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I built the first-generation antivirus while pursuing my Masters in Computer Science…
Artikelen van Sanjay
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Sanjay Katkar heeft dit gedeeldOne of the biggest mistakes leaders make is believing they have to solve every problem. I made that mistake too. In the early years, it was natural. The company was small. Every customer issue, every product decision and every technical challenge eventually reached me. But as the organisation grew, I realised something important. If every important decision still depended on me, then I had built a dependency, not a company. Leadership isn't about becoming indispensable. It's about making the organisation stronger with every person you develop. Some of the proudest moments in my career haven't been when I solved a difficult problem. They've been when I watched someone else solve it better than I would have. That doesn't reduce a leader's importance. It proves the leader has done their job well. The goal is never to build an organisation around one person. The goal is to build people who can carry the organisation forward. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘨𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘯'𝘵 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘴𝘰𝘭𝘷𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺 𝘱𝘳𝘰𝘣𝘭𝘦𝘮. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘳𝘦 𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘦𝘥 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘤𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥. Quick Heal | Seqrite #CyberSecurity #Leadership #QuickHeal #Seqrite
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Sanjay Katkar heeft dit gedeeldA reel keeps going viral: antivirus companies secretly write the viruses. This question existed even in the 90s. Back then, my honest answer would've been simpler. Viruses made nobody any money. No internet, no data worth stealing. It was purely for fun, for curiosity, bragging rights or simply to see if they could spread. Today it's a different world. Cybercrime has become a multi billion dollar industry. Ransomware gangs, phishing syndicates, data brokers and even state sponsored groups already have enormous financial incentives. They don't need antivirus companies creating malware for them. In August 2018, right here in Pune, hackers pulled off the Cosmos Bank heist with nearly ₹94 crore gone in three days, through cloned cards used across 28 countries and a SWIFT transfer routed to Hong Kong. Investigators later linked it to a state-sponsored group. In 2022, the ransomware attack on AIIMS Delhi disrupted critical hospital services for days, showing that today's cybercriminals are targeting essential infrastructure, not just computers. And IBM's own 2025 report puts the average Indian data breach at ₹22 crore now, the highest anywhere in the world, up 13% in a single year. Today, cybercrime is an industry. Data, identities and financial fraud are all monetised. So ask the only question that matters: Who actually profits from that model? Not the people building the defence. The people running the scams. I've spent the last 36 years helping people recover from malware, studying it, analysing it and building technology to stop it. Creating malware would defeat everything we've worked for. If someone tells you the fire brigade is secretly setting the fires, ask them why they've never once seen the receipt. What other cybersecurity myth do you keep hearing repeated as fact? Quick Heal Seqrite #CyberSecurity #QuickHeal #Seqrite #Myths
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Sanjay Katkar heeft dit gedeeldEvery security team has that one moment. 😊 Sometimes the smallest click creates the longest meeting. ☕ AI Break Room | Episode 1 𝘚𝘦𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘯𝘦𝘹𝘵 𝘚𝘢𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘥𝘢𝘺...
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Sanjay Katkar heeft dit gedeeldWhen people think of cybersecurity, they imagine exciting moments. A sophisticated attack. A major incident. A race against time. Those moments do happen. But they aren't what define a cybersecurity company. The moments I'm proudest of are often the quiet ones. A researcher who spends days understanding a new threat so customers never experience it. An engineer who improves performance by a few milliseconds because every second matters at scale. A support team that patiently helps a customer regain confidence after a difficult incident. A product team that debates a feature for hours because they want to get it right, not just get it done. These moments rarely make headlines. They don't create dramatic stories. But they create something much more valuable. Trust. At Seqrite, we don't measure success only by what we build. We also value the problems our customers never have to face because we did our job well. Those are the victories that matter most. The strongest cultures celebrate the quiet work that protects others every single day.
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Sanjay Katkar heeft dit gedeeldA newspaper clipping from 18 August, 2010 says "Quick Heal gets ₹60 crore investment from Sequoia." But it doesn't say the real story. Because by the time that headline was printed, Quick Heal was already 15 years old. I still have the cutting. But here's what that headline doesn't tell you. We didn't need the money. By FY 2009-10, we'd already crossed ₹100 crore in revenue. Growing at almost 100% CAGR for three straight years. Entirely bootstrapped. Entirely from a product built in Pune. But a decade earlier, not a single national distributor was willing to touch, because nobody believed India could build security software worth paying for. So when Sequoia came knocking, my brother Kailash and I had a real conversation: why take outside money when the bank balance is healthy and the growth curve is already bending up? The answer wasn't cash. It was cover. Global giants were sitting on deep pockets, ready to give antivirus away free for a year or two just to wipe out players like us. We needed a war chest, and not because we were losing, but because we refused to lose a war of attrition to someone with a bigger balance sheet. I remember what I told the papers that week: the Quick Heal brand had become synonymous with quality security for both consumers and businesses. That wasn't marketing copy. That was 15 years of floppy disks, angry customers, and a distribution network we built city by city because no one else would sell an Indian product. The ₹60 crore didn't build Quick Heal. It protected what we'd already built, long enough for the rest of India to catch up to what we knew all along. So I think the best funding round isn't the one that saves a company. It's the one a company never needed to survive. What do you think? #CyberSecurity #QuickHeal #Seqrite
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Sanjay Katkar heeft dit gedeeldThe average age of a cybercriminal in the UK is 17. I debugged my first virus at 20, with none of the tools they have now. The UK's National Crime Agency puts the average age of a cyber offender at 17. The FBI puts the average age of a US cybercrime arrest at 19, against 37 for crime overall. A tool that took me few weeks to build with a C compiler and zero internet in 1990 is now one prompt away for a bored teenager. Meanwhile, on the defenders' side: A 2025 meta-analysis in Nature's npj Digital Medicine, reviewing 83 studies, found generative AI already performs statistically on par with practicing physicians overall. In a separate emergency-room study, GPT-4 matched or beat resident physicians on diagnostic accuracy. That's not a "someday" stat. That's already happening, in real hospitals, right now. And the job market isn't waiting either. It's not just cybersecurity. Across professions, AI is already matching experts in tasks once considered uniquely human. Because the World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 says AI and related shifts will displace 92 million jobs by 2030, but create 170 million new ones. And almost 40% of the skills we use today will be outdated within five years. I've lived through one version of this exact panic already. When computers reached Indian banks, accountants who'd spent careers on ledgers and calculators feared they'd be replaced. Five years later, the ones who adapted did more work, not less. The ones who refused were the ones who actually lost their jobs. The data says exactly what my own life already told me twice. You're never really replaced by AI. You're replaced by someone who learned it faster than you did. Which side of that 92 million vs. 170 million are you actively preparing to be on?
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Sanjay Katkar heeft dit gedeeldThe day you become the smartest person in every meeting is the day your company stops growing. One of the biggest shifts I had to make as a founder was learning to be comfortable with people who knew more than I did. In the early days, I was deeply involved in almost every technical discussion. As the company grew, that became impossible. Today, I don't expect to know more than our malware researchers about threats. Or more than our product managers about every customer requirement. Or more than our engineers about every architectural decision. And that's exactly how it should be. The role of a leader changes with the organisation. In the beginning, your knowledge helps build the company. Later, your ability to attract, trust and empower talented people determines how far the company can go. The strongest teams I've worked with were never built around one expert. They were built around people who challenged each other's thinking with mutual respect and a shared purpose. Leadership isn't about having every answer. It's about creating an environment where the best answers can emerge. Great leaders don't build followers. They build people who make the organisation smarter than themselves. #Leadership #QuickHeal #Seqrite
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Sanjay Katkar heeft dit gedeeldIn the late 90s, I lost some of my best engineers. Not to competitors, but to marriage. Let me explain. Back then, CS graduates in India were rare. Maybe less than 100 a year came out of Pune University with the degree. And all of them got scooped up by Infosys, TCS, Wipro, Patni Computers, Mastek (the "safe" names). So I hired whoever was left. And I trained them for months on real problems, real research, real ownership, and actual product building. Word got around: "Join Quick Heal, you'll learn, you'll build, you'll matter." And slowly, I built a team of genuinely good people who loved the work. Some left for bigger salaries abroad after a couple of years (fair enough, that's the game). But the ones who stayed, who I really believed in, I lost several of them to something I never saw coming. Their parents started looking for a match. Arranged marriage was the norm. And the first question from the bride's side was always: "Where does your son work?" "Cat Computer Services. Antivirus software." (that was before we name it “Quick Heal Technologies”). Then they'd visit the office that had no fancy furniture, no glass cabins. Just makeshift tables and a small team building something nobody outside understood yet. The proposal would get rejected. In some cases, the match simply didn't move forward after the family saw where the groom worked. And soon after, the parents would say: "Why are you wasting your time here when MNCs are offering you double?" I couldn't compete with that. Not with logic, not with vision, not even with loyalty. Some who genuinely enjoyed working with us still chose to leave because their family wanted the stability that came with a well known company and see them settled. A few months later, I'd hear he got married. I was genuinely happy for them. But it taught me something about building in India in the 90s: You're not just competing for talent. You're competing with an entire social system's definition of "security." We didn't have that kind of security to offer back then. What we had was purpose. And it took years before purpose alone was enough to keep people, and stay married too. Looking back, I don't blame the parents either. They wanted what every parent wants: stability for their children. In the India of the late 90s, a large, well known company was the safest answer they knew. Founders from the 90s: did you experience something similar? #Entrepreneurship #Leadership #Founders
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Sanjay Katkar heeft dit gedeeldMeet my AI Agents I'll be spending weekends with. 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗦𝗵𝗶𝗲𝗹𝗱 Thinks every click is suspicious. 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗦𝗰𝗼𝘂𝘁 Finds things nobody else notices. 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗣𝗶𝘅𝗲𝗹 Wants to automate everything. 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗘𝗰𝗵𝗼 Keeps asking whether we really need that data. 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗕𝘂𝗴 Means well. Usually makes things worse. Every weekend, these five AI agents will have a short conversation on cybersecurity, privacy, and AI, inspired by my real life experiences with people. In just a minute or two, they might make you smile and perhaps think a little too. One small request. 😊 Don't just read the comics. Get to know the characters. I have a feeling you'll eventually find someone from your workplace in each one of them... or maybe a little bit of yourself. 𝘐’𝘷𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘦 𝘮𝘺 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘴𝘪𝘥𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘯𝘰𝘸. 𝘚𝘰 𝘐 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘐’𝘥 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘳𝘵 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘴𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘴 𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦, 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵 𝘣𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘮𝘪𝘭𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘧𝘢𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘥𝘥𝘴 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘰𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘳 𝘸𝘦𝘦𝘬𝘦𝘯𝘥. 🙂 #CyberSecurity #Weekend #Fun
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Josh Updegraff Thank you for such a thoughtful perspective. Building those conditions early is one of the most important responsibilities of a leader.
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Sanjay Katkar vond dit interessantVery important and key skill, rather I would say a mindset for aspiring leaders ( not just managers). I believe Here trust, coaching and facing clients are supporting skills. Thanks Sanjay Katkar for explicitly highlighting.
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Sanjay Katkar vond dit interessantA thoughtful and inspiring perspective. 👏👏 This resonates deeply with me. Early in my leadership journey, I often felt responsible for solving every challenge myself. Over time, I realized that sustainable success comes not from being the smartest person in the room, but from building a team that is empowered to think, decide, and lead independently. Some of my proudest leadership moments have been when team members took ownership of critical initiatives, made decisions with confidence, and delivered outcomes that exceeded my expectations. Those moments reinforced an important lesson: leadership is not about creating reliance on a leader; it is about creating more leaders. Thank you for sharing this powerful reminder that our true legacy as leaders lies not in the problems we solve, but in the people we develop and the impact they continue to create. The ultimate measure of leadership is when the organization continues to grow stronger, make better decisions, and thrive—even when the leader is not in the room. 🌟
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