From School Dropout to Ethical Hacker, Avalance’s CEO Manan Shah Flies High in Cyber Security

“Our aim is to abolish the possibility of unauthorized access to databases by classifying the weaknesses in the digital space.”

A vibrant entrepreneur 

Manan Shah, 24, is a proven and dynamic entrepreneur, a cyber crime consultant, and founder of Vadodara based cyber security firm Avalance Global Solutions. He is an internationally acclaimed ethical hacker and investigator. Speaking to The Silicon Review, Mr. Shah, CEO of the firm, who has previously implemented many cyber security projects for the Gujarat government says that he has formed a 6 member team who will oversee security for Vadodara smart city project’s command and control centre, IT security audit, monitoring and SOC (Security Operations Center), asset management, compliance management, forensics and incident response.

Mr. Shah’s expertise in cyber forensics has helped Gujarat and Rajasthan police, Ministry of Defence, CBI Gandhinagar, Vadodara and Ahmedabad Airports, Bank of Baroda, Navrachna University, MS University, and Amul in more than 15 cases of fraud detection, social media, account recovery, forensics, and email hacking and encryption. “We have even reported bugs in Twitter, Facebook, Apple, PayPal and even MIT and Harvard.”

But there was a time, when Mr. Shah had dropped out of school, faced the wrath of his parents for academic challenges, self preparing with hacking tools and the will to do something on his own.

I loved being the backbencher: Manan Shah

While he regularly failed in many subjects, he had an uncanny liking towards computer science. “My parents were worried about my future. They got me a computer system at home thinking that it might help me improve my academics,” recollects Mr. Shah.

He was forever hooked to the computer and spent most of his time watching online videos on programming languages, hacking, cyber security etc. This continued for a while. But he did not have a concrete plan for his future. “At 15, I was a hardware expert. My neighbours and relatives would take my help to fix their computers,” he reveals.

But all of that changed after he attended a seminar on ethical hacking at MS University, Vadodara, 2009 by Ankit Fadia, the self proclaimed ethical hacker. “I wanted to be like him, a coder, hacker whom people would recognize. I wanted to do something in hacking hereon,” Mr. Shah says.

The next few months saw Shah take a course in ethical hacking and prepare himself further by learning programming languages online, emergency response, intrusion prevention techniques. During this period, he regularly helped Cyber cell departments of police agencies, private organizations on cyber security. But he never charged any fees for any of his work.

Then in 2014, he found a cross-site scripting vulnerability on Go Daddy’s platform. The authorities at the web hosting company even offered him a job which he politely denied. “It took me some time to learn about various web vulnerabilities but in the meantime, I started participating on various bug bounty programs of Google, Facebook among others,” the CEO says.

For the next few months, he used to wake up, code, eat, help institutions with cyber issues, party with friends in the evening, and brag about his new hack and sleep. This was becoming monotonous and with his parents enquiring regularly about his career pushed him to think harder.

With an idea of charging clients for his work and the vision of going global with his name, he along with a couple of friends, got together and registered Avalance Global Solutions. “We want to make Avalance a Fortune 500 company. Before the end of 2017, we want to be in Australia, Dubai, and Singapore. Next in line are Germany and Japan. We already have a few channel partners in place in these countries and we are pushing our sales through them,” the CEO says. One of the first projects for his new venture came to him by chance. He had gone to the Vadodara Cyber Cell and by chance met one of the owners of Chemical manufacturing company who was also present there for some other work.

“The customer’s network had been breached badly and he didn’t know what to do as he had never faced a cyber attack before. I didn’t think twice and travelled 60 kms with him to his plant and helped him resolve the issue,” Mr. Shah reveals.

I was reprimanded by my parents for not being a meritorious student: Manan Shah

Inspite of all of these, Mr. Shah recalls he was not happy rather he was in fear of how his parents would react to the decisions he had taken. “I had not told my parents about me dropping out and starting my own company at 22 years. But somehow I gathered courage and went back home to Ahmadabad,” he says.

His father who is retired now initially was taken aback and was extremely angry about his decision. “Dad was extremely angry about the situation. But when I explained him the kind of work I had already done for some originations, he was happy,” the CEO says.

Avalance Global Solutions

Avalance, a cyber space security leader, enables its clients to secure their web-based resources. The firm delivers easy-to-use security products and services, both generic and customized to keep web-space and networks protected. From preventative maintenance to customized solutions, the company puts its experience to work to provide its clients with greater operating time.

Avalance organises ethical hacking and web security based workshops and seminars. And helps corporate guard against generic information security threats along with combating advanced persistent threats and customized zero day exploits, ensuring an organisation stays ahead of the security curve. It serves as an information security adviser to businesses, governments and institutions around the world. It is one of the 160 start-ups selected by the government of India and has worked with various ministries including the Ministry of Corporate Affairs and Ministry of Defence.

The company has its headquarters in Vadodara, India and is currently serving over 100 clients.

“Nobody took me seriously because of my age. I began wearing business suits to look older and bring gravitas to my image” 

“We are IT Risk Managers”