Ankita Dhakar’s selection among New Zealand’s 2026 EY Entrepreneur Of The Year finalists draws attention to a founder whose route into cybersecurity began outside the conventional technical pipeline.
The Jaipur-born entrepreneur moved to New Zealand in 2015 with a background in commerce and business administration, according to Indian Newslink’s September profile. She went on to build Capture The Bug, a business focused on helping organisations discover weaknesses in their digital systems.
Her inclusion in the finalist group was also reported in IT Brief’s July announcement coverage. The recognition provides a useful moment to examine how an Indian migrant founder has developed a technology company in New Zealand, without treating an award shortlist as proof of commercial success.
Finding the problem through client work
The company’s origins are rooted in an operational frustration. In an October 2024 account published by business-support organisation Soda, Dhakar described identifying demand for more continuous security testing while serving a client through her earlier business, SecurityLit.
Penetration testing involves authorised attempts to identify exploitable weaknesses. Capture The Bug’s model combines a platform with specialist testers, aiming to make findings available sooner and fit testing around software-development cycles.
Soda reported that the business used both its own testing team and an international community of identity-verified testers. It also recorded a 2023 launch and support through Callaghan Innovation’s Ārohia Trailblazer Seed Grant.
These details help explain the business more clearly than a broad claim about disrupting cybersecurity. The proposition is about changing how customers commission testing, receive information and act on it. Claims about faster service or lower costs remain the company’s proposition rather than an independent performance assessment.
Building capability and connections
Dhakar’s early New Zealand work spanned customer service, real estate, IT support, accounting and database administration, Indian Newslink reported. That varied background offers context for a founder working at the intersection of technology and customer needs.
A Kiwibank founder case study describes a later business challenge: expanding while maintaining security quality, clear pricing and a workable route to market. The bank says its StartUp+ support included funding access and introductions.
The account is promotional material from a financial provider, so it should be read with that relationship in mind. It nevertheless identifies a concrete part of the startup process that success stories often skip: expertise alone does not supply working capital, customer access or a useful network.
A migrant-founder story without shortcuts
For Indian New Zealanders considering entrepreneurship, Dhakar’s experience is relevant because it shows several kinds of work happening together. Learning a specialist industry, understanding clients and finding suitable support are connected parts of building a company.
It would be misleading to turn her path into a formula. A founder profile cannot establish how likely a new business is to succeed, and recognition does not reveal revenue, profitability or the quality of every engagement.
What the available record does show is a progression from varied employment to a customer-led business idea and then a place on a national entrepreneurship shortlist. That is a substantive contribution to New Zealand’s business story, with an Indian migrant woman at its centre.
Source-based feature prepared on 25 October 2026 from the linked reporting and organisational case studies. No new interview was conducted; finalist recognition is not described as an award win.
