Kailash Katkar is Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the leading IT security solutions provider, Quick Heal Technologies. It is a 28-year-old company providing Anti-Virus solutions based in India. Kailash also initiated a series of awareness workshops named “Rotary Cyber Safety Initiative“ by bringing together cybersecurity experts, law enforcement authorities, and academicians on a single platform. The main objective of this initiative is to focus on Internet safety for kids and teenagers.
Kailash Katkar Early Life
Kailash was born in a small village named Rahmitapur in Maharashtra to a typical Maharashtrian family. Later his family moved to Pune and his father used to work at Philips as a machine setter. Kailash has two siblings Sanjay and Asha.
Kailash flunked his ninth standard and dropped out from school and took up a job at a local radio and calculator repair shop. Although his brother, Sanjay completed class 10th, electronics fascinated him and he decided to pursue his engineering in electronics. Kailash encouraged Sanjay to study computers and the latter finished his Bachelors in Computer Science from Modern College, Pune.
In 1990 he started his own repair shop along with a seed capital of Rs. 15,000 from his savings. That was his first step to his entrepreneurial journey. Alongside he began upgrading his skill-set and began reading and attending short computer courses which eventually laid the foundation for Quick Heal.
Quick Heal’s Foundation
In 1993 alongside his calculator repair shop, Kailash started his new venture called CAT Computer Services with an office based in a small one-room electrical device repair station. Within a few months of starting his new venture, he also managed to break-in to the corporate world by winning the annual maintenance contract for New India Insurance.
During this process, Kailash managed to see a future issue evolving which is computer viruses. Since the internet was becoming popular, it only meant that the computers would be at great risk and would create multiple channels for viruses to reach the machines. That is when he began working on a definite solution for the same.
By this time his brother Sanjay who was studying Computer Engineering in Pune had begun writing software programs and he insisted Sanjay to start developing a basic model of antivirus software for his own firm CAT Computer Services. That is how antivirus Quick Heal came into existence.
The Growth Story of Quick Heal
In 1994, the first Quick Heal anti-virus for DOS was released followed by Win 3.1 in 1995 and Windows 95 in 1996 as well and it was well accepted by the market. At that time the duo was offering their product to other vendors for a fee of Rs. 700 which was cheapest among his competitors.
Since then there has been no looking back for the company. Some of the major developments made by the company till date are mentioned below-
- The company launched its own website www.quickheal.com in 1998.
- In 2002 company saw an immense growth in business and bought an office space of 2,000 sq ft in Pune for Rs. 25 lakhs.
- Between 2006 to 2010 Quick Heal signed a deal with Microsoft for bundling of Quick Heal anti-virus with Genuine Windows XP.
Today the company has more than 12000 employees with more than 17 million customers across 112+ countries has transformed into a globally-known brand.
Awards and Recognitions
- Entrepreneurs International Honors
- Maxell Award for Maharashtra Corporate Excellence 2012
- 2012 Brands Academy ‘Entrepreneur of the Year in IT Security’
- Deloitte Fast 50 award
- Red Herring Asia Award
