India’s robust, dynamic startup environment has given opportunities to numerous startups across the field of medical, hospitality, tour & travel, e-Commerce and many others. However, amid this ocean of startups, the Indian startup ecosystem is all ready to take the defence sector by storm with its technologically backed, strong out-of-the-box ideas. Under the ‘Make in India’ mission, defence sector has been identified as one of the most promising sectors, contributing towards external and internal peace and security as well as socio-economic development of the country. By 2030, India’s aerospace and defence industry is estimated to reach a market valuation of around $70 billion. While few years back start-up companies were lagging far behind in competing with the established defence companies, thanks to our start-up revolution, the Indian defence system is booming with a range of defence startups. A Pune based Hi-Tech Innovative StartUp, Fortytwo labs is changing the way information and identities are secured for individuals and enterprises. By developing next generation cutting edge technologies in the field of cyber security, embedded systems, high performance computing and IoT.
Over the past years, there has been a stark reduction in the dependency on exports, especially when it comes to the defence segment. For several key and critical resources, our country has been dependent on external entities which naturally poses a threat. In order to mitigate this, there has been a major thrust towards self-reliance through ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’. The government has also launched several initiatives towards promoting the defence startup ecosystem. With these initiatives the entry-barrier for innovators is becoming lower. Also, there are several platforms available to innovators to present and validate their ideas.
“Today, defence clients expect a high standard of quality in all products and services since their operations involve high possibility of life and death situations. Without proper and adequate trial and testing, acceptance becomes tricky and time-consuming resulting in resource bleed in startups. This is especially challenging for innovators building new products. At Fortytwo Labs, we have built, and are continuously enhancing, an indigenous digital trust infrastructure for secure digital operations. Adoption of a ‘user-first’ strategy has helped us not only in building based on what is actually required, but also with a clear first-hand understanding of quality requirements. We interact with users during the inception phase itself, to ensure this. We are very grateful to several officers who have not only provided guidance and insights throughout but also taken initiative to help build an indigenous worldclass offering”, says Nilesh Dhande, Co-Founder, CEO & Technical Director, Fortytwo Labs.
Creating Impact as a Defence Startup
Before starting Fortytwo Labs, the founding team had worked with the Indian navy, building and delivering a secure collaboration system which was deployed and successfully used in the ‘International Fleet Review - 2016’, for coordination between 71 ships from the Indian Navy; 24 ships and delegations from 50 foreign navies. Months later, the team met with Late Manohar Parrikar, who directed Fortytwo Labs team to interact and present their capabilities in the Integrated Defence Services (ISD) HQ. The level of knowledge of the officers of IDS in cyber security and cryptography was amazing. “It was after this interaction that the firm’s team carried home a problem statement - ‘an indigenous cryptographic platform to secure digital operations and communications’. We were promised a ‘patient ear’ if we were able to design such a platform. We were specifically directed not to use any foreign origin algorithm or technology because of the significant threat posed by alleged backdoors by various state and non-state actors. Our team of cryptographers led by one the founders of company – Sanjay Deshpande,
Anil Pradhan (Lead Cryptographer) and team of other experts, spent several months working on new protocols and algorithms which not only replace existing foreign origin protocols or algorithms, but are far superior and ‘quantum safe’. Subsequently, we were awarded our first project and are proud to announce that after due diligence and rigorous testing by DRDO lab and IIT Chennai, the system is being used by a sensitive defence establishment. This has helped Fortytwo Labs to position itself as a top tier-one cybersecurity platform provider”, speaks Nilesh.
One Platform Delivering a Range of Promising Solutions
Based on its fundamental innovations of π-CONTROL platform and I-AM Cryptographic Identity Technology, Fortytwo Labs has successfully designed a range of solutions to address the need of customers in a variety of operational areas. Some of these solutions include - AUTH42: A quantum-safe hardware authenticator device, manufactured in our research lab in Pune, which acts as a secure second factor of authentication for gaining access to digital services. COMM42: Secure zero-trace messaging solution designed to work on air-gapped networks. Users can exchange messages and files with each other with complete peace of mind. I-AM MFA: Unique multifactor authentication solution which replaces vulnerable SMSOTP products and solutions. I-AM MFA has several built in factors such as cryptographic online-token, offline token, device-as-factor and on-device biometric capture or authentication. PASS42: Password-less authentication solution that enables users to seamlessly login to their applications without worrying about remembering passwords.
We are proud to be associated with Indian Defense with our systems presently deployed in production after rigorous cycles of testing
Not only does it enhance user-experience but also eliminates frauds like password-sharing and password-based attacks. STORE42: Designed to perform secure data transfer and storage, this solution can also work over air-gapped networks. Users can bring in their data, pass it through sanitation machines to check for malwares, and then work on it in the private network and vice versa. CONSENT42: This solution can be used by enterprises in various contexts where user consent is necessary. Enterprises can use it for internal nonrepudiation and for easy compliance with privacy laws world-wide – GDPR, CCPA. ACCESS42: ACCESS42 is an innovative application-layer tunnelling technology which creates an end-to-end encrypted tunnel between the resource (hosted anywhere – cloud, on-prem, multicloud and so on) and the end-point (home, office, vendor location and so on, only after cryptographically strong authentication. In effect, it changes the paradigm to ‘verify, then connect’, reducing accessibility of the attack-surface at the same time eliminating insider attacks due to the inbuilt provability and hence accountability of the identity mode.
“At Fortytwo Labs, we have dealt with trust and security at the foundation with our innovations in cryptography and rethinking of the model of identity. We have also made sure that the internal engineering components are not only safe from current attack vectors but are also future-safe from arising threats of quantum computing. Platform thinking has brought in agility in delivering to customers’ needs rapidly, which can be seen in the products and solutions prepared in short spans of time. For initial customer base we are now focused on defence and regulated entities, which positioned us as a company that delivers defensegrade and compliant platform or products and solutions. Today, every product category is a market segment, and customers realize the benefit of deploying the platform, since they just have to deal with one platform rather than multiple point solutions. Our current positioning as a cryptographic identity based platform enabling security and privacy across digital operations is rare, if not unique”, highlights Swaminathan Iyer, Strategic Initiatives Head.
Innovations in Cryptography Driven by Customer Needs
At Fortytwo Labs, the customers are partners in innovation. The co-innovation model adopted by the firm is not only helping in genetating new ideas but also gives immediate market fit for the platform, products, and solutions. The possibilities emerging out of Fortytwo Labs’ platform is enormous and the firm is always hungry for new use cases that can be delivered using it. With its focus on both one-platform-several-customers as well as one-platform multiple- use-cases, simultaneously, Fortytwo Labs has come a long way since inception.
Fortytwo Labs also has strong collaboration programs with industry and academia where it runs innovation programs with colleges and industry partners to conceptualize, evaluate and build various technological innovations. Recently the firm has also filed three PCT patents on our fundamental innovations and several other patents are in the pipeline.
Speaking about the numerous achievements of Fortytwo Labs, Nilesh says, "We have also been selected in the National Centre of Excellence (NCoE), which was setup jointly by DSCI and MEITY. NCSC has also recently awarded a very prestigious research project to build ‘Fine grained access control and authorization cryptosystem’ which will not only enhance zero trust access but would be critical in securing critical national infrastructure. User agencies participating in this research are – Military Collage of Technology and Engineering (MCTE), Mhow; National Stock Exchange; and NSDL e-Governance. Several other agencies have also expressed keen interest in participation”.
While Fortytwo Labs also has some of its current customers from the government agencies, apart from that the firm is also in talks with several other government and defence agencies to implement the platform for a variety of use cases. “We measure ourselves by the number of use cases, products and solutions delivered on our platform. So far, we have created 21 different assets helping our customers secure their digital operations. For the years to come, we believe we will be the platform company utilized by developers across the world to build and deliver secure, privacy-enabled digital services and make the world a better place”, signs-off Nilesh.
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