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| Saket Modi | |
|---|---|
| Born | (1990-07-31) July 31, 1990 (age 34) Calcutta, India |
| Nationality | Indian |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, speaker, ethical hacker |
| Known for | Founder of Lucideus |
Saket Modi (July 31, 1990) is an entrepreneur, co-founder, and CEO of Lucideus, a cybersecurity and digital business risk quantification company, based out of Palo Alto, California. A computer science engineer by education, he founded Lucideus in 2012 while in his final year of engineering. Lucideus was incubated from IIT Bombay and backed by John T. Chambers, the former executive chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems. Modi is a public speaker about ethical hacking and computer security.
Early life
Modi was born and raised in Kolkata, India. His father is a businessman. He attended school at Lakshmipat Singhania Academy. While Modi was in high school, he led the school’s chess and table tennis teams and also earned a degree on the Grand Piano from the Associated Board of the Royal Schools of Music, London.
In school, Saket was often found in the computer laboratory and it is there that he realized he could access the Chemistry question paper stored in a password protected file. By using a simple ‘brute force’ tool, which was available for free on the Internet, he was able to unlock the paper. He later confessed to his teacher but this small incident helped Modi realize his potential and interest to further pursue a career in cybersecurity.
In 2012, he received his undergraduate engineering degree from the LNM Institute of Information Technology, Jaipur with a major in Computer Science. As an undergraduate student, Saket conducted several hands-on workshops on ethical hacking at Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) campuses across India.
Career
In 2012, while in his final year of engineering, Saket started Lucideus at the incubator of IIT Bombay, along with Vidit Baxi and Rahul Tyagi. For capital, they used their personal savings. In 2013, Lucideus inaugurated its first office in New Delhi. Lucideus was responsible for the end-to-end security of BHIM, the Unified Mobile based payment platform designed by the National Payments Corporation of India, Government of India.
In 2017, Lucideus secured its initial round of funding with $2 million from Sri Shivananda (CTO, PayPal), Rajan Anandan (Managing Director, Sequoia Capital), Victor Menezes (ex-Senior Vice-chairman, Citibank), Vikas Agnihotri (Operating Partner, Softbank Group), Mickey Doshi (CEO, Credit Suisse, India), among others.
Modi was introduced to John by a mutual acquaintance on the same day. An interesting anecdote is how Chambers got hooked to the concept after Modi’s 20-second pitch about Lucideus and his vision for cybersecurity - why quantification of digital business risk is the way forward.
Later, John T. Chambers went on to lead the Series A funding for Lucideus of $5 million in 2018, through his personal venture arm - JC2 Ventures.
In 2019, Lucideus expanded its operations to the USA and other markets in the APAC region, and shifted their headquarters to Palo Alto, California.
Public appearances
He is a regular speaker on various subjects of information security and entrepreneurship at international forums like Mobile World Congress, CeBIT (Germany), Forbes Under 30 Global Summit (Boston), Confederation of Indian Industry, Cyber Tech (Israel), ASSOCHAM, Data Security Council of India, ISACA, TiE, TED (conference).
Awards and honours
- 2013 student award: Indian Ambassador of Cyber Security in Education, National Education Awards, presented by AICTE and organized by CMAI.
- Young-entrepreneur recognitions in magazines: Forbes Asia, BW Disrupt (Business World), Fortune India, Entrepreneur India
References
- ^ Balachandaran, Manu (26 April 2018). "Saket Modi: Hacking for the greater good". Forbes India.
- ^ Chaudhary, Deepti (26 October 2018). "Why John Chambers loves Saket Modi's Lucideus". Fortune India.
- ^ "Tim Cook Can Legally View Any Photo On Your iPhone, Says Saket Modi". NDTV. 17 September 2016.
- ^ "How Safe Is Your Mobile Device?". BloombergQuint.
- Dhamija, Anshul (18 February 2016). "30 Under 30: Saket Modi - Hacking And Securing The World Wide Web". Forbes India.
- Peermohamed, Alnoor (25 September 2018). "Saket Modi, the millennial who keeps your data on the BHIM app safe". Business Standard India.
- Ranjan, Abhinav (19 August 2017). "All banking apps including BHIM safe, can't be hacked: Saket Modi at India TV's special show on mobile hacking". India TV.
- Ghoshal, Anirban (11 May 2017). "Lucideus Tech secures funds from angel investors". Mint.
- Sarkhel, Aritra (9 May 2017). "Lucideus Tech raises funding from Rajan Anandan, Govind Rajan & others". The Economic Times.
- "Lucideus Bags $7 Mn Funding To Become India's Most Valuable Cybersecurity Startup". Inc42 Media. 2019-12-03. Retrieved 2020-11-19.
- Hedgecock, Sarah (18 October 2016). "Cybersecurity Expert Saket Modi Will Make You Afraid To Own A Smartphone". Forbes.
- "TEDx Talks - YouTube". www.youtube.com. Retrieved 2020-11-13.
- "Entrepreneur India Congress". Entrepreneur India.
- "Hacking iPhone difficult but not impossible: Saket Modi at India TV's special show on mobile hacking". India TV. New Delhi. 20 August 2017. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
- "U30 Summit Asia 2019". Forbes under 30 summit Asia. issuu. p. 2. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
- Dar, Vaishali (10 November 2017). "Running a Startup is One of the Most Simplest Things a Person Can Do". Business World. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
- "SAKET MODI, VIDIT BAXI, RAHUL TYAGI - India's Young & Brightest Entrepreneurs in 40 Under 40 2018 - Fortune India". Fortune India.
- "40 Under 40". Fortune India. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
- "Entrepreneur 2020". Entrepreneur India.