This startup quietly secured an airbase; its encryption now guards railways, laptops and more

It began with a breach: the kind that sends shockwaves through an entire military establishment.

In early 2016, when terrorists attacked the Pathankot Air Force base in Punjab, perimeter security wasn’t just about boots on the ground, but also about securing data traveling across invisible networks.

Surveillance cameras, infrared sensors and motion detectors were all in place, but something wasn't right. The network lagged. The data feeding into the command centres was disrupted and inconsistent. The fear wasn’t only of armed intrusions, but also of cyber tampering.

That’s when Pantherun Technologies, a little-known deeptech startup from Bengaluru, entered the fray.

"There were hacking attacks. There were denial-of-service attacks, or DDoS attacks as they're called. Hackers were targeting the surveillance systems, trying to jam or intercept data flows from the perimeter walls to the command centres," recalls Srinivas Shekar, co-founder and CEO of Pantherun.

"All of this was continuously happening, and we were able to put our encryption on that network so that hackers were thwarted. They couldn't attack that network anymore." "The system was already using IPSec (Internet Protocol Security), with industry-standard grade protection... but it needed more security with the latest tech layer."

Pantherun’s solution: a real-time AI-driven encryption technology, patented, of course, that changed everything. Not only did it restore seamless data flow, but it also ensured the network couldn’t be penetrated, something that even the world’s best protocols hadn’t managed.

For Pantherun, it wasn’t just a breakthrough project. It was a validation that their homegrown encryption innovation worked in the most high-stakes environments. Since then, the startup has quietly built a deeptech encryption empire, one that powers everything from military surveillance and rail signalling to industrial control systems and AI-infused laptops.

Inception 

Founded in 2019 by Shekar and his Taiwanese co-founder Tiffany Chan, the company today serves domestic and global clients such as Deutsche Bahn, the second-largest transport company in Germany, Indian Railways, network operators like Vodafone Idea, Bharat Electronics and other major players across IT, telecom, and automotive.

They were incubated under Startup India and supported by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. Investors include SIDBI Ventures, Capital2B (Info Edge), 8X Ventures, Real Time Angel Fund (GrowX), Piper Serica, and family offices. In October 2025, the firm closed its Series A round of $12 million led by Sahasrar Capital Investors and Lucky Investment Managers, with participation from existing investors and Founders Collective Fund.

Pantherun team in Bengaluru office

Understanding the technology: Eliminating the key exchange 

But at its core, Pantherun’s edge lies in something deceptively simple: fixing what has long been considered a fundamental flaw in how the world encrypts data. To understand Pantherun’s innovation, we have to first understand how encryption typically works.

Shekar offers an analogy.

"When you look at encryption today, a standard called AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) is used. Not a very attractive name for it, but it's considered a gold standard — very strong encryption that can take 100 man-years of effort to break," he explains.

In simple terms, you need a key to encrypt data before sending it, and the exact same key to decrypt it on the other side. "Without the exact same key, you cannot decrypt," he says.

These keys are long, complex sets of hexadecimal numbers, often 256 bits in length. The challenge is that you need to send this key to the other end before decryption, which opens up a major vulnerability.

"This is called a key exchange. So over the same network, you are exchanging keys as well. Before you encrypt, you send the key to the destination so that it can decrypt. This is considered a big weakness," the co-founder says.

"You might have heard of a hacker staying on networks undetected for months together."

Shekar brings up the SolarWinds attack, a sophisticated cyber-espionage operation in which hackers compromised a widely used software called Orion from a company named SolarWinds.  The attackers secretly inserted malicious code into a software update, which was then downloaded by thousands of organisations globally, including multiple Fortune 500 companies and key US government agencies.

"This was detected by Microsoft after about 10 months," he points out, mentioning that even tech giants with robust defences can be blindsided for months if there's a blind spot in how encryption keys are exchanged and managed.

Pantherun’s breakthrough lies in eliminating the key exchange altogether.

"We've built an AI-based approach wherein you don't need to exchange keys. A key is dynamically generated to encrypt the packet, and at the destination, another key is generated to decrypt the packet. So there is no need for an exchange," he says.

The result? A communication system that’s not only secure but also lightning fast. "We do not drop speed, so no delays as we do the encrypt and decrypt," he adds.

Speed is critical in systems like railway signalling or industrial safety sensors. Even a microsecond delay can have consequences. "We built encrypted communication throughout the train just like they build out surveillance systems for the protection of passengers," Shekar says.

Product being assembled in Taiwan center

Global roots

Pantherun builds both software-based and semiconductor-based solutions.

"We also build out semiconductor technology to enable us to do this encryption. We also have a pure software-based approach to doing it," he explains. The semiconductor designs are developed in Bengaluru, while software and hardware integration is led by their team in Taiwan. A recently added Swiss team handles licensing and networking technologies.

Today, the team is split roughly with 40 percent in Bengaluru, 30 percent in Taiwan, and 30 percent in Europe.

The background

The founding team came together from years of professional trust. "I've been in the industry for 30 years," Shekar says.

He began his career at Rockwell in the US, then led an Indian company that was eventually acquired by Intel. Chan, his co-founder, managed operations for a Taiwanese manufacturing company that had once invested in Shekar’s previous venture. "When I left, we had a chat about what I'm going to do next and so on... She decided to join me as a co-founder."

Their early work got noticed. "We were part of a Qualcomm mentorship. They also took us in. We're getting that kind of attention from customers because our technology is quite unique in the way we do encryption," he says.

Metro network, Indian Railways, Intel partnership and more

The Pathankot airbase wasn’t their only government project.

Pantherun worked with one of India’s major metro rail projects, though the name remains undisclosed due to security protocols and a strict non-disclosure agreement, to secure signalling systems that manage train movement and prevent collisions. Its tech ensures that no one can remotely tamper with traffic signals or relay faulty information that could trigger accidents.

Work is currently underway with another metro network.

"This was a signalling project. You have signalling systems used in railways to prevent crashes... They have a lot of checks throughout that line to make sure that there are no trains on it before they turn the light green. All of this runs on electronics, and we provide the encrypted communication so that nobody can tamper with electronics and change red to green which might cause a crash," the co-founder explains.

They've also contributed to surveillance systems in India’s Northeast, and a global image sensor firm now uses Pantherun’s encryption on sensors meant to shut down dangerous machinery instantly upon detecting a human presence.

"They make image sensors and use our encryption on them. We not only encrypt data, we do it at very high speed with great reliability," he adds.

Despite their government work, the bulk of Pantherun’s revenue comes from private clients, including industrial-level encryption wherein they provide secure networking for controllers to talk to each other.

One major partnership in the works is with Intel’s Lunar Lake platform. "Intel has launched a new chip called the Lunar Lake. It brings a lot of AI acceleration into laptops... Intel selected us to provide encryption for data movement inside the laptop," Shekar says.

Revenue is growing. Last year, the startup recorded its first full year of earnings, and this year, it has already grown fivefold. Pantherun has filed three patents so far, with two granted and two more in the pipeline.

While they license their technology, they also build and ship devices. "Whatever we give to the railway is actually the device with our encryption built in."

Product testing in Bengaluru office

Open sourcing

In a bid to support broader adoption, Pantherun has started open-sourcing parts of its stack. "We call it the Pepper open-source platform, where whatever we've built is open-sourced so that more engineers can adopt it in their solutions."

Looking ahead, the startup is working on ramping up encryption speeds. "We are expanding our offering into telecom. They need higher speeds than what we are doing right now. We are now expanding into 100 gigabits per second," Shekar reveals.

What sets Pantherun apart is that it’s an Indian company building core encryption tech from scratch. "Earlier, there was reliance on the likes of Broadcom... Broadcom does have development centres here, but it's not an Indian company... As far as I've seen, there isn't anybody really working at the network level in India," he says.

Their encryption technology now runs deep inside government networks, rail signalling systems, international laptops, and industrial control devices. Each deployment, says the team, involves solving a unique challenge. "We feel proud of that, but ultimately, we look at what will lead to greater adoption of our technology so that we can also grow the revenue of the company.”