Penn alum designs tracking system for stolen laptops

When a laptop computer was stolen from his car last year, Ravi Hariprasad didn't get mad. He just made sure that it would never happen again -- to anyone. That night, he created the concept that would become Lucira Pinpoint, a software program that immediately tracks stolen laptops and PCs once the thief logs on to the Internet. One year ago, Hariprasad was a fourth-year graduate student at Penn's Medical School. Today, he is CEO of Lucira Technologies, the Boston-based company he founded on this concept. Hariprasad's success in last year's Wharton Business Plan Competition spurred the sudden career change and brought an end to his medical studies. "I heard a car alarm go off and found that someone had broken into my car and stolen my laptop," he said of the theft, which occurred the night before the deadline of the competition's first phase. "On the way home, with glass in my butt, I tried to think of a way to prevent this from happening... I [came up with the proposal], typed really fast and got it in on the deadline, by one minute." Hariprasad won the prize for the best Internet and information technology concept with his idea -- then called Cybertrak.com. Working with friends at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he further developed the concept and went on to win prizes at the MIT, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and Nantucket business plan competitions. The Lucira Pinpoint program -- available for free on the Internet since November -- takes about a minute to register and a few seconds to download and install. Designed to combat a problem that costs individuals and corporations over one billion dollars each year, according to Lucira statistics, the software not only allows police to track stolen computers to exact locations but also allows users to delete or retrieve data from the stolen laptop. "A laptop is stolen every 40 seconds in this country," Hariprasad said. He added, "Within a week of the launch of the product, many tens of thousands of companies requested the software." Hariprasad's company has grown to a multi-million dollar venture with the development of other privacy protection products. Virtually all of the company's income comes from licensing the tracking software to corporations. "We're not really looking to generate revenue on the consumer side," Lucira Chief Privacy Officer Keith Enwright said. For private users, Lucira Pinpoint is a nearly free public service. The minimal charge for tracking a computer reported stolen verifies the claim, by cross-referencing the user's credit card. Hariprasad's hope that others may never have to face his past aggravation is finally a reality.