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In India’s start‑up boom, billion‑dollar valuations rise overnight—then vanish by sunrise. Cryptic Boards takes a peek at boardroom door as it happens.
Shantanu Rao, a street‑smart founder from Bengaluru, bootstraps SecuComp into a global darling on code, charisma and a few creative invoices. Investors cheer, share prices soar—until a midnight breach exposes forged orders and a silent partner that shouldn’t exist. Enter Natasha Jain, a forensic‑security prodigy who discovers the saboteurs are SpectreFox, an elite hacker syndicate with one demand: license SecuComp’s breakthrough “Beacon” platform or watch the company burn.With regulators circling and auditors blinking, Shantanu must choose—ally with yesterday’s enemy or see his life’s work reduced to a cautionary footnote. Behind the tension lies a maze of dual‑audit pipelines, blockchain ledgers that never forget, and directors whose loyalties shift with every tick of the stock tape.
Penned by experienced CXO and cybersecurity expert Srinivas Mahankali, Cryptic Boards blends razor‑sharp technical insight with breathless storytelling. Real scandals inspire every twist, turning buzzwords like “governance” and “resilience” into mortal stakes. From hidden server rooms in Bengaluru to hush‑hush summits watched by EU regulators, the novel lifts the veil on the games founders play—and on the tools that can finally keep them honest.Who truly holds power when code, capital, and conscience collide? Open the ledger and find out.
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Srinivas Mahankali
Srinivas Mahankali is an experienced technology strategist, board‑room veteran, and one of India’s most vocal evangelists for blockchain, cybersecurity, and ethical governance. For more than twenty‑five years he has worn many executive hats—Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Innovation Officer, independent director—across sectors as varied as cloud infrastructure, healthcare IT, and deep‑tech consulting. His tenure on multiple listed‑company boards has given him a ringside view of both inspired leadership and the quiet, corrosive shortcuts that can undo it. Those encounters, coupled with a lifelong fascination for cryptography, inform every line of Cryptic Boards.
He is also the author of seventeen previous books on technology and management, most notably Corona Wars: Chronicles of a Corporate General. Published at the height of the pandemic, the novel was hailed as the world’s first “STEM‑fiction” exploration of COVID‑19, intertwining real virology, supply‑chain analytics, and leadership psychology into a gripping narrative. Corona Wars earned five‑star ratings across global e‑stores to become the highest rated fiction book on the topin on Amazon.
When he isn’t writing or consulting, Srinivas champions open‑source security projects and serves as an honorary advisor to several incubators that nurture socially responsible tech ventures. He believes that trust—whether in code or in people—scales only through transparency, and he pushes that credo in keynote stages and hacker meet‑ups alike.
An IIT Chennai and IIM Bengaluru alumnus, A native of Hyderabad now based in Chennai, Srinivas recharges by mentoring Startups and architecting advanced technology solutions to solve complex problems.
With Cryptic Boards, Srinivas turns decades of board‑room scars and cyber‑trenches wisdom into a tense, illuminating story—inviting readers to question not only how companies grow, but how they choose to stay honest when success arrives.
