Feature
Rising stars
Kaker (centre back) and
Manji (centre front)
Steve Monnington of
Mayfield Merger Strategies
continues this series
showcasing up-and-coming
independent organisers
with a look at cyber security
conference organiser
Qatalyst Global
M
any event organising companies
start life because their founders
couldn’t get support for their ideas within
the companies that they worked for and
Qatalyst falls squarely into that category.
Ravi Manji and Kudsia Kaker both worked
for Marcus Evans. Manji joined as a
sponsorship salesperson in its summit
business and, like many people, didn’t
really know what an events company
actually did. Kaker joined a year later to
handle delegate sales as she figured that
the summits were sufficiently broad in
both their scope and geography that she
wouldn’t pigeonhole herself.
The events that they worked on were
senior level 1-2-1 events in life science,
legal, tax and finance, through their
research they could see the problems
that digital innovation was having on the
world but were unable to create events
addressing these issues.
“As a large company there wasn’t the
flexibility or infrastructure for us to
launch a cyber security event. We had
a feeling that this was an issue on the
cusp of growth but no-one there was
interested,” recalls Kaker.
Setting up on their own
Their different personalities pushed
against each other while they made the
decision whether or not to set up their
own business.
“It took us a couple of months from
having the idea to making a firm
decision,” Kaker explains. “Ravi is more
impetuous while I like to consider all the
angles, but he decided one day that it was
now or never, so I had to decide if I was
in or out.”
Qatalyst was born in 2011 (while Kaker
was 26 and Manji 33), so named because
it described how they wanted to facilitate
and accelerate growth and innovation
for the stakeholders they work with. The
cyber security events arena was quite
crowded when they started.
“We were cautious about the direction
we took as there were a lot of existing
cyber security events, especially in
banking and insurance, but we were
surprised that the vulnerability of critical
assets such as oil and gas, energy and
chemicals weren’t being addressed, so we
decide to focus on this area” says Manji.
Qatalyst didn’t suffer from the ‘who
are you?’ syndrome that afflicts many
small companies when they try to engage
with large corporations because these
corporations understood that, through
their events, Qatalyst could help inform
the issues that they were facing.
They ran their first event – Cyber
Security for Critical Assets (CS4CA)
– in London within six months of the
company being formed and with only
the two of them involved for the first
year they had to wait until the first event
was wrapped up to start work on their
second. According to Manji, small start-
up companies experience more than just
a lack of bandwidth.
“We both come from a sales background
and now we were having to cover off all
the roles. It was the first time we had to
deal with creating content, so it was a big
learning curve but fortunately we both
enjoy research which helps,” he explains.
September — 33