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He Promises Invincible Security

Ela Dutt
India Abroad Correspondent in Washington

Evincible chief executive officer Vijay Takanti believes his company produces invincible security products for e-business.

Takanti (43) maintains that while the IT downturn has affected him somewhat because of budget cuts, his cutting-edge products continue to appeal to financial institutions.

Besides, congressional legislation putting timelines on bringing in e-signatures and other forms of security in online business transactions is helping his business, he points out.

"We are not a dotcom company. We are selling to brick-and-mortar companies. We are well-funded," he said about his firm based in Chantilly, Virginia.

The Hyderabad-born Takanti came to the United States in 1983, on assignment from Tata Burroughs of Bombay. He became a consultant for Complete Business Solutions from 1986-89, moving on to SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications) in 1989.

"As CTO what I saw was a growing B2B market and growing ebiz. For this vision of ebiz to succeed, security was critical. And that security technology from the vendors of the day did not provide the complete solution. We wanted to take advantage of the niche that provided," he said in an interview.

Initially, Evincible brought out the "Access" product -- a single sign-on security product for Web-based operations. From being purely a product development company, Takanti has expanded with marketing and sales teams.

"We are focusing on financial services as well as on ebiz in healthcare, and B2B exchanges, which go across multiple industries -- hi-tech, aerospace, etc," he said, but did not reveal the names of any customers.

"Our product is differentiated by being 'easy to use', that's the key to the game. Security is used only if it is easy. We have a richer set of functions compared to the competition. That is probably why one of the big health-care providers selected us," he maintains.

Evincible gives price discounts to attract its customers, and Takanti believes his company is a market leader in his second product. The first product was shipping from August last year and second from October 2000.

"We are leveraging the fact that the e-signature Act has been cleared by Congress. We are trying to provide technology that is not available. Some customers are pilot-testing the second product. Digital sig used PKI, and electronic signature is a graphic image.

His company's products include:

• Evincible þ Access(tm) -- an access and privilege management solution, which provides a policy-based solution to access all business application resources and information, and is extensible to both wired and wireless infrastructures;
• Evincible þ Ink(tm) -- which provides the key components of an infrastructure that ensures legally binding electronic transactions;
• Evincible þ Privacy(tm) -- which allows encryption of certain elements of XML documents without deploying client certificates. This solution ensures that only privileged parties can decrypt confidential information, while providing robust key management.

  Takanti got his bachelor's degree in electronics and telecommunications engineering from Jawaharlal Nehru Technological University in India in 1980. In 1982, he earned a Master of Technology in computer sciences from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and completed his Master of Business Administration degree at George Mason University in 1994.

  "The mission of Evincible is to provide highly scalable, manageable, and comprehensive security software applications that 'make e-Business Invincible'," he maintained.

  His company has attracted a fast-growing team of marketing, sales and strategic business development professionals from leading companies, including AOL, Computer Associates, EDS, Genuity, Lucent, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Scotia Bank.

  Married to Anuradha, a paediatrician, Takanti has two children, Varun (8) and Nita (4).

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