Security Product Entrepreneurship in India

Entrepreneurship begins with an idea, strong zeal and motivation to achieve goals. Journey starts with the minimal resources and maximum enthusiasm and faith in the idea. Then it follows a long way, for creating a sustained business with a success story, which is an outcome of the well executed and well thought of business idea.

Entrepreneurs usually focus on the unaddressed problems in the business ecosystem and pursue opportunities in the new and emerging fields. In the Internet economy, entrepreneur's traction in Information technology and other related niche domain such as information security and cyber security has witnessed increase in the recent past. In the niche domains such as cyber security, security product development is seen as one of the major opportunity for the entrepreneurs. The security entrepreneurship story of India is significant, although still remain largely unknown.

There may be about 40 to 50 security product companies, many of them have been set up in last five years. Some of them are globally acknowledged, for their capabilities and market share. The products they have been offering and serving are innovative, competitive and covering a broader range of capabilities. Some companies have deeply entrenched their foothold in the diverse global market. In fact, for the most of the companies, significant revenue comes from export. The companies believe that the share of the export will be rising in the coming time. The global market is willing to experiment with new innovations. Geographies, such as the Middle East, South East Asia, Africa, US and Western Europe provide multiple opportunities to the new ventures. The market ecosystem in these countries is conducive to adopt niche security innovations. There is significant scope of scaling up the value of the IPR in the international market, and even realize maximum business benefits as the major security players are eyeing at buying new technology solutions.

The domestic market for security is also growing significantly. However, in contrast with the global experiences, the security product companies struggle in this market. The domestic security market is conservative, not much willing to experiment with new products. The market ecosystem is not mature to match with global markets. The partner ecosystem, venture financing and other market facilitators, as witnessed in the other IT products, are still in the nascent stage. The market is still seen dominated by big MNC players and larger system integrators.

The government is an important force behind creating innovation and product ecosystem - one by becoming the buyers of the technology and other by fostering R&D, producterization and commercialization. On the backdrop of larger debates of cyber security and its relevance to the national security, there is a call for development and depplyment of indigenous security technologies. However, little is seen on the ground.

However, the recent development in the country around national cyber security, bound to change this. Both National Cyber Security Policy, released in the month of July this year and Joint Working Group (JWG), established for public-private-partnership for cyber security emphasized on the need of promoting development of security products in the country. Attention to cyber security research and development, product engineering and product management is critical for national cyber security design. The time has now come to translate the high level objectives to ground level implementation. The industry is already in existence, although in nascent stage. Specific attention, concerted efforts, conducive ecosystem, the zeal of entrepreneurs, specialized programs and campaigns will take the industry to the next step. This will not only help grow existing players, but also help entry of many new aspirants.

Path of entrepreneurship is not easy; hurdles can be there, which may demand sacrifices, not only from the professional front but also from the personal front. These hurdles may sometimes lead entrepreneurs to step back with their ideas. The difficulty and complexity of security aggravate the challenges before the entrepreneurs. Strong passion and faith in oneself is the key to the success stories. There are many such stories and many in the making.

In India Security product Industry is in the nascent stage but it is growing at a high pace. In recent past several entrepreneurs proved their ability in the domain of cyber security. These success stories are feeding reverse to the community and encourage the budding entrepreneurs to endeavour in this domain.

Entrepreneurial culture is now becoming the need of hours in the domain of cyber security. Government is a key enabler in creating a favourable ecosystem for ideas to convert in realities and protect the flight of IPR and supporting with the conducive ecosystem where talent can nurture and grow itself. This effort in long run will pay to the overall economic growth of the nation & industry and make the nation self sustained from national cyber security perspective.

Entrepreneurship may demand huge investment ....investment of time, money and efforts...with strong zeal, hope and faith in idea and system ... but journey concludes in realism of dreams.