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TMCNet: Meet the man behind Rs 200cr anti-virus software business [Security] [Times of India]

[March 14, 2013]

Meet the man behind Rs 200cr anti-virus software business [Security] [Times of India]

(Times of India Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) When one door closes, another opens. It's been like that right through Kailash Katkar's life. Every time an opportunity looked like dimming, another emerged for him. The founder and managing director of the over Rs 200-crore antivirus software maker Quick Heal Technologies, however, puts it differently. He says his success was largely the result of his ability to sense changes in technology early.

Katkar gave up formal education after he passed the Secondary School Certificate examination in the mid-1980 s because of his family's circumstances. His father was a machine setter in electricals company Philips in Pune and his mother was a homemaker. Katkar relied on his interest in technical matters to learn how to repair the then popular office gadgets such as Facit adding machines, desktop electric calculators and ledger posting machines.

The going was fairly good, but Katkar could see the tide turning in favour of computers. So he acquired the skill to fix computers and was soon signing annual maintenance contracts (AMCs) to maintain these machines.

That was the early nineties and the dreaded phenomenon of 'viruses' had also set in. "In those days a virus travelled from a floppy disc to a computer, paralyzing the system. The creators of viruses did not intend to steal data and use it for financial gains. They were happy to cause nuisance by simply damaging data," Katkar recalls. He sourced standard solutions to deal with the problem. "There was no concept of removing a virus. We reformatted the computer. This was a built in feature of our AMCs," Katkar says.

Meanwhile, Katkar's brother Sanjay had completed higher secondary and was thinking of pursuing electronics at the graduate level. Katkar coaxed him into enrolling for a BSc programme in computer science, arguing that information technology was the opportunity of the future. At the time, about 50,000 unique viruses were emerging each day. Prominent among them were Happy Birthday Joshi and Michaelangelo. Sanjay chose development of antivirus solutions for these as project work for his BSc course and was successful in finding ways to address the problem.

It was the mid-1990 s and the internet was becoming popular. "It also meant greater risk for computers as it created another channel for viruses to reach the machines," says Katkar.

The brothers built on Sanjay's BSc project to create a larger anti-virus solution, but nobody was willing to pay for it. So the Katkars distributed the solution free with the computer AMC and also circulated it among their network of computer service professionals.

"Then came deadly viruses like One Half and Natash. Only our antivirus could decrypt the files they encrypted," Katkar recollects, indicating that even the global big names in the antivirus business were not up to the task. "That was the birth of Quick Heal as a business idea -- a solution that would reside on a machine and tackle problems as they cropped up." But Katkar faced the typical predicament of a first generation entrepreneur -- lack of marketing muscle. Banks did not understand his work enough to take the risk of lending him money. He appointed a distributor. The distributor raised sales volumes, but filched part of the sales proceeds. Katkar recognized this and decided to build his own team. The effort paid off. Today, Quick Heal's products command a 35% share of the home PC and small and home office PC segment of the antivirus market. The enterprise solutions market is still largely in the grip of MNCs.

Katkar has opened sales offices in Japan and the US. The Quick Heal product family has been recognized as establishing industry benchmarks by international computer security certification organizations. In 2010, private equity investor Sequoia Capital invested Rs 60 crore in Quick Heal. "This is helping us in our development and marketing strategies and to professionalize the organization," Katkar says. The company expects to end this year with a revenue of Rs 225 crore, up from Rs 10 crore just a decade ago.

Sanjay, who heads the technical side of the business, and his team are currently busy developing solutions for the mobile digital devices market. Katkar is sure mobile is where future computing will be. "It will also help us step up our reach into the enterprise arena," he says.

(c) 2013 Bennett, Coleman & Company Limited

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