Indian-American entrepreneur Jay Chaudhry never envisioned himself as a business mogul, let alone a billionaire or an industry pioneer.
“I have no background of entrepreneurship in my family of small-scale farmers. So if you asked me, ‘Did I ever think about becoming an entrepreneur in my childhood [or] early years of my career?’ Not really,” Chaudhry, the founder and CEO of cloud security company Zscaler told CNBC.
Although he noted, “If Marc Andreessen [Netscape co-founder] could start a company — he was a young guy [right] out of college — why shouldn’t I start a company?”
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Who is Jay Chaudhry?
Growing up in rural India and later moving to the US in 1980 to study engineering and marketing, he didn't foresee his future in entrepreneurship, even after securing positions at tech giants IBM and Unisys.
Chaudhry began to consider entrepreneurship during the boom in City by the Bay back in 1996. Motivated by the success stories around him, he decided to leave his executive role at IQ Software in Atlanta. “Let’s go get venture capital funding,” he said.
His wife, Jyoti, quit her job as a systems analyst at BellSouth to join him in his venture.. Together, they invested their life savings of around $500,000 into their first cybersecurity startup, SecureIT, in 1997.
{{/usCountry}}His wife, Jyoti, quit her job as a systems analyst at BellSouth to join him in his venture.. Together, they invested their life savings of around $500,000 into their first cybersecurity startup, SecureIT, in 1997.
{{/usCountry}}“At the time, maybe less than 5% of Fortune 500 companies had firewalls,” Chaudhry recalls. “Within 18 months, we had deployed firewalls in about 50% of [the] Fortune 500.” In 1998, SecureIT was acquired by VeriSign in an all-stock deal valued at nearly $70 million.
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How Zscaler became a cloud security giant
Over the next decade, Chaudhrys founded two more cybersecurity companies and an e-commerce business, each of which was eventually acquired. By 2007, they were already successful entrepreneurs, but the Indian-American tycoon decided to launch “one big company and put 200% focus on that.”
This new venture was Zscaler, a company designed to help businesses transition from traditional firewalls to cloud-based security solutions.
“We were trying to solve a problem that was futuristic. Will it be successful or not? Will the market take off or not? That was all unknown,” he said while sitting with CNBC Make It’s.
With a $50 million personal investment, the couple launched Zscaler. Today, the company generates $1.6 billion in annual revenue and holds a market value of approximately $30 billion.
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Chaudhry’s personal net worth is estimated at $11.5 billion per Forbes.