START-UP ISLAND. With a ‘niche’ and ‘scaleable’ product, Uniken is future secure

These are interesting times for India. Where once the country was best known for technology services, it is now spawning product firms too. This may not be a ‘trend’ just yet, but it is a slow and steady move towards exporting intellectual property rather than taking instructions as we did in a historically service-oriented model.

Even better – investors are interested in those that take this leap of faith.

Uniken Inc is a case in point. It was set up in 2003, but evolved from a pure R&D entity into a digital security product company.

Uniken received ₹30 crore from Nexus Venture Partners in 2014 and then a second round of funds from Exfinity Ventures earlier this year.

Products are hard to do as they have to be niche. It’s even more challenging to make them appropriate for diverse environments.

Uniken’s leading clients include Axis Bank, Bank of India and Bank of Maharashtra.

Its digital security platform, REL-ID, has more than two million end-users.

‘End users’ here are not just individuals but corporations and retail companies that are a bank’s clients.

“It’s a massively scaleable product. We have found success in the BFSI sector, but it’s a horizontal product.

“We serve insurance companies too, and we’re making headway in the telecom sector,” says Sanjay Deshpande, CEO and Co-founder, Uniken.

Commercial environments today deal with emerging technologies, connectedness and an all-pervasive internet.

So for a start-up serving up digital security, things are both interesting and complex.

Cyber-security products have to be future-ready and able to meet any eventuality. Uniken’s focus on ‘niche’ and ‘scaleable’ is proving advantageous for even international takers. The company aims to serve the US market soon. But its partnership with Bynet Communications, a leading Israeli SI firm, can be seen as the best validation yet of its capabilities.

“Deep technology-based products from India need endorsements. We’re not known for product development. The best endorsements come when we win customers,” Deshpande says. Large corporations have attempted to solve what is now a complex problem – digital security across sectors and customer touch points. But in Deshpande’s assessment, nothing’s working and there are no alternatives.

“We need to take a fresh look at security,” he declares.

From protecting existing ecosystems of enterprises, and thereby impacting relationships with employees or customers, partners and vendors, Uniken is working at creating a ‘Secure Private Internet’ for enterprises.

In the end, what will mark India out for IP development in years to come is if these leaps of faith by start-ups increasingly find early-stage support from investors.

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