Sequretek, empowering growth without fear by simplifying security

Sequretek has raised $3.7M in total. We talked with Pankit Desai, Co-founder and CEO.

How would you describe Sequretek in a single tweet?

We empower your growth without fear as your trusted partner by simplifying security.

How did it all start and why?

Cyber Security industry from a customer’s point of view can be divided in the world of have’s and have not’s — where the Top 10% has access to everything whilst the rest have to make do without much of any. As they say the industry is for, by and to the elite.

If you look at any technology, it goes through a curve where there is complexity in the beginning and over a period of time it becomes simple and commoditized. Security industry is going the other way where every year new technology areas emerge in response to new threats instead of enhancing existing technologies, the result is 90 technologies areas and 3500 different companies make security amongst the most fragmented market in the tech space. All these options make the life of Have-nots difficult since they do not the resources to understand the what, why, when and how of their needs. There is way too much buyer’s remorse and consequential churn here.

Sequretek was born in 2013, therefore, with a vision “to simplify security by consolidating the technology landscape” and mission “to empower our customer’s growth without fear as their trusted security partner by simplifying security”. The key words here are removing fear attached to security threats linked to the digital transformation that has become essential for our customer’s growth and the fact that we will make security simple and accessible to them as their trusted partner.

We focus on three areas where we would lead with our technology i.e. device security, user behavior and enterprise security visibility. There are two major trends that one sees in the industry, first is that employees are moving out of their offices and second is that data-centers are moving to cloud. In this scenario the traditional perimeter defense concepts are becoming irrelevant, since there is hardly anything within the perimeter to protect. In fact, the new perimeter that needs to be defended zealously is your user and the devices they use to interact with the company. This is where our products come in, the traditional approach of addressing these forces customers to buy 8+ individual security technologies to adequately secure their environments. Most customers do not have the financial and technical maturity to be able to understand and procure it. Our EDPR, which is an end point security product, comes with features of upto 7 products rolled into one, thereby making it simple for customers to procure such tech products and keeping it simple when it comes to end point security.

What have you achieved so far?

We have been growing at CAGR of 60% over the past few years and have customers that span across the financial, manufacturing, retail and services segment. Whilst so far our operations were focused in India, but recently we forayed into the US. We believe that the market we are addressing is currently underserved and our approach of offering simplicity, ownership of outcomes and affordable subscription-based services makes us uniquely positioned to be a preferred choice for our customers both in India and the US.

Our products have been competing with the established industry giants and still do not fail to leave its mark. Sequretek products implement cutting edge technologies for next generation threats, reduce total cost of ownership for enterprises and simplify cyber security.

Our management team is a unique blend of very experienced resources that bring complementary skills required to succeed in this deeply competitive market place.

Pankit Desai: Co-Founder, is a veteran of corporate industry with over 25 years of experience in global sales, operations and FP&A with leadership stints at Rolta (President) , NTT Data (SVP), IBM(Country Manager), and Wipro (Regional Manager). He is responsible for sales and investor relationship functions.

Anand Naik: Co-Founder, has worked in the corporate world for our 25 years with companies like Symantec where he was their MD for South Asia, and before that with IBM, Sun Microsystems in technology roles. He is responsible for product vision and operations.

Santhosh George: Chief Products and Technology Officer, has over 25 years of experience as CTO, product development leader as well as entrepreneur with companies like Rolta, Finestra, Oracle and Cognizant. He is responsible for product strategy and execution

Arun Rathi : Chief Financial Officer and Member of Board, has over 30 years of experience with companies like Religare (MD and COO) and Citibank (Director Investment Banking).He is responsible for finance, admin and back office functions

Commander Subhash Dutta: Head of Operations and Malware research, he brings over 30 years of experience with a majority time being spent in Indian Navy where he was responsible for Indian Navy’s information warfare group

Udayanathan Vettikat: Head of Channels, Sales and Marketing, comes with over 30 years of experience with bulk of it being in Cisco where he was responsible for general business sales and marketing.

Achievements:

• One of the Top SME, by GreatCompanies.in (2019)
• Best MSME, by CISO Mag (EC-Council, world’s largest security training organisation) (2019)
• Top 4 Enterprise Startups, Enterprise IT World (2019)
• Top 50 Innovators, by World Innovation Congress (2018)
• Game Changing Startup, EC-Council (2018)
• HOT 100 Race to Grace Award by organizations of senior Industry CIO (2017)
• Top 5 Fintech startups award by Fintegrate Zone (2017)
• Next Big Idea 2017 contest winner (by Government of Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia) along with Ryerson Futures, Zone Start-ups and Government of India

What do you plan to achieve in the next 2–3 years?

In the next five years Sequretek wants to:

• Make world a better and safer place for digital interactions through delivering cutting edge security technologies
• Employ over 2,000 people. Protecting more than 2M+ endpoints across 1000 enterprises.
• Revenue in excess on USD 50 Million.
• The biggest IT security company in India and among top 100 globally.

Sequretek will have:

• Equal opportunity employment environment
• Well defined governance model that will enable ethical business practices and sound fiscal management
• High performance culture that fosters innovation, transparency and collaboration among our employees and extended ecosystem
• Agile business processes to adapt to changing business environment

Technology innovation will be core to Sequretek ethos. All innovations will be with an aim to simplify security for enterprises and consumers, thus creating safe experiences in digital economies.