We had a chance to sit down with Deepak Gupta, a tech entrepreneur whose blazing path to fame has inspired many upcoming youngsters. Since his inception into the tech space, the serial cybersecurity architect, writer, and keynote speaker has made remarkable achievements, putting his technological expertise into the global limelight. He is best known for his cybersecurity solutions, his development of unique SaaS architecture, his place on the Forbes Technology Council, and his four published books, to name just a few of his accomplishments.
What’s it like growing up for you? What lessons did you learn from your childhood?
Growing up, I have personally witnessed my father, who is a businessman, working hard and building companies. From that, I learned the value of hard work and gained insight into building and managing a company. When I was 9, I got introduced to computers and was so fascinated by them that I learned various applications and experimented with algorithms to design computer programs. Since childhood, my passion has been to invent and innovate computer technology.
What was your first real job and what did it teach you?
After my masters degree in Information Technology from Chicago, I joined a fintech startup, where I researched and developed a new secure software that integrated back-end financial systems to manage massive amounts of financial data. It was the first entrepreneurial experience where I learned building customer facing software, scaling, and securing infrastructure, and how to solve real customer pain points. Also, I realized the importance of putting customers in the center of the product and used the lessons learned to build customer-focused products within my other companies, including LoginRadius.
What was the problem you set out to solve when you started your company/venture?
Customer login and registration experience were painful for the online businesses, so I developed a simple yet unique software for a social login product in the cloud where businesses can quickly set up social login to their website and/or mobile app in less than 2 mins.
What was your biggest challenge when starting your business?
Hiring good talent was one of our biggest challenges. As I learned, having a solid team is very important for building and growing business, and as a new company, it was hard to attract talented individuals. To overcome this, we did some experiments. Ultimately what worked for us was to hire experienced and motivated management staff and let them build out their own teams.
What has been your biggest success in recent memory? How did that make you feel?
My biggest success is building a scalable and secure customer identity and access management platform. The product now serves over a billion end users and can handle a massive peak load of 250,000 requests per second. It is used by many global 2000 companies to provide a seamless and touchfree digital experience to their online users.
I’m very proud to have architected this robust platform that can not only provide peace of mind to online users but can also scale for the businesses to meet post-pandemic digital growth.
What’re you most excited about for your company in the next few years?
We are innovating customer authentication and single sign-on by adding an intelligent layer for cybersecurity to LoginRadius’ platform. The AI layer will protect businesses with online data fraud and help with account verification and privacy.
In what ways do you give back to the community? Why is it important for you?
On a personal level, I support non-profit organizations by donating both my time and money. I also share my knowledge and expertise with young entrepreneurs and upcoming startups, so they don’t make similar mistakes in their journey.
As a company, we have set up a non-profit foundation (LoginRadius.org), where one of the key initiatives is to help poor children by taking care of their education and expenses.
What advice would you give to your younger-self?
Don’t be afraid to take risks for something you truly believe in. I quit my full-time job to focus on LoginRadius pretty early on, long before we started making sales in any significant way. Without taking this step and having the time to dedicate ourselves to LoginRadius fully, I don’t think we would’ve been able to develop it to where it is now.
Anyone you want to thank through your journey as an entrepreneur ?
My family helped me along the way to make risky decisions. I’m very grateful for their constant support.
What’s the best way for others to learn more about you and your company?
- Website: loginradius.com
- Personal website: guptadeepak.com
- Twitter: twitter.com/dip_ak
