SUMMARY
The Jaipur-based cybersecurity startup offers an all-in-one hardware product or unified network security gateway
WiJungle’s unified network security gateway combines features offered by cross-section of providers
With customers in over 27 countries, WiJungle is looking to expand in the Middle East and South Asia
Indian businesses have a data security problem as the country was victim to the second-highest number of cyberattacks between 2016 and 2018. According to an August 2019 report by Gartner, enterprise information security spending in India reached $1.86 Bn 2019, an increase of 12.4% from 2018, and it’s expected to breach the $2 Bn mark by 2020.
However, at the same time, the current network security market is scattered and different vendors offer hardware and software for specific use-cases, and in many cases, the same vendor has multiple products to address data security and cybersecurity needs.
The Fragmented State Of The Cybersecurity Hardware Market
- Security appliances: This includes examples like next-gen firewall (NGFW) or unified threat management (UTM) platforms
- Companies: Cyberoam, Sophos, Fortinet, Checkpoint, Dell Sonicwall, Watchguard, Palo Alto Networks and more
- Target segments: Enterprises, educational institutions, data centres, healthcare networks
- Gateway appliances: Used to manage a wired or wireless network with business needs uncompromisingly.
- Companies: 24Online, Kaspersky, Barracuda, pfSense, Unibox, Zyxel and more.
- Target segments: Hospitality, transportation, retail and more
For businesses, this is a complex arrangement with each vendor pitching its own hardware to support a specific issue. This results in an unnecessary increase in investment (almost double) because of redundant hardware appliances. Further, it increases the complexity of cybersecurity and data protection, as businesses need to have resources that understand and manage different product dashboards and support on a day-to-day basis.
Jaipur-based cybersecurity startup WiJungle is looking to solve this complexity with an all-in-one product or a unified network security gateway. Founded in 2017, Wi Jungle is a DPIIT-recognised startup and have received several accolades from the industry for its product.
WiJungle’s network security gateway caters to verticals including Ministry of Defence, NIC, Airport Authority Of India, Aljazeera Airways, Reliance Hospitals, The Hyatt, Lemon Tree, Royal Orchid, Fern, ESIC Hospitals, FDDI, SAIL, NALCO, CIPET, ICAR and ministry of shipping. Its customer base is spread across 27 countries and WiJungle is looking to enter the Middle East and other South Asian countries by end of next financial year.
The First Pivot
WiJungle was initially founded in October 2014 under parent company HttpCart Technologies by cousins Karmesh Gupta and Praveen Gupta. It was launched as a free WiFi service with no data and duration limit.
While implementing the service, system integrators told the company to deploy two different products at the gateway level — a UTM or unified threat management system and an AAA/Hotspot Gateway product for visitor authentication. AAA refers to a set of protocols for authentication, authorization and accounting within a network.
“Unified threat management by default offers 70% of the AAA product functionalities and the remaining 30% differentiation is just around the user authentication modes. Technically, we were not able to figure out the reason behind the existence of a separate redundant product just for authentication modes,” said Karmesh.
Two years later, WiJungle pivoted to the unified network security gateway, marking their entry into cybersecurity appliances space from a social WiFi product. The unified network security gateway product has capabilities of next-gen firewall, web application firewall, hotspot gateway, vulnerability assessment, Software-defined wide area network (SD-WAN) and more by eliminating the need for multiple standalone products. This not only reduces the capital investment for businesses by up to 60%, but also simplifies security management.
“The focus was to make security more accessible by bringing down the cost and simplifying management. Also making it more comprehensive by aggregating data of different endpoints running in different locations which earlier was distributed between multiple vendors,” Karmesh added.
The WiJungle Advantage
WiJungle’s artificial intelligence-based unified network security gateway product supports multiple languages. It enables organisations to organise and safeguard their entire network by means of a single window. WiJungle offers a proprietary operating system called WiJungle OS, which is based on the Linux kernel.
It claims that 90% of the operations are automated — from demo request via partner portals to dispatch and support.
The WiJungleOS image is mounted on a general server with 26 different server models and up to 12K synchronized users supported. At the same time, it offers a multitude of features including data leakage prevention, load balancing, link aggregation and more.
“WiJungle is the only advanced appliance that serves the purpose of UTM/NGFW and hotspot gateway. We have eliminated the need to deploy two different devices in premise” said Karmesh.
The cofounder believes that unification is the future of the cybersecurity industry. Currently, the addressable market is $8.1 Bn globally, and it is expected to increase to $20.4 Bn in 2022. Correspondingly, India market will see a shift from $0.3 Bn to $1.4 Bn in 2022.
Of course, the opportunity comes with its set of challenges. For the existing as well as new ventures coming in the cybersecurity market, the two primary challenges are gaining the trust of enterprises given the huge number of multinational cybersecurity companies operating in this segment, as well as the acceptance from channel partners, who are a key part of the sales chain.
In respect to product and technology, WiJungle is now adding to the capabilities of its unified network security gateway. In parallel, the team is also working on a cloud-focused platform and looks forward to launching the beta by late 2020.
“We solved the challenges faced channel partners by doing three things: reduced their pre-sales bandwidth through automated partner portal, offered demos to their customers; and created round-the-clock dedicated agent support with 90-minute resolution time over WhatsApp, web, chat, email and phone. We also acknowledged sales efforts with a higher margin wherever possible,” added Karmesh.
