Pacesetters: OneTrust is Atlanta's fastest-growing technology company

The global privacy and security landscape is constantly changing.  

"New laws are passed or amended, and those changes have major implications for how our customers operate their businesses and privacy programs," said Kabir Barday, CEO of OneTrust, a security and third-party risk technology platform company. “We’ve built OneTrust to be super agile to adapt to these changes." 

OneTrust is No. 2 on the Chronicle’s Pacesetters list of top fastest-growing companies in metro Atlanta, and the top company in the technology category. 

The company’s 40 in-house researchers stay on top of evolving trends and feed that data to OneTrust customers and technology developers. Employees update its software even three weeks for its 6,000 companies who are customers, which include half of the Fortune 500 companies, according to Barday. 

Being in Atlanta allows the company access to top talent from local colleges and offers employees a low cost of living, Barday said. 

"Additionally, operating a global business from the Eastern time zone gives us a lot of flexibility to work both with Europe and Asia in our standard workday," Barday said, adding that Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport also is a draw. “Our business operates in 100 countries, and half of our customers are outside of the U.S., so this is key in our success." 

OneTrust employees attribute the company's success to its people. 

"The company’s meteoric growth is the result of Kabir Barday and his team’s vision and management," said co-chairman Alan Dabbiere. "He hired the best and the brightest in Atlanta.  He is consistently staying on top of industry trends, and enhancing and expanding the product line to stay on top of the customer’s needs. Finally, he has embedded himself in the fiber in the privacy community with strong relationships with the key people in the industry." 

Barday also has an uncanny ability to anticipate the privacy concerns of customers and the market, according to Dabbiere, which has led to its growth from a start-up to 1,500 employees and 6,000 customers in four years. 

"CEOs are trying to find the balance between knowing their customer  and  respecting their privacy. At the same time, customers and employees are choosing to purchase from or work with companies with strong ethics," Dabbiere said. "OneTrust recognized this need for a broad privacy solution before any other company, and quickly executed to become the largest and most widely used technology solution in the market. Thanks to Kabir's leadership, and the company’s history coming from the same leadership [as] two other great Atlanta companies – Manhattan Associates and AirWatch – OneTrust was able to execute on a better solution, faster, and with more scale than any other company. " 

Insight Partners, a venture capital firm, led OneTrust’s $200 million Series A investment round in 2019. OneTrust also had a $210 million Series B investment round in 2019. 

“One of the first things that comes to mind when I think about OneTrust is how impressive their leadership team is,” said Richard Wells, managing director of Insight Partners. “Not only do they have a proven track record of building scalable enterprise technology, but they are agile operators who are able to deftly lead their employees, while navigating the ever-changing privacy ecosystem. We’ve seen changes to the global privacy landscape over the last ten years, and Covid-19 has created even deeper complexities. It is their ability to rapidly adapt to meet the market’s needs and deliver industry leading solutions that sets OneTrust apart.” 

The company's biggest challenge has been staying agile to adapt to the changing regulatory landscape, Barday said. 

"We’ve overcome this by hiring the right people who thrive on coming together to build the global leader in the industry," he said. "Our team is smart, and keeps our research base and technology up-to-date to adapt to these ongoing changes."  

Fastest-Growing Companies, Technology Category