbai University and an MBA from San Jose State University.

    Anubhav Sharma

    VP Customers

Fueled by Visionary Investors

Nirmata is powered by the collective experience and resources of leading investors who are vested in our mission to transform security and operations with Policy as Code.

  • PeakXV
  • DVC
  • Dreamit
  • Z5
  • Uncorrelated
  • BGV
  • SamsungNext

What do we do?

  • Nirmata governs the AI agents running inside Kubernetes clusters — what they may call, on whose behalf, within what budget.
  • Nirmata created Kyverno, the CNCF-graduated policy engine for Kubernetes, and still maintains it as Apache 2.0 open source.

How do we deliver value?

  • By enforcing policy at control points your stack already has — no new runtime to adopt
  • By building on Apache 2.0 Kyverno, so the enforcement layer is never ours to take away
  • By giving platform and security teams one audit trail instead of two tools