Jay Chaudhry Keynote at IIT2026

📅 Jul 01, 2026 PanIIT USA 34 MIN 107 VIEWS 2 SEGMENTS · 2 SPEAKERS

Jay Chaudhry is the Chairman, Founder & CEO at Zscaler, Inc. He is a successful serial entrepreneur, having founded Zscaler, AirDefense, CipherTrust, CoreHarbor and SecureIT. He is a trusted name in the security technology industry and an advisor to many enterprise CIOs and CISOs. He has more than 25 years of security industry experience. An IIT (BHU) Varanasi alumnus, Jay Chaudhry received the prestigious Ron Gupta Lifetime Achievement Award at IIT2026 Global Conference for his pioneering work and global entrepreneurial impact. Enjoy Jay Chaudhry's Keynote at IIT2026: Lessons Learned from...

What Jagtar Chaudhry said

Written from the verified transcript and checked against it. Every figure links to the moment it was said.

Jagtar Chaudhry, CEO of Zscaler, accepted the Lifetime Achievement Award at IIT2026, sharing his journey from a Himalayan village to leading a cybersecurity firm. He credited his parents for instilling honesty, integrity, and hard work, and noted he entered IITs by accident. After working at IBM and other firms, he founded three successful startups with his wife's support, then launched Zscaler in 2007-2008 to address cloud and mobile security, replacing firewalls with an identity-based switchboard. He highlighted that 45% of Fortune 500 companies are customers and 40% of employees are in India, including a development center in Chandigarh. He advised taking risks, course-correcting, building a hungry founding team, and leading by example. He emphasized the CEO's role as chief salesperson, the importance of sales and marketing, and the value of self-reflection. He encouraged giving back to India, citing government policies supporting reverse brain drain.

Key takeaways

45% of Fortune 500 companies are Zscaler customers.
40% of Zscaler employees are based in India, with a development center in Chandigarh.
Chaudhry advises raising money when you don't need it and being frugal.
He reflects for 15-30 minutes every Saturday to stay self-critical.

Numbers and commitments

Figure	What it refers to	Type	At
45%	Fortune 500 companies that are Zscaler customers	metric	1:33
40%	Zscaler employees based in India	metric	1:33
2007-2008	Period when Zscaler was founded	timeline	1:33
15-30 minutes	Weekly self-reflection time every Saturday	other	1:33

Aninda Sharma 0:05 ↗

Thank you Shashi. Ladies and gentlemen, my name is Aninda Sharma and it is an honor to welcome a visionary entrepreneur and a global leader Jagtar Chaudhry. Born in a small village in India, Jagtar's journey is a powerful example of what resolve in education can achieve. He is a graduate of Indian Institute of Technology Varanasi. Over the years, he has founded many successful technology companies. He is the founder and CEO of Zscaler, a company specializing in cybersecurity. From humble beginnings to scaling a multi-billion dollar business, his journey is one of vision, resilience, and impact. IIT 2026 is honored to present the Lifetime Achievement Award to Mr. Jagtar Chaudhry. Please join me in honoring and welcoming him.

1 more exchange in this transcript

Cite this transcript

APA, MLA, BibTeX

APA

Chaudhry, J. (2026, July 1). Jay Chaudhry Keynote at IIT2026 [Interview transcript]. PanIIT USA. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1055283/

MLA

Jagtar Chaudhry. "Jay Chaudhry Keynote at IIT2026." PanIIT USA, 1 Jul. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1055283/.

BibTeX

@misc{chaudhry2026_1055283,
  author       = {Jagtar Chaudhry},
  title        = {Jay Chaudhry Keynote at IIT2026},
  howpublished = {Interview transcript, PanIIT USA. CEOInterviews.AI},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {jul},
  url          = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/1055283/},
  note         = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}

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Mentioned in this interview

IBM IBM: Chaudhry worked in sales there, calling it the best training.

Netscape: Reading about Netscape in 1996 sparked his interest in internet security.

Tata None-Tata Group: Provided a scholarship for Chaudhry's one-way ticket to the US and $200.

NCR: One of the companies Chaudhry worked at after his MBA.

Unisys UIS: Another company where Chaudhry worked after his MBA.

Chandigarh: Location of Zscaler's development center in India.

Earlier, on the same topics

“India today offers far more opportunities than it did 30, 40 years ago. So, opportunities here are wonderful. I actually do like the reverse brain drain. In some ways, we all kind of all feel like US has become more restrictive. But it is, I believe, US's loss and India's gain. Cuz those bright peop”

reverse brain drain · Apr 25, 2026 at 1:07 →

“So we at Zscaler see a lot of data that our customer use out there. I think India has tons of talent, tons of potential to catch up or get ahead. In the real world you need domain specific language models — a language model for agriculture that's trained and specialized in that.”

Feb 20, 2026 at 3:58 →

Every Jagtar Chaudhry interview →

Newsletters that week

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About Jagtar Chaudhry

Jay Chaudhry, CEO and chairman of Zscaler, discussed the company's quarterly results and its focus on securing AI agents in recent interviews. He described the quarter as a record by multiple measures, citing revenue growth, an annual recurring revenue exceeding $3.8 billion, and a non-GAAP operating margin of 24%. He also addressed the company's upcoming investor day and its new agent-native security operations offering, which he said uses telemetry from Zscaler's inline position to detect and respond to threats in minutes. In an interview with Yahoo Finance, Chaudhry said AI agents are becoming the weakest link in corporate security and advocated for a zero-trust approach, stating that agents should not be trusted by default. He pushed back on comments by OpenAI's Sam Altman that the world should accept some negative outcomes from AI, saying that human ingenuity can find solutions and that each party needs to take responsibility. He also advised private AI companies like Anthropic and OpenAI on going public, saying it is a good thing that makes companies more responsible and adds discipline, while noting that enterprises prefer working with public companies due to transparency.

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