Saket Modi

Saket Modi was born and raised in Kolkata, India, Saket attended primary school at Lakshmipat Singhania Academy. He received an undergraduate degree in technology from the LNM Institute of Information Technology, Jaipur in 2012 or 2013.[2]

He is an ethical hacker. In 2008, he hacked into his school's IT system, gaining access to a chemistry question paper and that's when he realized that he could use his skills for social good.[3] As an undergrad student at LNM, Saket conducted 2-day hands-on workshops on ethical hacking at Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) campuses across the country for a fee.[2] During this time he "shot to national prominence" demonstrating how to hack into a smart phone in 20 seconds.[2]

In 2012, while in his fourth year of college, Saket Modi, Vidit Baxi and Rahul Tyagi started Lucideus at the incubator IIT Bombay, using capital from their personal savings and family.[2] In 2013, Lucideus opened its first office in New Delhi.[2] Among the company's accomplishments include doing a security assessment of the BHIM, an Aadhaar-based mobile payment platform designed by the National Payments Corporation of India.[4][1]

In 2017, Lucideus secured its initial round of funding with $2 million from Sri Shivananda (CTO, PayPal), Rajan Anandan (Managing Director, Sequoia Capital), Victor Menezes (ex-Senior Vice-chairman, Citibank), Vikas Agnihotri (Operating Partner, Softbank Group), Mickey Doshi (CEO, Credit Suisse, India), among others.[5][6]

In 2018, Cisco's former Chairman and CEO John T. Chambers led an investment round of $4 million through JC2 Ventures to invest in Lucideus. Chambers asked Modi to describe his business in 15 seconds and was hooked by the reply.[1]

In 2019, Lucideus expanded its operations to the USA and other markets in the APAC region, and shifted their headquarters to Palo Alto, California.[7]

Modi has appeared as a guest on TV news programs including News 18, ET Now, NDTV,[8] Bloomberg Quint Live TV[9] and has spoken on various subject of information security and entrepreneurship at international forums like Mobile World Congress, CeBIT (Germany), Forbes under 30 Global Summit (Boston),[10] Confederation of Indian Industry, Cyber-Tech (Israel), ISACA, TiE, TED (conference), etc.[11] In 2017, Saket was invited at India TV’s show on mobile hacking.[12]

• 2013 student award: Indian Ambassador of Cyber Security in Education, National Education Awards, presented by AICTE and organized by CMAI.[13]
• Young-entrepreneur recognitions in magazines: Forbes Asia,[14] Forbes India,[15] BW Disrupt (Business World),[16] Fortune India,[17][18] Entrepreneur India[19]