If one cuts across their minds over the saying "Nice guys finish first", and then to connect it to entrepreneurship in this competitive world, the situation can certainly cause a few eyebrows to bring up. Yet there is a story which can be told straight,with no deliberate twisting and churning required of how passionately Ramesh Kesanupalli made it happen. Today as the Founder of NokNok Labs, Ramesh may be sitting pretty, but the peddling done underneath is worth a true story.

When people were doing audio files on the web, Ramesh and his team were video streaming way ahead of the then industry time. Ramesh started the FIDO alliance a security consortium with an ambitious mission of eliminating network passwords, which is a 50+ years old industry problem and becoming bigger and bigger problem in the online world. "Today the FIDO consortium includes members Like Google, Microsoft, Lenovo, Samsung, MasterCard, Visa, Discover, Bank of America, Qualcomm and every single day people are joining the FIDO alliance group", exclaims Ramesh.

Thinking Ahead of the Norm

Growing up in a middle class family with an Engineering Degree from the Madras Institute of Technology, Ramesh made his way into Kingston Labs in the US as a data security consultant for IBM. Working under the Main Frame system engineering group, Ramesh was to explore the intricacies involved in the domain which led to his joining of Covansys, a consulting service company 4 years after his stint as an IBM consultant.If this was to be the start that was to leave behind a legacy of a dedicated technological career, there is more to Ramesh. His uncompromising attitude to keep digging is what resulted in his first find, Object Connect in 1995. A services company which primarily took some of the turnkey projects of moving the mainframe related applications to a web based html front end related applications with a group of young people. A business of $2.5 million each year; this was some start.

Inspired by the success of Object Connect, Ramesh set his eyes over a new market which was to become a revelation at
that time and space. It only took a while for Ramesh to sense the aura building up surrounding the mobile phone market. With Kinera, a wireless carrier and a messaging company, he had already proved to the world that he was way ahead of the industry, with the introduction of carrier grade IP messaging and services delivery platform in the already exciting cell phone market. The unrelenting Ramesh then became a founding member of a team which started Network24 which was into Online Video streaming and was later acquired by Akamai in 1999 for $200M, but Ramesh still had his focus intact as he was nurturing Kinera where his heart was. Ramesh served the next 8 years as the CEO at Kinera. Shifting gears, Ramesh plunged into the dual space, and with his contribution he was responsible for the Engineering, Marketing and Business Development at Phoenix Technologies bringing in more than 10 different product lines. During his term as a Sr. VP & GMat Phoenix, the federal government constituted a panel of 10 CTOs from the industry along the likes of Microsoft CTO, Apple's CTO, RSA CTO and others, Ramesh was in the panel too advising for 3 years from 2004 to 2006. The role was still to be played and Ramesh was hired by Validity, a finger print sensor company. This was the time when Validity was struggling and Ramesh was brought in. It was a blessed transformation,credits to Ramesh. His involvement in building their software, product and market strategy bore fruits and as a result it was in route to a healthy customer base. The turnaround was gigantic as Validity was acquired by Synaptics for $265 million.

A Visionary

At this point, one would arguably stay complacent given the revival. But this is what differentiates a quality Entrepreneur from the others, Ramesh was a visionary; and carrying behind him his technical expertise, he sensed the opportunity in the finger print business to arrive at a conclusion of a blunt progress. Ramesh had a vision to increase the adoption and usage of fingerprint in the mainstream authentication and filed about 11 patent applications back in 2009 and started a small working group writing a new protocol for online authentication and completely eliminating passwords from the network which was a legacy problem. The prime moment occurred in 2009 when Ramesh met Michael Barrett who was the then CISO at Paypal and TaherElgamal, regarded as the father of SSL over a patent in bringing out a new protocol to strengthen user authentication. Michael was then trying to fix consumer authentication for PayPal and Ramesh was looking for ways to bring fingerprint technology into mainstream consumer authentication. Then in 2010, Ramesh had to undergo a personal trauma as his wife lost the battle to cancer; Ramesh was left with his 4 month old daughter and he being a single parent in her upbringing wasn't an easy task.

Ramesh was more than ever initiated, and after sending his daughter back to India he reviewed the security protocol that he originated and resumed where he left by expanding the finger print technology to other methods like Speech Bio metrics, Facial and other forms and Secure pins. The confluence of those great minds resulted in the origination of FIDO alliance in 2013 publically with six founding members. But the seed was sown by Ramesh in the summers of 2009.Today the FIDO model has 145 alliances and embraces the full range of local authentication, driving interoperable methods and enables them to communicate with the network to authenticate users without ever sharing passwords or credentials. Back in 2011, the working group of Ramesh decided on a commercial entity which was to implement the protocol that was written "The adoption and the market traction that was not going to happen:, the group decided to form a company and Ramesh quit Validity and started NokNok Labs. The rest awaits for some glory days ahead.

"Never go with people whom you feel comfortable with but go with those who will fit the bill", a typicality of the man in quotes embarking an honest, submissive approach. A little more to Ramesh's life is only that his daughter fills the void as he manages to close off at mid afternoon to account for a more brighter side of his life with his daughter. A peaceful stroll at a beach in the evenings and a wise advise to young people is what Ramesh signs off his day with.