The journey began in Pune.
CXO Junction, in association with Netpoleon Bharat and its esteemed partners, Infoblox, Exabeam, and BMC Helix, brought the first chapter of the Netpoleon Bharat CXO Drive to Pune, bringing together cybersecurity leaders and technology decision-makers for an evening of candid conversations, peer exchange, and strategic perspectives on the evolving security landscape.
Pune was more than the first destination on a 12-city calendar.
It was the first table. The first conversation. The beginning of the journey.
What followed across the evening was a discussion grounded in the realities security leaders are navigating every day, growing volumes of security signals, increasingly sophisticated threats, insider risk, visibility gaps, and the continuing need to turn intelligence into decisions.
And that set the tone for everything that followed.

The Pune chapter brought together George Joseph, Regional Sale Manager, Exabeam, and Hiten Radhanpura, Product Security Specialist – SAARC, Presales, Infoblox, with Sejal Shibe, AVP – Cyber & Operations, CyberFrat, moderating the discussion.
Cybersecurity leaders came together with experiences shaped by different organisations, environments and priorities. Around the table, the conversation quickly moved beyond the usual security checklist and into the realities of making decisions in an environment where the volume of information continues to grow.
The discussion touched on behavioural analytics, insider risk, DNS-layer visibility and security intelligence, but the real conversation was about what happens when these signals need to be understood together.
How do you distinguish meaningful behaviour from everyday activity?
How much can DNS activity reveal about what is happening across an enterprise?
And when multiple signals point in different directions, how does a security leader determine what deserves attention first?
These questions gave the Pune conversation its first shape.
But more importantly, they opened the door to a much larger CXO dialogue — one that would continue to evolve as the Bharat CXO Drive moved from one city to another.
What began in Pune around visibility, context and decision-making would gather new perspectives with every subsequent table. Each city would bring its own experiences, priorities and interpretations to the conversation, allowing the questions to travel further while the perspectives around them continued to broaden.
The value of the Pune evening extended beyond the formal discussion. Conversations continued between sessions. Leaders exchanged experiences from their own organisations, compared approaches and found common ground across challenges that can look very different from one enterprise to another.
That exchange became an important part of the CXO Drive experience.
Pune gave the conversation its starting point. The cities that followed would give it depth, direction and new perspectives.
A room full of leaders. One table. A conversation that would travel much further.
Conversations continued between sessions. Leaders exchanged experiences from their own organisations, compared approaches and found common ground across challenges that often look very different from one enterprise to another.
That exchange became an important part of the CXO Drive experience.
The journey was taking shape through people, perspectives and conversations.
The evening also introduced the Offensive vs Defensive Challenge, bringing a competitive edge to the Pune chapter.
CXOs stepped into the challenge, taking on offensive and defensive scenarios that called for strategic thinking, quick decisions and the ability to respond under pressure.
The challenge added a different dimension to the evening, one where participants could put their cybersecurity instincts into action and compete for a place in the journey ahead.
By the end of the Pune round, the first finalists had emerged.
🔴 Parth Trivedi, CISO at Bosch Global Software Technologies
🔵 Vishwas Pitre, CISO & DPO at Zensar Technologies Ltd.
The Pune finalists will meet again at the Final Showdown, alongside the finalists who emerged from the cities that followed.
And the Story Continues
As we revisit each city, we will take you back to the conversations, people and moments that shaped the Bharat CXO Drive along the way.
Next in the throwback series: Mumbai.
Follow along as we revisit the cities that shaped the Bharat CXO Drive, and build towards the Final Showdown.
Stay tuned as CXO Junction continues to bring you exclusive updates from Netpoleon’s cybersecurity journey, thought leadership initiatives, and enterprise technology engagements across India.
