India GameChanger recorded an energetic conversation with Ashish Tandon, the founder and CEO of Indusface. Indusface is a leading application security SaaS company that secures critical Web, Mobile, and API applications using its fully managed platform.
Some of the topics that Ashish covered:
- How Cricket helped Ashish build his foundation of values and traits
- The entrepreneurial calling
- Ashish’s 3 factors to help a business thrive
- Using each venture as a building block for the next one
- How Indusface helps customers feel an additional sense of security
- The importance of Indusface having a fail open mechanism
- Effectiveness of using information from two perspectives
- Ashish’s future plans to make more time to guide young entrepreneurs
Some other titles we considered for this episode:
- Keep Your Calm and Hold Yourself Up
- If I Think I Can Do It and I Want to Do It
- It’s an Evolution
This episode was produced by Stephanie Ng.
Read the best-effort transcript below (This technology is still not as good as they say it is…):
Michael Waitze 0:03
Hi, this is Michael Waitze and welcome back to India GameChanger today we are joined by Ashish Tandon, the founder and CEO at Indusface. Ashish, really, thank you so much for doing this today. How are you doing, by the way?
Ashish Tandon 0:17
I’m doing very well. Thanks for having me on your show. I’ve heard a lot about your show. And I’m looking forward to our conversation today.
Michael Waitze 0:24
Just two guys having a convo. Before we get into the main part of this conversation, actually, can I learn a little bit more about you? I want to understand your background, if you don’t mind.
Ashish Tandon 0:33
Sure. So well, you know, I’m a first generation entrepreneur. In some sense, I would call myself an accidental entrepreneur, you know, I was a keen sportsman, and I actually used to play cricket. Cricket, as you know, in in our country is almost religion. Yeah. And I used to play luxury shopping for the State team of mine. And I was the fastball reasonably good, faster, I could have made it. I mean, at least that’s what I believe I could have made the national team but you know, I was a flat feet. So because of injury, I had several stress factors, and I had to let let that passion of mine go. And then I was a reasonably good student, I was an engineer did very well and studies as well. And then you know, I have to in order to earn a living, I need to kind of, and I was always inclined towards being an entrepreneur, I don’t have any background or being an entrepreneur. So I have no legacy here, right. But it really it was always my passion. And hence, after that started my journey, entrepreneur journey, you know, and God, and life has been very kind. This is actually my fourth venture, I have built three in the past and on sold all of all the three of them. So the last one was, we built security, the SAS based security software to find malware is in websites, and that software, that SAS SAS platform, we sold it to a Trend Micro, which is one of the largest enterprise security company of the world. So it’s been a very satisfying journey so far.
Michael Waitze 1:56
Can I ask you this when I was much younger, right. And when I was at Morgan Stanley, and Goldman Sachs, one of the things we used to ask for when we were hiring people, male or female, it didn’t matter was about team sport participation. We actually thought it was really important for the teamwork that they were going to do at work as well. And I’m curious if you see some sort of analogy between the sport that you did, regardless of what it was, and the business that you do, and how those two things combined together. And if you don’t mind me following up a little bit, Did that surprise you? Or not? So
Ashish Tandon 2:30
I’ll tell you, Michael, my opening experience and right from the diligence, the hard work, you know, the preparation, the process, and then finally, when getting into a game or a match, all of those aspects come in. So very handy to be in almost every time and in the current situation, my cricketing experience helps me I’ll tell you what, game, it is a team event. So I’ve always paid utmost importance and diligence in making sure that the right team because it’s ultimately a team game started individually, you might have a spark here and there, but it’s ultimately an individual, it’s a team game, right? How do you keep the pack together, keep them motivated, even when the chips are down. And all those things come in so many anti crunch moments, you know, when we are down and our team is going to lose? How do we kind of make sure we we kind of bite and give our best? And the fourth is it’s a process, it’s not that good. So match is the ultimate outcome of all the process you follow in terms of building your skill practising. And but the process is very important. So the outcome has to be processed, or isn’t it? So all of these things come in very handy. And trust me, I’m not that evil engineering, actually, that engineering was always a step by step possible, kind of look at the end result, what is that you want to achieve? And then you got to figure out, so all these things, honestly, combination of them have really helped me and I think this is all honesty. Yeah,
Michael Waitze 3:55
one of the things that I think about what sport I’m just trying to come up with this as we’re talking, right? It’s practice, obviously super important, right? Because even if there is a process, even if you know what that process is, if you don’t practice that process, you’re lost because there’s another guy or another gal who’s practice it. And when you’re right, when the chips are down, and when the stress is on you, you want to have that memory, the muscle memory to do it. And the prep almost as important if not more important, and then the precision of just being able to get it right. Every single time or close is just so important in sport and in business. Yeah,
Ashish Tandon 4:27
absolutely. Absolutely. And you know, I think my experience has shown me like for example, when I made my debut, I weighed against the team Mumbai, Mumbai or Bombay that point of time and they had such in London and I was bawling I was fastball was opening match, but he was a legend at that point of time. Now of course it is much but you know, it’s the pressure of you know, you are holding to the best batsman in the world and that’s your first ball ever in your career, right? So it’s overwhelming, overpowering, but these things happen to me when I’m facing a competitor or a larger audience. I’m working on presenting In front of a large audience, all these, you know, this pressure managing pressure. Yeah, ways to overcome, I’m telling you it is always comes in very handy.
Michael Waitze 5:07
I want to talk about the Trend Micro experience as well, right? Because you sold a company to them. And again, this reminds me of what you were just talking about, like if it’s your first time, and it’s not your first. But if you’re building a company, and you’re selling it to this other really big, well established company, right? They have all these processes, procedures, lawyers, all this experience in m&a in place. And in comparison, right? I talk in relative terms, you’re just a guy with a thing in a way, right? In relative terms, not in reality, but you know what I mean? What’s it like, in that process as well, right? Because that’s hard to prep for
Ashish Tandon 5:37
No, no different. So you’re right. And micro, very large company, they were, they are the best lawyers in the world, the best tax consultants, their best people, you know, they’re, they’re the best of the breed. And here is a company out of India, which is selling to them, and just the process and the ups and downs. And you know, when you go through a legal process, or an intelligence happening, there are a few things you know, which you feel are not right, or should be done in a different way, etc. And then again, the end result was to get the transaction done and to get the money in line or banks. And then when there are hiccups coming in in terms of you know, the lawyer comes in, say, by the way, I mean, I remember that was the first time I started even looking at clauses like indemnity and escrow. And I would never look at that agreement. But then I realised how important
Michael Waitze 6:24
those were in general. Yeah. And that’s great. For sure.
Ashish Tandon 6:27
It’s meant also IP, you know, how the code is written and taught me a lot. But again, phenomenally stressful, right? Especially if it’s the first time you’ve got again, same experience, you know, it’s just experience which you walk through, so you have stress and use it. In such situation, what do you need to do? You need to keep your calm, hold yourself up. And the process? I mean, if you’re honest, and you’ve done things, right, and if something has happened, or is not right, because of doing your thing in certain way, and getting an answer for yourself that you know, you did the right thing in that context, of course, it’s not meeting their criteria, but then you need to honestly mention that to them, or judgement to them that this is what we get done. And maybe we did it or not in the way you would have expressed. All these things, trust me actually helped me overcome the questions. And very, because we were honest, or I was honest, yeah. What’s also teaches us sportsmanship and honesty and integrity. Right. And so that always helped me I would be honest, tell them exactly what’s happening. And they would appreciate it, and they would find answers to my challenges and get it done. Yeah, I
Michael Waitze 7:28
love it. Look, I have this whole concept that no one succeeds alone, right. And even though like Steve Jobs was the face of the iPhone, there are hundreds and 1000s of people out there working to build that. And I think it’s true at every company, but also for every team. And we can give hundreds of examples of this. Right? What I want to ask you though, is this idea of being an accidental entrepreneur, because I love this term, right? Like, I’m maybe even more of an accidental entrepreneur than you are. And I’ll tell you why. Because for 25 years, I worked for other people. And to be honest, I thought a couple of times, but maybe I should start this company or that company, but had no idea and didn’t understand, like the infrastructure around starting up. And it didn’t seem to be an avenue for it. But I’m curious for you, right? Because if you started building companies, if this is your fourth, you must have started building companies, what 1520 years ago? Like, I can’t imagine when there’s a while ago, no. 99? So it’s 33 years? Yes, it’s a long time ago, right? But back then there was no startup ecosystem in India. And in a way there was no startup ecosystem anywhere, really, except maybe Silicon Valley. So why do you think you were the guy that said, I want to build my own thing, as opposed to just go work for a big company, even back then.
Ashish Tandon 8:35
So I usually ticket I was a reasonably good student, I was doing engineering, right. And like most of the guys of my age, and my friends were preparing to go to the US, because that was like supposed to be like the dream land and go there, do an MBA and they’re in software, that is always an option. And incidentally, even Obi few million students, she actually had an admission waiting for Johns Hopkins there and went to her and said, somehow, I think that I have this entrepreneurial thing in me, and I want to do something of my own. I know, I have no experience, but I think I can do it. And I want to do it. And will you support me? Let’s see if we can do it for a couple of years. If you don’t, then of course, we’ll be both will do. Whatever everybody else does. It just came from within IU. Right? I always see myself as an entrepreneur, and I’m being honest. Yeah. Then I just fought my passion. And I got support from family. And then as I said, God has been extremely kind and I’m a firm believer, you have to put the hard work, you have to you have to do all those things. Right? You also need the almighty with you. That factor also plays a role for sure.
Michael Waitze 9:38
Do you feel like look, there’s a massive difference if we just talked about when interface was formed? And when your first company started in 1999? You said 9990 9899? Yeah, the whole ecosystem has changed. But starting is still hard, right? It’s just the hardness is moved to different places. But when you look at the startup ecosystem in India, like how does it look? to you today, do you what I mean? Like when you look around, because when you first started, there was nothing there. But now there’s a whole bunch of stuff there. But now there are more people doing it as well, like, how does it look to you today? How would you characterise it? From your perspective?
Ashish Tandon 10:10
I feel that the entrepreneurial spirit was always there in India, I think that spirit was always there, it has become more pronounced. And I think there are a few reasons. One is there is a recognition that there is talent. And the talent is now getting back with capital. And I think the other important factor, which is helping us is, you know, India itself, as a economy or as a country, where the political between the leadership and the sort of stability, those so much instability anywhere in the world, I mean, just from a political angle, it is quite stable, it is a democracy. So, you know, the decision making is much more balanced. And then I think another thing, which is really helped us is, look at the leadership across the world, and for all the best companies on the Indian side, and they always have roots back in India. Yeah. So they’ve also been getting back and saying, Guys, why don’t you look at this idea? Why don’t you do this? So I think overall, it is just headed the ecosystem a lot. I firmly believe that the next 1520 years belong to India, you know, and this is the place to be, and we have the best talent and build a build a software service, not only to service India, but the world.
Michael Waitze 11:15
Do you feel like it’s changed, though, in the sense that, like you said, when you were younger, right, your wife got that entrance into Johns Hopkins, a lot of your peers were saying, you know, I graduated from here, and I’m gonna go work in California, I’m gonna go work in Boston or Chicago. And even though you have like Microsoft, and Google and all these big American global tech companies run by Indians, you feel now that a lot of guys and gals that were in the same position that you were in are just looking around going, I’ll stay in here instead, because the opportunity is so large.
Ashish Tandon 11:43
So looking at launched in my case, so it’s been 19 years for ventures, three ventures which have built and sold where when were bootstrapped, the number one thing I never got funding, I mean, I was the cause. But I used to, I used to put my house on, I put my house or mortgage and got money, and I’ve got from whatever money has to get from my customers to put it back soon running the company very prudently, I didn’t have this luxury of just putting this was non existent, that is actually happening. Now with the ecosystem there it is helping but it has been by keys with all the constraints you talked about. The constraint of capital is a very big thing. You know, if you’re a startup, because you’re putting in all your savings, and whatever little savings you have, in my case, I don’t have the luxury that I will make money over five years, right. In my case, I had to make money if I don’t make money, I’m I’m shutting down, because I didn’t have an avenue to get good money from investors.
Michael Waitze 12:35
Plus, you also made this what’s the right word implied promise to your family into your wife going, I need to succeed at this. If we don’t succeed, we have other plans that I need to succeed here. And I can’t raise money from some venture capitalists. So I got to figure out a way to make this work. It’s like more pressure. But here’s the other thing once you succeed, and you can define that any way you want, right on the first one, what’s the incentive to go do the second one? And the third one, because they’re still hard, right? Do you don’t I mean, it doesn’t get easier, really. So I
Ashish Tandon 13:04
think each one, each one of my exits were the building block for the next one, go ahead. So the first one I exhibited, it was an ISP business, we had done a joint venture, I sold it to the joint venture partner back so that gave us the motivation there was to get some more capital, Personal Capital, right to kind of really be sizable so the next one was that I built a software SAS software sold it to a large enterprise customer enterprise from electron Miko that gave us a lot more capital, but the reason for that exit was twofold One of course, we wanted capital, but the second thing was you know, India was not known as a product or a product. So, it was more known as a it enabled services back office operations or software development, it was very important that to cybersecurity actually two very important for us so for me it was important one to carbon second also established ourselves that we can build a world class product security cyber physical product out of India and sell it to the best in the world. So which we have the keyword that I think that was very important I and then use leveraging that I wanted to build the current industry and industries now the motivation is not just money or capital now money is how do we scale this up and make it a world class organised or urban scale organisation? I think those are the things which drive is now currently in this phase, the motivation is how do we scale it up? How do we make it world class have presence across the world and make it a company of what standard?
Michael Waitze 14:31
Do you feel like you’ve been part of this transition? Because you’re right, right, 20 years ago, you know, whether it was outsourcing or you know, call centres and stuff like that India was known as a place of highly educated people, but not a place that developed products. But now that’s like upside down. Right? Where people look at it, and just think, Oh, my God, I can’t believe the products that they’re developing there. How can we bring them here? Right and there’s this idea of like building in India, for India building in India for the rest of the world. You can test some stuff there that you may not be able to test in the rest of world is like, there’s so much going on. Like, do you feel like you were part of that transition? Do you feel like you’ve helped develop that as well, you and your peers? Yeah,
Ashish Tandon 15:09
I think it was just a security space, with all humility and humbleness, I would definitely say that, you know, we have been able to at least, I would believe that we have been able to motivate and inspire a few youngsters, you know, looking at us to realise that, you know, you can build a cybersecurity software company out of India, make it world class become global, I believe passionately in some way we have had, or our team or our company has helped influence. And there are now there are quite a few of them as well. So you know, but yeah, I would say that, or I would like to believe that we have helped inspire a
Michael Waitze 15:44
few more, what exactly does Indusface do?
Ashish Tandon 15:47
so we have a platform, it’s a SaaS based platform built on the cloud, the objective of the platform is to protect our customers, digital assets, and whatever they call digital assets, are assets, which they use to interact with their customers, or partners or employees. And these digital assets, which are Internet facing. So for example, websites, mobile apps API, these are the mechanisms people, or customers use now to digitally transact or interact with the ecosystem. And if there are 7 billion people have an access to the internet. And all these turns a billion people, if we cannot assume that all of them are good guys. And they’re a nice people, there are people that are adversaries who would like to take advantage of this openness of the internet and try to exploit these digital assets. So what we as a company do is we help our customers make sure that their digital assets are continuously kept protected against these adversaries, right, and we have done is that platform, and we do three things. One, we continuously keep looking at our customers digital assets, because it is that sort of software built on a software platform, we see we make sure that we continue to keep scanning these assets or the software and find out if there are any weaknesses or vulnerabilities which got added or a new vulnerability got introduced. As soon as we find them on a real time basis, protect them or virtually patch them so that no adversary can take advantage. Even if there is a vulnerability, these adversaries don’t take advantage of the open vulnerabilities and open whatever it is means they can get credit card numbers, they can get passwords, whatever, right. So we will kind of make sure that the other aspect, which we’ll look at is what we realised is the cause of with resources in cloud, what they can do is, for example, you have a website, and it can maybe handle at the maximum 10,000 concurrent users at a time, right? Now imagine, if your same website by an adversary by hiring at a cost of over $20, he can hire hundreds of machines across the world and have an attack on your site where instead of 10,000 requests for you will be encountering 100,000 150,000 requests at a time but your server cannot handle what it means is your site or your entire server crashes. Hence your customers were in control of a transaction in our terms is called DDoS. Attack. So we have our platform has an intelligence we can enrich the base back from big data and behavioural learning, we can either where we continuously keep looking out if there are certain kinds of attacks, which are initiated, and based on intelligence, and based on various correlations, we will mitigate those ones so that the customers side doesn’t go down, or basically, the business availability doesn’t go down. Right? And the third important thing, which we do is that what we realised is that, right? While security is important, the end user experience is very important is that, for example, if you go to a site, and it takes takes a lot of time to load, right, or the page load takes time you’re left frustrated, you know, you’re not happy with the experience, right? So what we have done is that we’ve also added a CD and also called Content Delivery Network where it caches static content and customer experience becomes much more so for example, your page load time, we take a taking two, three milliseconds, take it maybe one day, so it improves that. So our approach is we continuously keep finding and mitigating the risks, which hacker can exploit and ask for ransom, for example, take credit card numbers, etc. Make sure that the business availability is there by making sure that we are you know, keeping these adversities out by not letting our customers be victims of DDoS attack and accelerating so that the end user experience. These are the things we fundamentally do and what we feel the customers really want.
Michael Waitze 19:36
The CDN idea is actually a really good idea, right? Because like you said, if I go to a website, and it’s protected, but it takes me literally 10 seconds, I may go somewhere else. If it normally takes me one second, right? So it’s like having another lock on the door. It’s like ah, do you need another key for this thing? It’s really annoying. I didn’t know you were doing this actually by by building a CDN around it. It just means that all of your nodes that have all this stuff that’s why already cached means it’s always super fast. And then on the back end, you’re doing the security stuff. So on the front end on the CDN stuff where all the content is delivered, it really means that the users are never exposed to even if the site goes down, right, because you could DDoS the site, but since it’s cached somewhere else, I still have access to it while interface is going, Oh, automatically, yeah, and fixing it and patching it in real time, which is, I guess what you said, which means that the customer never knows, the end user never knows or should never know that that’s happened. So
Ashish Tandon 20:30
there’s a lot of uniqueness. And you know, I’ll tell you, Michael, Phillip, philosophy, our philosophy of the company has always been, we try to solve our customers problems here we are here, which are there. So another very interesting thing happened or we introduced we which which created us and thought through right from inception was another thing, which we are very conscious about it. Now. Imagine now, before us, the customers traffic was going directly a customer’s website, website, now it goes to us, if something happens to us, or if there is some kind of issue or a bug or whatever, in my software, it goes down there users and the customer will stop talking, right? Because to me, now, their traffic, you know, we had built a fail open mechanism from the first day of my product, where even if something happens to my software, automatically, the customers traffic moves directly to the there is no disruption. And interestingly, one of our competitors, you know, just about a month, month and a half back, it’s a global competitor, their entire software went down. Yeah. And their customers are websites, which were hosted all week to protect them all down with them unless they can. So when they told our customers that, you know, even if that didn’t happen to us, your business will not have your security would have got because our software is not there. But your business continued having this again, I don’t take credit for this. I remember when I had gone to sell it to a bank, this is my pharmacy. So Fred nasiha friends in the bank told me I will use your software, but I need this failover mechanism, because Because of you I my business cannot be done right. And today it is a differentiator.
Michael Waitze 22:02
So it brings up so many innocent questions. But have you seen a change in like, senior management’s opinion of whether this type of protection is necessary? Don’t even like When did in this phase start? When did you launch? It? Right? So that’s a while ago, right? Eight years ago, or nine years ago, when you first launched, like, did you find that the tenor of the conversations have changed over time was when you went in 1314 and 15, like, Hey, you might need this, they’ll be like, we’ll get to it. Whereas today, like the phone is ringing, as opposed to you making outgoing calls, if you know what I mean, like the people understand in the C suite, just how dangerous this is.
Ashish Tandon 22:37
So there are two things which are changed. One, it’s the boardrooms C suite discussion. And because nowadays, if you pick up a newspaper or if you’re using digital content, because you can use something or the other has crashed or something has been hacked, here ransomware this is happening that is happening. So the board and the C suites questions are how are we protected? So I think about three, four years back this kind of consciousness and become a very prevalent and this for the world with dies, what are you doing to make sure that we are not against tomorrow? Not the news tomorrow? What are your Yeah, so that was three, four years back in the last year, year and a half, I’ve started seeing it has evolved. So now the board is saying, okay, great. You guys are doing this. And you all came to when we told you we have to do this, and y’all Wait, and we give you unlimited budget to do whatever it takes, so that we don’t become paralysed now, thank you very much. But now you tell me what’s your return of investment? So you want the security stuff? Tell us what are you really getting out of it, or you’ve just made an investment. It’s quite a coincidence that last week, I was presenting the CIO of a very large group in India. And the way I like to present and we were, we were doing a review of the entire project and a lot of stuff. And it’s a big customer of mine. So we do it once in a year. And I was so what I present it to him was just three things I said, Mr. CIO, these are the number of digital assets we are protecting for you. These are the vulnerabilities are open vulnerability are already existing. We have virtually patched it for you. And by the way, these many attacks happened on your open one entities. So if we were wrong there, or if we had not protected you and the number why I can give you a number, but overall across our customers perspective, in the last one month, there was about 10,000 Plus open vulnerabilities in our customers, we are protecting all of them. And we found out that there were almost about 13 million attacks which happened on these opportunities. So imagine if you were not there, so that was the ROI. So he says digital printers it did the same thing to him and said by the way, you have these many sites, these are new. These are the blocks we did and these may attack the block. I love it actually because my board is not interested in technology, SQL profite whatever he’s asking about, you invested this what is that we got and this is like a clear ROI for it right. The second thing I told them is by Read these many DDoS and bought attacks happen from you and we block them. If we had not your business would have gone down and you would have suffered one business class. Second, is your work hard to get the business up and running. Right? I can see that that that is the changing trend now. So the board three years back was asking about we’re hearing a lot, please implement stuff will take this budget. Now they’re coming and saying, Guys, we give you all the budget. Now tell us what is exactly that you’re doing? Because they have also evolved? That’s the change, I would say which I haven’t seen it
Michael Waitze 25:29
lately. Yeah. I mean, look, there’s a large monetary risk, but there’s also a large reputational risk as well, right? Because if they’re providing other services to people that are based on their software being up and running, and it goes down, it’s hugely problematic, right? Because, you know, it’s like my grandfather told me it takes a lifetime to build a reputation and just like a picosecond to lose it. And once you’re not responsible, then you’re just irresponsible, and you can’t like get it back. It’s just superduper hard. Yeah,
Ashish Tandon 25:54
absolutely. I think different companies have different motivations. For example, you said those companies were providing services and people are banking on the like, SAS is a very good example. SAS, basically, it’s a platform, which is helping other customers provide services. Now, you might be unique on water, if you are hacked, and you know, and people figured out that you’re, you know, they’re getting information because of you is going somewhere else, those customers stop trusting you so it can actually have a huge. The other example would be as a large business, it is publicly traded, and you know, you are completely attacked, and this ransom attack, and it’s just the new sock is going to go public. Now, the board has a much more, it has repercussions. The good news is that the board is conscious, there is enough emphasis put on this topic. But now the discussion has gone a step further now said, while we are investing, please also show us are we getting a return of investment or it’s just me making money. Right? So essentially, they are asking, Are you also implementing and getting away one day, or it wasn’t just that you wanted to just because you said appear? You will say I bought 10 tools? Or these tools really working? Right? And are you getting advantages? I think those are the questions they have sorted out. So it’s an evolution, right? So layer was putting something in place. And now it’s like, okay, you put this out there working? And what is the benefit? You get it? Do
Michael Waitze 27:09
you feel like because I think a lot of people out there don’t understand what a CDN business does, and the access it gives to information into data, right? Like it’s a really powerful business in a way a lot of the CDN companies. I’m not suggesting this right. But a lot of these CDN companies have very low fees to use them because they get all this other information, then they can then consolidate, aggregate and analyse and and sell back to the companies that are using their CDN to create an even bigger business. Do you look at other business opportunities, through the protection that you’re giving and the CDN service that you’re giving that can lead to other things as well? Absolutely, I
Ashish Tandon 27:42
think the biggest advantage we are getting from all the, you know being spread out across the world. So we have geographically spread diseases. Hence, we have actors who are across the world second, bad actors, I mean, and we look at all that data, we have different verticals, we have healthcare, we have insurance, we have financed, we have power companies, and the motivations are different and attack vectors, the different use by them. So we get so much of data. So our quarterly, we come up with a quarterly information and application data’s report, and it is so much of give it vertical, why is it how is healthcare getting affected? Or how is the banking? What are they missing in the banking? Are there different types? Why are we seeing what has been the like, for example, one of the findings in our last report was that we were started seeing that a lot more attacks are happening from Ukraine and Russia, we’re seeing it happening. We’re finding we had some time where we see things from China. So all these geopolitical issues a lot of information comes in. And what we are really doing is we use it from the perspective one, we kind of use that information to strengthen our protection mechanism. And that protection mechanism is learning from various other customers and giving it to all customers. So the beneficiary are all customer because back end, we implement the same thing. And the second thing is we’re using this information to share it with our customers. So they also like to look at it. They’re very keen to what is happening in the healthcare industry. What are others doing? are we different? How are we doing? How are we you know, compared to maybe a developed geographies, like Europe and US or other developing countries and stuff like that. So I think whether we want to add more that we’re using it to add more, add more features. And of course we are but these are the two benefits I see of information weekend. And the last one you we don’t look at any customer data. No, no, no,
Michael Waitze 29:29
I don’t mean at all we look at
Ashish Tandon 29:31
is the bad data or the bad and attacks work for us if we only only look at that text.
Michael Waitze 29:37
Yeah, no, I understand completely. The last thing I’ll ask you before I let you go. I mean, I feel like I can keep going on and on because it’s so interesting for me.
Ashish Tandon 29:45
This is a great conversation. I love it.
Michael Waitze 29:47
I love it too. Do you feel like you’ve been at this for 20 something years now, right? And again, you’ve been an entrepreneur your whole life, essentially, after being a sportsman right? Do you feel I don’t know if the word response ability is the right word, but just some kind of like the necessity to mentor and to give back to people that maybe a generation behind you just show them like, you know, don’t focus on this focus on that in life and in business, if that makes sense, right? Because it’s hard to separate the two at some level.
Ashish Tandon 30:15
Absolutely. Because I’ve gone through so many different stages, and even different environment. I mean, it was like, as I said, I had no capital available now things that I do spend time with startups, and I’m always open. Even in the security space, I have a few 456 friends or guys who are aspiring to, you know, they reach out to me, and I tell them, talk to them, I do spend a lot of time and I think my effort there is always been there to one understand and also guide them, and most of the times are found is that most of the startups are driven by passion or small, little aspect. And once in a while, we’ll solve this, and they’re so very over consumed with that idea. And when you ask them a larger question, what is your addressable market? How are you going to get there? What is the capital using? You’ll be requiring? You know, what are what how is your team looking like? And I’m asking them only very basic five, six questions. And it kind of helps them like you are asking like basic questions, but it kind of opens them up and they start thinking about, like, if you don’t do this, what does your competition look like? What is different about you? And why would people buy you stuff like that, I’ll give you an example. I give a very simple objective, one of the guys who reached out the day you get five paying customers, no matter how you get it, you think that your product is acceptable, because nobody is going to pay you. Unless they see the value added. That’s the best way to figure things out. And it’s interesting that it won’t last week over dinner, and he’s like, hey, you know what, I’ve still got just three days I’ve got three, right. So I plan to increase the amount of time of course, I’m currently very consumed with our with our business business is not our growth trajectory, I need to we need to get things done and reinvest our growth, equity investment data, that they’re also looking at how to be a lot of I have a lot of responsibility, and it takes a lot of my time. But at some point of time, I think after this gig as and when I get an exit or we can exit from the business or the handover to somebody else. I do intend to spend majority of my time in guiding young entrepreneurs because I feel that they could do well with the guidance, because I think that’s an area actually most of the guys are just stuck on the idea and they think that it is the best thing. And yeah, yeah, I would definitely want to do that. And it comes again, straight from my heart. Very passionate about it. And hopefully I’ll spend more time there.
Michael Waitze 32:36
Okay, that’s the perfect way to end. Ashish Tandon, the founder and the CEO of Indusdace. That was awesome. Thank you.
Ashish Tandon 32:43
Thanks a lot, Michael. I think as I said, I’ve done a few such conversations not to flattery, but this was some of the best.
Michael Waitze 32:49
Thank you very much.
Follow Michael Waitze Media here:
Facebook – Michael Waitze
LinkedIn – Michael Waitze
Twitter – Michael Waitze
