Chennai: Rakesh Thatha was exploring the world of computer hacking as part of his research at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology-Madras when it occurred to him that a majority of online frauds could be eliminated if people used a password that changed every time a person logged on to a system.

Meanwhile, Rakesh’s brother Pavan, who had already dirtied his hands as a student entrepreneur at the Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay, was looking to start afresh after the online recruitment portal he had developed with fellow students failed to take off.

Passwords aplenty: Pavan Thatha (left) and his brother Rakesh Thatha, co-founders of ArrayShield. (Sai Sen/Mint)

A few years later, Pavan persuaded his younger brother to give up his job at Computer Associates to join him in developing the security software. The one-and-a-half-year-old software company and its flagship ArrayShield product has since won multiple awards and recognition, including the Red Herring Asia Award for innovative technology.

“It is easy to decipher a password if I have personal information, almost 10% of people use “password” as password and the rest would use their names, pet names or kid’s name,” says Rakesh.

ArrayShield’s authentication system is a simple pattern-based recognition system that changes every time a person logs on to the system. Users have to remember a pattern in an array as a secret. Based on the remembered pattern and a unique translucent card that helps generate the array of characters, the user derives a one-time password for each transaction, providing them protection against hacking, phishing and identity thefts. Rakesh presented his paper on the authentication process in international conferences held at Singapore and Dubai. His paper has been published in Lecture Notes in Computer Science, a compilation of articles presented at conferences.

The Thatha brothers, who are testing the product in at least two companies, aim to become a global player in the computer security market in three years. A long way for the sons of a cloth retailer in a small coastal town in Andhra Pradesh, who claim to have first seen a computer after they joined college. Little did Pavan and Rakesh, who joined IIT Bombay and IIT Madras, respectively, on the same day, realize that four years later, both of them would come together to found the company.

Although Pavan’s debut as a student entrepreneur on setting up an online recruitment portal at the IIT Bombay’s Shailesh J Mehta School of Management failed, it strengthened his resolve to become an entrepreneur. The stint at the IIT helped Pavan crystallize his ambition to start a company and Rakesh to come up with the idea that would change how a person is authenticated. Rakesh says it was a simple idea that struck him while he was half asleep. Pavan was the first to graduate in his family. When he completed his studies at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Warangal, in 2004 with a Roll of Honor, his parents were both thrilled and excited.

“Technology was my passion and I wanted to set out on my own, but realized that I lacked the industry understanding and joined Philips,” says Pavan, the chief executive officer.

He quit Philips after working as a software programmer for two years and enrolled for his MBA at IIT Bombay. “I was sure that I wanted to become an entrepreneur, but did not have enough skill and decided to pursue MBA,” says Pavan.

Rakesh says that his brother Pavan, who is just a year older, is a role model—be it academics or the passion to start a company. For Rakesh, to pursue his postgraduate in computer science at IIT Madras was a dream come true.

“While doing bachelor’s course in a private college at Ongole (Andhra Pradesh), attending a 15-day workshop in IIT Madras was enough to kindle my interest to pursue research in the prestigious institution,” says the younger brother.

Pavan says, “I could have become a gold medallist in my MBA but wanted to get my hands dirty.” Pavan spent most of his time hanging out in the incubation centre, a fertile place for start-ups. In 2008, Pavan managed to meet, talk and listen to 25 business people at various seminars. It was heartening to listen to the challenges faced by them, says Pavan.

“I had technology experience and business understanding, but did not have concrete idea on what to start,” says Pavan. “I felt there was a gap in terms of business experience, so decided to take up the job offer from Photon Infotech in 2008 as project manager.”

Soon after graduating, Rakesh got an offer from Computer Associates as software developer in 2009. He worked for eight months and then quit. “I did not like a 9am to 5 pm job, as it was neither interesting nor challenging for me after doing research in IIT,” says the chief technology officer.

After extensive deliberations over their dinner table at home, Pavan and Rakesh decided to take the plunge and set up ArrayShield Technologies Pvt. Ltd in mid 2010. Pavan says that looking at security solutions as research and as business are entirely different things.

The brothers kept evolving and conceptualizing their technology to make it foolproof when applied to larger organizations. Incidentally, they came up with a better idea that would solve more technical problems when the model was scaled up.

Pavan’s business management skills helped as he started out to explore the business—the market for the product, the existing companies, their funding—while he worked on the business plan.

“The easiest thing was to quit our jobs and start the business. However, the toughest part was to convince others in joining us and seeing our vision,” says Pavan. Two of Rakesh’s juniors from IIT and a friend quit well-paying jobs with Oracle and John Deere and are working with the brothers with a 70% pay cut.

Two angel investors have funded the start-up. The company is in the threshold of scaling up revenue and is now looking at their second round of funding, likely from venture capitalist or a group of angel investors. The product is being used by large customers in manufacturing and information technology and is being targeted at financial institutions.

Mint is a strategic partner of national entrepreneurship Network, which hosts the Tata First Dot.

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Also Read |Earlier stories in the Student Enterprises series