Jay Chaudhry | $10B+
Get in touch with Jay Chaudhry | Jay Chaudhry, founder and CEO of Zscaler, is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in cloud security, having built multiple cybersecurity companies before creating Zscaler in 2007 to redefine how enterprises protect their networks. Born in a small Himalayan village in India with no running water or electricity, Chaudhry immigrated to the U.S., earned multiple engineering and business degrees, and launched a series of security startups acquired by major tech firms. With Zscaler’s zero-trust platform now securing thousands of global enterprises, he has become a leading voice in cloud transformation and one of the wealthiest self-made immigrant founders in Silicon Valley.
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Jay Chaudhry[2] (born August 26, 1958)[1] is an Indian-American billionaire technology entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of cloud security company Zscaler.[3]
Early life and education
Chaudhry was born in Panoh, a village in the Una district of Punjab (now Himachal Pradesh), India with a population of 800.[4] The village did not have running water or electricity until he was a teenager.[5] His parents, Bhagat and Surjeet Chaudhry, were small-scale farmers, and he was the youngest of three sons.[6]
In an interview, Jay recalled that he used to walk nearly 4 km every day to attend high school in Dhusara, the neighboring village and, because there was no electricity, he often studied outside under a tree.[7]
Following the completion of high school, he earned a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering from Indian Institute Of Technology, Banaras Hindu University.[8]
In 1980, at age 22, he moved to the United States to attend the University of Cincinnati.[9] His first time on a plane was his flight to the U.S. to attend the University of Cincinnati, where he received master's degrees in industrial engineering, computer engineering, and marketing.[10][11]
He also completed the executive management program at Harvard Business School.[12][13]
Career
Chaudhry started out working in engineering, sales, marketing and management at IBM, Unisys, and NCR.[14] He went on to become the founder of four security software startups—SecureIT, CipherTrust, AirDefense, and Zscaler—as well as the managed e-commerce platform CoreHarbor.[15][16]
SecureIT (1996–1998)
In 1996, he and his wife Jyoti founded Internet security service SecureIT, using their life savings to do so.[17] After SecureIT was acquired by Verisign in 1998, Chaudhry moved to San Francisco to lead Verisign's security services division.[18] He left Verisign in 1999.[19]
CipherTrust and CoreHarbor (2000–2006)
In 2000, Chaudhry launched email security company CipherTrust. The idea for CipherTrust came from his work at SecureIT, where he became familiar with the types of security issues, vulnerabilities and attacks that were possible. The technology was built from scratch and was later acquired by Secure Computing Corporation in 2006 for $274 million.[20][21][22][23]
In 2000, Chaudhry also launched CoreHarbor, a managed e-commerce platform. It was later acquired by USi/AT&T.[24][25]
AirDefense (2002–2008)
In 2002, Chaudhry launched wireless security company AirDefense, which provided a wireless intrusion prevention system that monitored airwaves and traffic between laptops and WiFi access points. AirDefense was acquired by Motorola in 2008.[26][27][28]
Zscaler (2007–present)
Chaudhry founded Zscaler, a Zero Trust cloud security company, in 2007.[29][30] His goal was to build the Salesforce of cloud security, inspired by Marc Benioff.[31]
Jay Chaudhry Recognitions
Recognitions
Jay Chaudhry is the recipient of three awards from the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU), Varanasi: Alumnus of the Year (2015), Alumnus of the Century in Making (2019), and Distinguished Alumnus Award (2021–22). [32]
He received the American India Foundation's Corporate Leadership Award in 2022. [33]
Chaudhry has been honored twice with the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award: in the Southeast USA region in 2006, and in Northern California (Public Companies in Tech category) in 2018. [34] [35]
In 2025, he received the Committee for Economic Development (CED) Distinguished Leadership Award. [36]
Personal life
Chaudhry and his wife, Jyoti, have three children and live in Reno, Nevada, U.S. Chaudhry is a vegetarian.[37]
Jay loves to hike, white-water raft and go on “bonding walks” around his neighborhood with his family. Jay is a voracious reader and he particularly favors books on history, global politics and psychology.[38]
Philanthropy
Jay makes regular trips to Panoh, India, to help the community. In 2011, he arranged for a mobile medical lab to give older residents blood tests and other checkups.[39]
In 2022, Jay gifted $1 million to his alma mater, IIT-BHU, to fund the school's Entrepreneurship Center and its Software Innovation Center.[40] That year, he also donated $3 million to the Bay Area Chapter of the American India Foundation (AIF), an organization committed to improving the lives of India's underprivileged, to support COVID relief efforts.[41]
In 2023, he donated $1 million to the Sankara Eye Foundation, an organization whose mission is to eradicate curable blindness in India.[42]
In 2024, Chaudhry and his wife Jyoti donated $4 million to the University of Cincinnati to establish the Chaudhry Family Scholarship Fund, supporting approximately 150 first-generation, Pell-eligible students in the Gen-1 1MPACT House starting in fall 2025.[
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