Brothers Sohel and Dev Sanghani who hail from Rajkot have already made it to what is called a US dream career. Sohel worked at Bridgewater Associates, a top global hedge fund based in CT, USA after completing his Bachelors in Computer Science and MA in Economics from John Hopkins University. Dev secured his job at San Francisco based Pocket Gems after completing BS in Computer Science from California Institute of Technology.
Sohel and Dev, aged 33 and 31 who were living a US dream life, like most Indians are hoping for, decided to head back to their hometown in Gujarat to live with the extended family and pursue their entrepreneurial vision here. It is also a fact that being based in India is increasingly attractive for young entrepreneurs since it enables low cost of development and operations, while still having access to a global marketplace.
Everyone is aware that email is a free service. These Gujarati brothers from Rajkot, who were caught up with an idea of an email app which is highly secure and has value added features, created a mobile app called Canary Mail that reimagined email security for modern businesses and individuals.
As per Sohel “security encryption is very common in many apps like WhatsApp, but surprisingly there is no such facility available in E-mail. If somebody gets your password they can regularly access your mails from anywhere, without you even knowing about it. In 2017 we launched an app called Canary Mail; which provides highly secured mail communication. You may be using any mail service, but, by using this app your mails would be totally encrypted and only would be decrypted when only you yourself read it. The app has several other features also. The company charges users a lifetime fee of 20 US dollars per operating system.”
As per Dev, who previously worked with a gaming company in US, “after 5 years we have 300,000+ users globally who use our service. We have received tremendous responses and our app has been appreciated in many US publications. The app is also regularly featured by Apple on the App Store under 'App We Love' category. Canary Mail is used by users and teams at top global organizations such as NHS (UK), Harvard University, leading European investigative agencies “The
Intercept”. Healthcare organizations in the US and elsewhere are required to encrypt patient health information, which is why they prefer using a secure email solution such as Canary Mail. Failure to adequately safeguard confidential health information can lead to severe penalties.”
At Indian government's prestigious National Startup Awards 2020, “Canary Mail” made it as a finalist in cyber security category. As per Tejinder Oberoi, Chairman, GESIA (Association of IT companies of Gujarat), it is indeed a great effort by the young entrepreneurs. In fact, IT environment is very conducive in Gujarat right now and there are several new innovative products like this under development in Gujarat. Next few years are very positive for IT industries of Gujarat.
The company has now been funded by US based Sequoia Capital, one of Silicon Valley’s largest and best known venture capital firms. Sequoia that has previously backed Apple, Google, WhatsApp, Instagram, Zoom has committed to invest US $2 million in Canary Mail.
