Get to know the 2020 DataTribe Challenge Finalists:
Q&A with Scanta founder Chaitanya Hiremath
Q: Tell us about your background.
Chaitanya Hiremath Founder and CEO
Chaitanya, or as some call him, Chad, has been involved in technology and related trends throughout his career. Having started multiple companies, and launching his second startup after winning the SharkTank Showcase, Chad has been working in startups for over 8 years. In 2019, he was selected as a Top 25 People in Tech by Entrepreneur Magazine, after being chosen for Forbes 30 Under 30 in the Startup Category. He was also chosen as the ‘Youth Icon’ for 2019 by Fame India, was featured in Discovery Channel’s Expedition Unknown series, and represents startups of the United States in the Global G20 Summit as a senator.
A dynamic, results-oriented leader with a strong track record scaling companies, Chad utilizes keen analysis and insights to drive organizational improvements. He has entered the cybersecurity space with a unique perspective from his expertise in artificial intelligence and machine learning. With this vantage point, Chad found new approaches to solving the emerging problems in the field. Creating use cases for upcoming technological platforms and developing relevant strategies for their implementation is central to his vision.
Anil Kaushik Co-Founder and CTO
Anil served as the Data Platform Engineering Head of the Cloud Platform Group at Sophos. He was also responsible for leading the wireless team of its Network Security Group and was one of the founding members of the Wireless Sync Security Team. He has also worked for leading technology companies like Fortinet, Juniper Network, Motorola, and HP. Anil is a member of the Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) and WiFi alliance and has been his company’s representative at multiple patent committees in the past. Anil holds close to 60 patents in networking, security, and cloud and has authored and presented peer-reviewed papers to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE).
Q: Tell us about your business/idea.
Conversational systems are on the rise and growing at 30% CAGR, such rapid scale has left gaps in security that existing systems are not protecting against. We provide comprehensive protection against malicious attacks through our security platform for conversational systems.
Q: What was the original inspiration for your company/product?
After witnessing several attacks hit at the conversational layer, it became evident that this was an up-and-coming problem that needed to be resolved. We then got feedback from large cybersecurity company executives that this is an upcoming threat vector, so we got started right away building out the solution.
Q: What’s your vision for the future … “What will the market you are pursuing look like in 5-10 years?”
In the next 5-10 years, we believe that the conversational systems market will expand exponentially, reaching more than $100B. Our cybersecurity company is poised to impact a significant portion of that market.
Q: How does your business address pressing cyber and data challenges for the commercial sector?
As corporations roll out next-generation conversational systems, there is growing risk to their security. We provide a security solution which is going to be the industry gold standard for this problem.
Q: What attracted you to the DataTribe Foundry? Why did you choose to participate in the DataTribe Challenge?
DataTribe is well known in the security space, with a strong team of experts, and we thought it would be beneficial to get some feedback on our thesis. We didn’t expect to become finalists, however, and are enthusiastic about pitching to the panel of judges.
Q: What’s your long-term vision for your business?
Our vision is to become the leaders in conversational security, dominating this emerging threat vector. We plan on becoming the Gold Standard for conversational security.
