Zendata is a full stack cloud data security platform designed to help CISOs, DevOps and Compliance teams embed privacy and security controls and protocols across their assets and SDLC. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Zendata CEO Narayana Pappu to learn more about the company.
Narayana Pappu’s Background
What is Narayana Pappu’s background? Pappu said:
“I began my career in Data Science at Fannie Mae, even before the term was widely recognized. My primary responsibility was to create a more accurate home price index than what was available at the time. Over the next 15 years, I gained extensive experience at companies like PayPal, Coinbase, and Doctor on Demand, where I developed and scaled various high-performance tools for internal investigations, graph analysis, and entity resolution to support risk management and compliance. Additionally, I launched consumer and merchant lending solutions in the US, UK, and Germany, each handling over $5 billion in annual transactions. I also led initiatives around data monetization, fostering partnerships between PayPal, advertising, and payment networks. My expertise lies in building complex data-driven solutions that are both easy to implement and capable of generating significant value.”
Formation Of Zendata
How did the idea for the company come together? Pappu shared:
“I was exposed to privacy (this was well before regulations like GDPR were in place) while working on a data monetization project that required anonymous data sharing between a couple of companies. I was fascinated by the complexity of data collection, transformation, aggregation, and sharing, and the systems/use cases that facilitated it and how pervasive and real-time they operated. This led me to work on building a privacy platform at PayPal. It was a sophisticated system that did automated/accurate data mapping, but the problem was time to value (it took a long time, with a lot of false positives). I walked away from these experiences to build a solution that creates visibility on data risks for CISOs/CPOs, with low time to value, that acts as a bridge between policy and engineering/data organizations. This thesis has held up well and is even more important with AI adoption in enterprises where privacy, data security, and controls are the number one barrier to applications being built.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Pappu reflected:
“My favorite memories thus far have been just figuring out where we fit in and how we can add maximum value to our end users.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Pappu explained:
“Zendata’s core products focus on data privacy observability and AI explainability. Key features include real-time monitoring of data flows, AI decision process tracking, bias detection, and ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations. The platform provides end-to-end coverage, offering a clear understanding of how data is collected, processed, and used within AI models.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Pappu and the team face in building the company? Pappu acknowledged:
“When we started working on the initial solution, everyone agreed on the need for it, but some companies would deprioritize privacy – “I have five things on my plate and can only focus on four; privacy is number five.” Educating companies on the importance of AI governance and privacy, and the business value both could bring, took time and experimentation. Ultimately, it required showing how these aspects could create tangible business value to get people to prioritize them.”
Significant Milestone
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones from a founders perspective? Pappu cited:
“Startup life is all about running as many experiments as possible with limited resources. In that sense, some of the most significant milestones thus far include building a strong team, figuring out the structure/focus area, raising funds, signing customers, and expanding the addressable market for our product. All of these have been crucial in the journey.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Pappu affirmed:
“We come from the data collector’s and user’s side, rather than the governance side. This gives us a deep understanding of why someone might want to collect particular data and the business value it would generate. We also understand the verticals we target – financial services and e-commerce. We are building a solution that handles complex problems, but is simple to use and easy to implement.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Pappu concluded:
“Our goal is to become a trusted solution that provides context around data usage, detects and mitigates biases, and creates explainability.”
