Section 36
Kailash Katkar
Quick Heal Technologies · Pune, Maharashtra
- ₹350
- Monthly salary in his first job · 1986
- About ₹1,300 crore
- Market value · 2017
- 1,200
- Employees · 2017
The story
Kailash Katkar's family lived in a small house in a slum area of Pune. His father, who had studied till Class 7, worked as a machine setter at Philips and did overtime to run the house. He put his children in English-medium schools even though it was hard to afford. Kailash struggled with English, failed Class 9 and left school.
He had already learned radio repair and screen printing from his father, and was earning ₹1,200-1,300 a month. In 1986 he took a job as a calculator technician at a company called Data Star for just ₹350 a month, because he wanted to learn digital electronics. There he also learned accounts. In 1990, when the company closed its Pune workshop, he took it over, paying from his earnings because he had no capital.
He added computer repair and won maintenance contracts, starting with the Times of India office in Pune. His younger brother Sanjay studied computer engineering, and together they built the Quick Heal antivirus. Open magazine reported in 2017 that Quick Heal had a market value of about ₹1,300 crore and 1,200 employees.
Timeline
- 1986Joins Data Star as a calculator technician for ₹350 a month.
- 1990Takes over the Pune workshop as his first business.
- 1992Persuades his brother Sanjay to study computer engineering.
- 2017Quick Heal valued at about ₹1,300 crore with 1,200 employees.