Jay Chaudhry grew up in Panoh, a village in Himachal Pradesh, India, at the foothills of the Himalayas. His home did not have electricity or running water until he was in the 10th grade. He moved to the United States in 1980 for graduate studies at the University of Cincinnati, where he earned an MBA in Marketing, an MS in Computer Engineering, and an MS in Industrial Engineering. Before becoming an entrepreneur, he worked for a decade in engineering, sales, marketing, and management at IBM, Unisys, and NCR. In 1996, fascinated by the internet's potential, Chaudhry asked himself a question that would define his career: 'Why can't I do a startup?' He and his wife, Jyoti, put their life savings into a company called SecureIT. Chaudhry managed sales and marketing, while Jyoti managed finance, human resources, and operations. The hours were long and the strain on the family was difficult, but in 1998, SecureIT was acquired by VeriSign. This was the first of four successful exits. Chaudhry then founded CipherTrust, a leading email security gateway, which merged with Secure Computing in 2006. He founded AirDefense, a wireless security pioneer, which was acquired by Motorola. He also founded CoreHarbor, an e-commerce solution, which was acquired by USi/AT&T. By 2007, Chaudhry had built and sold four companies, amassing both wealth and a reputation as one of the most successful cybersecurity entrepreneurs in the industry. But he was not done. At a conference in San Jose, California, Chaudhry ran into Kailash Kailash, a classmate from Benares Hindu University (BHU) where Chaudhry had earned his Bachelor of Technology in Electronics Engineering. Kailash, who held a Masters in Computer Technology from IIT Delhi and a B.Tech in Electronic Engineering from BHU, was a brilliant computer scientist — 'exactly the person who could help me realize my vision for transforming the security industry,' Chaudhry would later tell BHU graduates. Over dinner at Chaudhry's house, the idea for Zscaler was born. Chaudhry proposed a cloud security platform that would replace firewalls and VPNs entirely. Kailash was convinced this was the future, but recognized the problem was not easy to solve from a technology standpoint and had not been done. After four months of development, discussion, and trial and error, they had a viable solution. Chaudhry supplied much of the seed capital himself, preserving founder control and avoiding early dilution. The company was originally named SafeChannel, Inc., before rebranding to Zscaler. The founding team operated conservatively, prioritizing product-market fit over rapid capital raises. The first major external financing came in 2008 when the company launched its cybersecurity platform. In August 2012, Zscaler secured $38 million in funding from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners and Strategic Investments. A second funding round led by TPG Capital raised $100 million in August 2015. Throughout this period, Chaudhry maintained tight control over the company's vision: a cloud-only security platform with no on-premise appliances. This was radical in an era when enterprises bought firewalls as hardware boxes and installed VPN concentrators in their data centers. The skepticism was intense. CIOs and CISOs were deeply uncomfortable with the idea of routing all their traffic through a third-party cloud. The argument that a cloud-native proxy could inspect traffic more effectively than on-premise appliances was intellectually compelling but emotionally difficult for risk-averse security professionals. Chaudhry and Kailash personally attended dozens of prospect meetings, often spending hours explaining why cloud architecture was more secure than perimeter-based approaches. The breakthrough came gradually. Early adopters — cloud-first companies, organizations with distributed workforces, and businesses frustrated with VPN performance — began to see the value. By 2017, Zscaler had built a substantial customer base and was ready for the public markets. On March 16, 2018, Zscaler went public on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange, raising $192 million and achieving a valuation that would grow to exceed $10 billion at peak. The stock was added to the Nasdaq-100 index on December 17, 2021. Chaudhry's personal wealth from Zscaler has been estimated by Forbes at over $18 billion, making him the wealthiest Indian American. The Chaudhry family collectively owns Zscaler stock worth approximately $8.5 billion. Despite this wealth, Chaudhry remains deeply involved in the company's operations, serving as Chairman and CEO, and continues to live by the lessons he shares with graduates: 'If you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life,' and 'take risks and dream big.'