“Ever since I can remember, I’ve loved solving problems and assembling things.” – Hari Ravichandran
Hari Ravichandran has come a long way since he graduated from Mississippi State University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science in 1997 and followed it up with an MBA from Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
A few years later, he opened his very own business called Bizland, a small web-hosting startup. After Ravichandran turned that small startup into a billion-dollar, publicly traded global web hosting empire now known as Endurance International Group, he could have rested on his laurels and retired a wealthy man.
Instead, despite being the highest-paid executive in 2016 for any company based in Massachusetts, he decided to leave it all behind to take on a new challenge and created another company, a cybersecurity firm powered by AI called Aura.
As Ravichandran wrote in an article for Forbes, “It turns out being the CEO of a publicly traded company wasn’t what truly motivated me. I realized, a little to my surprise and chagrin, that it just wasn’t the right job for me.”
The result was a brand new company called Aura, a cybersecurity firm centered around protecting consumers from cybercrimes like identity theft, fraud prevention, and other internet-related catastrophes caused by hackers or other bad agents. When customer data is breached by hackers, an individual’s entire financial future could be at risk.
The inspiration came from a 2014 incident where Ravichandran applied for a home mortgage and was shocked to find that he had been declined. He later found out that his identity had been stolen, with multiple credit cards having been taken out in his name.
As Ravichandran told the Wall Street Journal, “I spent the better part of two weeks looking around to see how this had happened, where exactly did the information leak from, had it affected the rest of my family? I couldn’t make head or tail of what I needed to actually get to make the problem better.”
However, he soon realized exactly what he needed to do to protect himself and others by creating Aura, a cybersecurity company designed with a simplified pricing system on plans designed to protect individuals, couples, and families.
Aura sets itself apart from its competitors by its innovative use of AI to help fight cybercrime. Imagine an elderly person receiving an AI-generated phone call with the voice of their grandchild claiming they’re being held hostage and asking for ransom money.
“We use a fair amount of AI to detect sentiment in the voice, for example, categorizing something as a scam call or a real call. Same thing with the text messages,” Ravichandran told Kim S. Nash of the Wall Street Journal.
Why use artificial intelligence to fight cybercrime? As Ravichandran explains on his Forbes blog, in the past, hackers had to actually understand how to write code to write malicious software. With the rise of AI applications like ChatGPT and Bing AI, bad actors can now have that programming code written for them.
He further explains that the only solution to AI-generated code is by harnessing that same power for good.
“While it is crucial to be vigilant against the weaponized use of AI, it is equally — if not more — important to recognize the potential of AI to improve cybersecurity and benefit society as a whole,” he wrote.
This revolutionary and unique approach to cybersecurity has already paid dividends. The company has reached the vaunted “unicorn” status, the rare distinction given to a privately-held startup that has reached a valuation of over $1 billion.
Again, not satisfied to simply rest on his laurels after creating a second massively successful company, in 2018 Ravichandran is also the founder and CEO of Jump Ventures, an infusion firm that works with entrepreneurs to bring potentially risky ideas to market, either by working with the company or by absorbing it entirely.
Even after founding three massively successful businesses, being named on over 40 patents, and creating a philanthropic organization called The Ravichandran Foundation that supports a variety of causes, Hari will never be satisfied with his past accomplishments and will always continue working towards the future.
What’s next for Hari Ravichandran? Nobody knows, least of all Hari himself. For now, he’s committed to working hard for both Aura and Jump Ventures and just focusing on being the best leader for his employees that he can be.
