With almost 700 million smartphones in use in India, the need to protect them from cyberthreats has given birth to a number of cybersecurity startups operating across consumer and enterprise segments. Catering to this market is Gurugram-based bootstrapped startup, Protectt.ai Labs, with its plug-and-play software solutions. “India has over 200,000 mobile apps developed by Indian companies on the Google Play Store. Every time a company is developing a mobile app, they are doing the security on their own. So, we developed a plug-and-play security component which can be integrated with mobile apps and by default it provides comprehensive security,” says Manish Mimani, founder and CEO, Protectt.ai Labs.
On the enterprise side, the startup is currently focused on the financial sector that primarily deals with highly sensitive data. “India is home to a large number of growing fintech apps. Banking, insurance and stock exchanges are some of the enterprise areas in fintech we find huge opportunities in,” says Mimani. While the solutions are available for download from the Google Play Store for individual users who can then subscribe to the services after a free trial, the startup works with its enterprise clients to integrate into their system and then charge them per user. “Currently, the enterprise segment forms the major chunk of our business with millions of devices under protection. In addition to securing their businesses, there is a strong demand for a vast range of analytics services,” says Mimani.
Also Read: Blaupunkt Google QLED TV (55-inch): A good choice in the mid-range segment
According to him, the demand for analytics grows stronger by the day because enterprises want to move beyond just identifying the threats. With plenty of data points available, businesses want to use them to understand threat patterns over time while leveraging AI to understand the behavior of the devices in their network and to predict how their network security can be tampered with in the future. “A lot of our R&D work includes developing and tampering with security and analyzing how it can impact various mobile applications, operating systems and devices that our customers may use,” says Mimani.
Over the last two years, with the demand for cybersecurity drastically increasing due to the Covid-19 pandemic-induced digital push, the startup has seen strong growth and continues to ride on that wave. “Our first quarter revenue this year is more than the full financial year revenue of last year. We are going to break even this financial year,” says Mimani.
The growth since the pandemic has also cleared one of the major barriers facing the startup, which was to create awareness and educate potential customers while creating new kinds of challenges, in terms of evolving threats and subsequent deep engineering needed to defend against them. “As a nation, we have lots to improve in product engineering and more so in the cybersecurity space. We are working towards it actively,” says Mimani.
.