Jay Chaudhry

Chaudhry grew up in Panoh, a village in Himachal Pradesh, India, without electricity or running water until the 10th grade. He moved to the U.S. in 1980 for graduate studies and worked at IBM, Unisys, and NCR before founding SecureIT in 1996 with his wife Jyoti using their life savings. SecureIT was acquired by VeriSign in 1998. He subsequently founded CipherTrust (email security, merged with Secure Computing), AirDefense (wireless security, acquired by Motorola), and CoreHarbor (e-commerce, acquired by USi/AT&T). His founding philosophy for Zscaler was that the internet should become the new corporate network, replacing firewalls and VPNs with cloud-native zero trust architecture.

Jay Chaudhry is the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Zscaler, Inc. Born in India, he earned a Bachelor of Technology in Electronics Engineering from Benares Hindu University and an MBA in Marketing, MS in Computer Engineering, and MS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He also completed the Executive Management Program at Harvard Business School. Before founding Zscaler, Chaudhry built and sold four successful cybersecurity companies: SecureIT (acquired by VeriSign, 1998), CipherTrust (merged with Secure Computing, 2006), AirDefense (acquired by Motorola), and CoreHarbor (acquired by USi/AT&T). He serves as Zscaler's Chairman and CEO, maintaining tight strategic control over the company's cloud-native vision. Forbes estimates his net worth at over $18 billion, making him the wealthiest Indian American. He and his wife Jyoti have established a charitable foundation and donated $3 million to COVID-19 relief in India. Chaudhry is a vegetarian and fitness enthusiast who enjoys hiking and white-water rafting.