Amar Kanagaraj — Founder

At Protecto, we’re solving one of the biggest challenges of the AI era—how to keep enterprise data safe while enabling AI. AI agents and LLM-based workflows are transforming how businesses operate, but they come with serious risks around data security, compliance, and privacy. Most solutions either block access or strip away meaning—making AI less useful or even unusable. Protecto takes a different approach. We’ve built a data guardrails platform that secures sensitive information without compromising AI accuracy. Our intelligent tokenization preserves the meaning and context AI needs to work effectively—so companies can move fast and stay compliant. ⸻ I’ve always been driven by one thing: building—solving complex problems and driving impact. I studied engineering at CEG (College of Engineering, Guindy), India’s oldest and one of its top engineering institutions, where I also served as Student President. That experience shaped my early passion for leadership and innovation. I went on to earn a master’s in computer science from LSU, and started my career as a developer at Sun Microsystems, working deep in systems and enterprise software. I started my career as a developer at Sun Microsystems, diving deep into systems and enterprise software. Later, I pursued an MBA at Carnegie Mellon, where I learned to think in a structured, analytical way—skills that help me solve complex problems. After business school, I joined Booz & Co, helping companies across automotive, industrials, and consumer sectors solve growth challenges. But I missed building. So I joined Microsoft’s Search & AI team as a product manager, working on Bing, Cortana, and next-gen AI-powered search experiences—a formative experience in launching impactful, user-focused AI products. Then came the startup chapter. As co-founder of FileCloud, I led marketing and helped grow the company from under $300K to over $8M ARR in just a few years. Now at Protecto, it feels like everything has come full circle—engineering, product, go-to-market—all coming together to solve one of the most urgent problems in enterprise AI. Still building. Still learning. Still driven to solve the hard problems.

Stackforce AI infers this person is a SaaS-focused leader with expertise in AI and data security.

Location: Cupertino, California, United States

Experience: 20 yrs 9 mos