Jay Chaudhry
Jay Chaudhry | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 26, 1958 Panoh, Una district, Punjab (now Himachal Pradesh), India |
| Occupation(s) | Entrepreneur, CEO |
| Known for | Founder and CEO of Zscaler |
| Spouse | Jyoti Chaudhry |
| Children | 3 |
Jay Chaudhry (born August 26, 1958) is an Indian-American entrepreneur in the technology sector, serving as the founder and CEO of the cloud security firm Zscaler.
Early life and education
Chaudhry was raised in Panoh, a small village located in the Una district of Punjab (currently part of Himachal Pradesh), India, which had a population of approximately 800. During his youth, the village did not have access to electricity or running water until he reached his teenage years. His parents, Bhagat and Surjeet Chaudhry, were modest farmers, and he was the youngest among three brothers.
He traveled nearly 4 kilometers each day to attend high school in Dhusara, often studying outdoors beneath a tree due to the absence of electric lighting. Following high school graduation, he obtained a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering from Indian Institute Of Technology, Banaras Hindu University.
At age 22 in 1980, Chaudhry relocated to the United States to pursue further education at the University of Cincinnati, where he earned master's degrees in industrial engineering, computer engineering, and marketing. Additionally, he completed an executive management program at Harvard Business School.
Career
Chaudhry’s professional journey began with roles in engineering, sales, marketing, and leadership at IBM, Unisys, and NCR. Subsequently, he founded five startups specializing in security software.
SecureIT (1996–1998)
In 1996, Jay and his wife Jyoti invested their entire savings to establish SecureIT, an internet security company. After Verisign acquired SecureIT in 1998, Chaudhry took charge of Verisign's security services division based in San Francisco before departing in 1999.
CipherTrust and CoreHarbor (2000–2006)
In 2000, leveraging his experience from SecureIT, Chaudhry founded CipherTrust, focusing on email security solutions developed from the ground up. Secure Computing Corporation purchased CipherTrust in 2006 for $274 million.
That year also saw him launch CoreHarbor, a managed e-commerce platform that was later acquired by USi/AT&T.
AirDefense (2002–2008)
Chaudhry founded AirDefense in 2002, a company specializing in wireless security through intrusion prevention systems that oversee communications between laptops and WiFi access points. Motorola acquired AirDefense in 2008.
Zscaler (2007–present)
In 2007, Chaudhry founded Zscaler, concentrating on Zero Trust cloud security models. His goal was to build what he envisioned as the Salesforce equivalent within cloud security, drawing inspiration from Marc Benioff’s approach.
Recognitions
Chaudhry has been honored multiple times by the Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University), including being named Alumnus of the Year (2015), Alumnus of the Century in Making (2019), and receiving the Distinguished Alumnus Award (2021–22). He also received the Corporate Leadership Award from the American India Foundation in 2022. In 2018, he was shortlisted as a finalist for Northern California’s EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Personal life
Jay Chaudhry lives with his wife Jyoti and their three children in Reno, Nevada. He maintains a vegetarian diet.
His hobbies include hiking, white-water rafting, and taking family walks around their neighborhood. An enthusiastic reader, Chaudhry favors literature related to history, international politics, and psychology.
Philanthropy
Chaudhry often travels to Panoh, India, where he actively backs local health programs, including the provision of a mobile medical laboratory in 2011 aimed at assisting elderly community members.
In 2022, he made a $1 million contribution to his alma mater, IIT-BHU, for the creation of both an Entrepreneurship Center and a Software Innovation Center. Additionally, during the same year, he donated $3 million to the Bay Area Chapter of the American India Foundation to support COVID-19 relief initiatives.
In 2023, Chaudhry allocated $1 million to the Sankara Eye Foundation to further their mission of eradicating treatable blindness across India.