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For the latest edition of Life @ Netskope, we sat down to chat with Alok Kothari, Managing Director for Netskope India. Alok was the sixth employee hired at Netskope and has been with the company since month three of existence in January 2013. We talked with Alok about how he came aboard with Netskope, what it’s been like watching the India team grow, and what excites him looking ahead at his future with Netskope, among many other things. Here’s our conversation:
How did you initially come to Netskope?
Over the last twenty-five years, I worked at several different startups. The previous three startups all saw reasonably large exits in one form or the other. Just before Netskope, I was on a sabbatical. At the time, I was actually thinking I was done with the industry and doing work completely unrelated to this industry. So when Sanjay called me and said, “Hey, I would like you to help me set up India for Netskope,” I was extremely reluctant. I told him, “I can help you get started, but I’m not ready to jump into a corporate job right now.” Ten months later, I was full-time at Netskope.
What made you change your mind and start your longer journey with Netskope?
Through my experience working with the other startups, I knew that large opportunities exist when a startup is trying to solve problems at the intersection of multiple megatrends. In my consulting months at Netskope, I began to see some of those megatrends. There was a huge disruption around how the industry thought about endpoints. The way users were accessing ente