Story of an Young ENTREPRENEUR Series

---

#Story of an Young #ENTREPRENEUR Series-

#Story 1:

 

Sohang Sengupta, student of Computer Science #IEM, the Founder of ZeroDollarSecurity Community and Designated Partner and CEO for Cybertix Technologies LLP, has always harboured an acute passion for Cyber Security, ever since the beginning of his +2. His knowledge in Cyber Security and the prestigious selection at the KWHS Top 30 Young Leader, University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of

Business helped him bag his first internship, even before starting college, with one of the NIFTY 50 companies of India. This exposure taught him how to harness the power of cybersecurity as a business enabler and value creator. He then went on to become the youngest member of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Development Centre (IEDC), #IEM, funded by DST, Govt of India, in his first year. The next year, he founded the first Cyber Security Cell under IEM-IEDC, and nabbed his second internship with RSA Security, DELL-EMC. He came back armed with a comprehensive knowledge of product development, testing and value chain of software products, and started ZeroDollarSecurity, India’s first crowd-sourced and crowd-skilled cybersecurity company.

 

ZeroDollarSecurity aspires to arm all enterprises, especially small and macro ones, with reasonable security features, and better the community as a whole by educating, mentoring and providing resources to students, free of cost, as their name suggests. Creating a value ecosystem where they work on real time, real life problems pertaining to the industry, while helping out small businesses, is one of Sohang’s main goals.

 

Institutionalisation of the Triple Helix Model has always been one of his other goals. This startup’s whole mode of operations is online, with a few offline student chapters at acclaimed institutions like NIT Durgapur, Jadavpur University, and IEM. All of the colleges and institutions under their umbrella use their resources and handbooks, which have been verified by industry members so as to have a holistic development.

ZeroDollarSecurity has already mentored and trained more than 500 students, and quite a few employees from reputed IT giants in India. All ZeroDollarSecurity community members then utilise this model to educate and convert more people to this noble cause. They have established chapters at Tamil Nadu and Telangana, with new ones opening in Delhi and Pune.

 

He got selected by MIT( Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Bootcamp for Innovation and Entrepreneurship for this startup, and it has been nominated by CIO Insider India as the Top 10 Indian CyberSecurity Service provider, which will feature in late July, 2020. He was also appointed as the Chief CyberSecurity Mentor at the Centre of Excellence, ZeroDollarSecurity at Jadavpur University.

 

His goal is to sustain this model of commodizing niche technologies to benefit society as a whole, and work towards the betterment of student resources and opportunities. But the question he gets asked most frequently is how does he sustain a model which has entirely free educational resources and has no discernable profit to the outsider’s eye?

In the words of Sohang himself, “I use a three pronged approach, namely, cross learning, train the trainer, and the utilisation of the vast talent pool of this community as a parent company (Cybertix Technologies LLP) resource. Our members learn from each other, and from our resources, making it a completely crowd skilled initiative, and all of them take an oath to teach at least 5 others about the cybersecurity domain, thus spreading our outreach even further. A part of profit earned by Cybertix Technologies is channeled into ZeroDollarSecurity, which allows more free growth of the niche innovative products we aspire to develop. In return, Cybertix can put this brilliant young skill pool to use.”

I feel really fortunate to be the witness of their dynamic journey with tremendous hard work and dedication.

 

#innovation #entrepreneurship #cybersecurity #startups #IEM #Teamwork

 

Article Courtesy: Prof. Avijit Bose, IEM, Kolkata

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---