By: Tomer Alfandari, ELEFense
Pankit Desai is CEO and Co-Founder of Sequretek, a global cybersecurity company located in Mumbai and the greater New York City Area. They offer end-to-end security in enterprise threat monitoring, incident response, device security, and identity & access governance through their own AI-driven Percept Cloud Security Platform. He and his partner began Sequretek in 2015 and it has grown tremendously since. We at ELEFense were fortunate enough to have the opportunity to speak to Mr. Desai and acquire insight into the value of his company and corporate culture.
Mr. Desai, tell me a little about yourself. Where you are from? What led you to your current position as Co-Founder and CEO of Sequretek?
I am based in a small city north of Mumbai and began my professional career in I.T with a public sector company in India then joined IBM. I moved to the US in 2000 during the Y2K boom and worked my way up the corporate ladder. I was in the US for 12 years specializing in global sales operations.
After a change of heart, I decided to move back to India in 2012 to work for a midsize I.T company known as Rota as they were looking to expand globally. I provided my expertise in international operations. Following 23 years of working in the corporate world and working under someone, I felt this was the right time to step out and start something of my own. My partner Anan had a great background in security, and with his deep understanding of the domain and my knowledge of sales and global operations, we believed we could do something different in the security space.
Our goal was to build a set of products and technologies that would fundamentally change the way security gets consumed. We're focused on mid-sized companies with significant security challenges that do not have the resources to make it work.
Can you talk to me a little bit about Sequretek and what it does?
Sequretek fundamentally shifted the consumption of security in the marketplace. First and foremost, we believed this can only happen if we had a platform approach over a product approach, as a platform tends to combine multiple technologies together. It is more self-sufficient, inclusive, and easy to buy.
We then made sure to have a top-down view of security where the essential element is the ability for you to monitor security across your heterogeneous landscape. For example, I could tell a company across its complete landscape that an attack is coming, its source, its target, and most importantly what they can do to fix it. We act as an arm that will work with you in case of an attack.
In addition, we also provide a bottom-up view of security which allows the company to know who has access to certain files and information, therefore allowing the company to grant or deny information access to certain employees.
How do you think making meaningful relationships with your employees and other business colleagues have helped you in your career?
I always believed network is the net worth, so that's how you grow and develop yourself in the business world. In the process of going to school and working in corporate culture, you build relationships with your classmates, colleagues, customers etc. I believe the relationships you accrue and build over time need to be out of goodwill without expecting a reward or outcome in your favor. This creates honest, positive relationships. When I look back at our initial employees, investors, and customers; they were all former acquaintances that I knew. These connections allowed me to reach out and ask for assistance without feeling as if it was a favor. It truly makes a difference.
How would you describe the culture at Sequretek?
I'd like to say our culture is something I take great pride in. Our employees are our biggest asset, therefore we try to create a safe working environment backed up with complete transparency. We will not ask someone else to do something we have never done ourselves, but rather lead by example in order to create a supportive culture. We also stand on giving our employees roles and responsibilities beyond their areas in order for them to gain more skills and increase their knowledge. This demonstrates trust in our employees thus giving them more confidence in their day-to-day work. I stand by the fact that if an employee's life is getting better, then there's something positive we are doing through the culture we create.
Do you believe culture helps you in the long run?
Yes, these positive relationships we create through our company culture provide us with advantages in the future. It keeps the doors open to new opportunities as we never know where our employees will work after Sequretek. A great culture strives for great relationships and that is what we try to get done here. We purposely hire new graduates because we want them to start their corporate careers on a positive and motiving foot. And with these positive relationships, our culture helps us in the long run.
About ELEFense
ELEFense computes company engagement, sentiment & keyword trends in real-time at a department level, revealing Enterprise Cultural Analytics to manage employee burnout and much more. We can create a graph of employee and company health that indicates the effects of events and trends on cultural change. This is done automatically & in real-time without using questionnaires or other traditional methods. ELEFense saves you from relying on opinions or voluntary contributions to make a management decision.
Tomer Alfandari works as a Marketing and Sales Representative at ELEFense. He is originally from Los Angeles, California, and currently attends the University Of California, San Diego. He is studying International Business with a minor in Marketing.