Every start-up has an origin story. Vishal Marria’s is pretty dramatic. It began when he was just nine years old, and was attacked by four men who held a knife to his neck in a raid on his father’s cash and carry store. That traumatic moment sparked an interest in crime that took him into data analytics, and eventually the founding of Quantexa – a tech firm that’s been used by major banks and international police to “find the bad guys”, rooting out fraud, money laundering and more. He’s built a company recently valued at 1 point 8 billion dollars, in just seven years.

In this episode we talk about: 

• How that violent incident led to his interest in crime 
• The problem he noticed working with financial companies’ data while working at EY  
• How data is used to tackle financial and organised crime 
• How he got an untested start-up into a room with a huge bank and won a major client against “some of the biggest tech companies on the planet” 
• The nerve-wracking moment the wifi on a plane went down just as he was emailed the result of his presentation to HSBC 
• How as an AI company they have to remember that “people buy from people” 
• How Quantexa has evolved from “catching the bad guy” to “finding the good one” 

For more interviews, news and analysis go to standard.co.uk/business or pick up the Evening Standard newspaper. How to be a CEO is back next Monday, we’d love to see you then.  

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