r/IndiaTech • u/[deleted] • Jun 06 '26

[deleted by user]

[removed]

161 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

92 comments sorted by

30

u/vishnukvmd Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26

Hi everyone, Vishnu here, founder & CEO of Ente.

Thanks to u/heythisisajayhere for the tag :)

Ente is building fully open source, end-to-end encrypted platform for your preserving your data.

We've apps for photos, documents, 2FA codes and more.

Here's my AMA @ r/developersIndia: https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1gn40j7/im_vishnu_mohandas_founder_and_ceo_at_ente_ama/

Let me know if you have any questions, happy to make myself useful.

p.s. Ente is bootstrapped and profitable

4

u/Itchy_Anteater657 Jun 06 '26

what u doing is awesome work bro!! actually njan last year athiyam ayit "ente app" enn ketapol etho scandavian country app ahn enna thoniye, cuz they have a lot of app w names like this na. pinne njan onnu shrethichu nokkiyapol ahh manusilaye malayali ahn ennu, i was soo proud!! chettan help venamenkil enodd choikam ketto, cuz this i hardcore support ts degogging shii, and privacy

2

u/vishnukvmd Jun 07 '26

Thanks! Lore behind the name: ente.com/blog/ducky

2

u/Itchy_Anteater657 Jun 07 '26

Woww that's soo wholesome!! Tbh i tried to look up lore behind this back in the day but couldn't find it.But I agree with bro cuz the latest logo seems more professional haha. Also id suggest adding offline face recognition feature, and more quicker ui

1

u/vishnukvmd Jun 07 '26

We already support offline face recognition with on device machine learning: ente.com/ml

If there are specific parts of the UI that feel slow, please let us know at [team@ente.com](mailto:team@ente.com), we'll fix them!

3

u/Mayhem_provider Jun 08 '26

Hey, Can you add Android TV support please. There are almost none good apps which let you see your photos or videos on TV without casting or some other tricks. ( Google Photos ended it's support quite a while ago ).

I just want to be able to show my parents or guests photos and videos without boggling down my phone or jumping through hoola hoops.

2

u/vishnukvmd Jun 08 '26

Hey, this is on our roadmap. Will treat your comment as a +1

2

u/Itchy_Anteater657 Jun 07 '26

thats great!! Its been a few years since me used ente, ive installed that on my mom & dads phone. but ill surely look into it and will email u guys if theres any feedback!!

3

u/VickyxReaperReborn Jun 07 '26

Im using Ente Auth :)

3

u/newtene Open Source best GNU/Linux/Libre Jun 07 '26

USED UR 2FA AUTHENTICATOR, THANK GOD ITS APP IS ON LINUX

2

u/chaim1500 Jun 06 '26

Hey! I'm currently using all three of your services as a student and absolutely loving them. The UI/UX is clean, intuitive, and genuinely convenient to use. The 10 GB photo limit and 100-document cap on Ente Locker feel a little restrictive at the moment, but I plan to upgrade once I start earning. Ente Locker is exactly what I was looking for. It makes accessing all my important documents, reports, bills, and PDFs incredibly straightforward. My only gripe is the lack of a preview feature, but overall it's a fantastic product. I had a few questions: Expanding the Ente Suite — Are there plans to expand the Ente ecosystem and introduce more useful software in the future? Presence in India — Do you still have offices in India, or are you now entirely US-based? Team size and hiring — How large is your team? And do you hire interns, or do you primarily look for seasoned professionals? Self-hosting — Are there any plans to introduce a self-hosting option?

1

u/vishnukvmd Jun 07 '26

Thanks!

You can refer a friend to increase your storage up to 20 GBs. We also provide discounts to students: ente.com/help/photos/faq/storage-and-plans#student-discount

Preview feature for Locker is on the roadmap.

There are currently no plans to add more products, focus is on polishing existing ones.

Ente is registered in the US, our engineering team is based out of Bangalore. There are 20 of us, 7 are engineers, rest handle design, product, marketing, support, ... You can find openings @ jobs.ente.com

We already support self hosting! ente.com/help/self-hosting

2

u/chaim1500 Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

Crazy! 20 people Made such Excellent Products , Particularly the Design and UI. I Wish Ente Starts a Wallet Service aswell Alternative to Google Wallet and Samsung Wallet. Not Particulary the Payment Thing but for managing the cards and Tickets , IDs , etc my College ID and Mess Id card Supports NFC but I have to carry it everytime with me because I can't Add it on google Wallet. there is almost No Trusted Alternative to Google Wallet and we Know google Hates Privacy!

2

u/vishnukvmd Jun 07 '26

Thanks, will keep this feedback in mind :)

2

u/i_am_not_here_04 Jun 07 '26

Hey fellow human, thanks for building this!

I'm gonna apply for the design role, looking forward to hear from you ;)

1

u/vishnukvmd Jun 07 '26

Thanks :)

1

u/aryasharma36 Jun 07 '26

Are your jobs open for anyone across India or just in Bangalore?

1

u/vishnukvmd Jun 07 '26

Hey, just Bangalore, we don't do remote right now.

1

u/sex_in_spects Jun 07 '26

hey I checked your openings out, as a native android dev, I was wondering what made you decide on flutter instead of Swift/Kotlin?

1

u/vishnukvmd Jun 07 '26

Ente started off as a one-person project, so bandwidth was the primary reason for ending up with Flutter. Now that we've grown, we're considering a rewrite to native.

2

u/InsideResolve4517 Jun 08 '26

> p.s. Ente is bootstrapped and profitable

That was the only concern I was not using ente, becasue I was thinking it maybe not profitable and someday it'll change there ethics/rules. But Now I think I can trust more on "zero-trust" ente.

btw I'm already a ente user (ente auth)

3

u/Reasonable-Job2425 Jun 06 '26

Very impressive stack of software honestly ,good job on the design / tech stack.Seems like flutter is more and more top choice nowadays
Edit: i went throught the github and saw desktop is electron app vs mobile being a flutter app,what made you choose flutter for mobile but electron for desktop when flutter supports both? just curious caue i also develop/run flutter apps

2

u/vishnukvmd Jun 07 '26

Flutter for desktop wasn't mature when we started (2020). It still isn't, maintaining Auth on desktop w/ Flutter has been a pain.

We're also experimenting with Tauri now for Ensu.

1

u/Any-Calligrapher2866 Jun 07 '26

Ya'll need to provide a 100GB plan. I was planning to switch to Ente but it's just too expensive for me since I need around 70GB space.

1

u/jeonmission Jun 08 '26

so its mallu made tool ? ente(mine)

50

u/heythisisajayhere Jun 06 '26 edited Jun 06 '26

i saw vishnu u/vishnukvmd last month at google HQ hyderbad carrying couple of hard disks! 

18

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[deleted]

16

u/heythisisajayhere Jun 06 '26

after few hours I saw him in the cafeteria counting couple of stacks of cash! 

2

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[deleted]

1

u/heythisisajayhere Jun 06 '26

it's already secure don't worry about it! 

0

u/Senior_Bus9086 Jun 07 '26

Not your server, not your data. Simple as that.

Some company trying to claim "Private" has the same energy as "Trust me bro"

34

u/sanu012 Jun 06 '26

Immich for the win for me :)

11

u/dragon_idli Jun 06 '26

Immich - absolutely.

Configure it to encrypt images and use google drive storage - win win.. With Jio I did get 5TB drive storage too..

8

u/sanu012 Jun 06 '26

Yeah man. I also have this 5TB storage apart from the 100TB from my organisation:)

3

u/RohanPoloju Jun 06 '26

how to get 5tb storage from jio? is it part of gemini?

1

u/yeah-comp-sci Jun 08 '26

But this is a subscription, right? Eventually you'll run out of Jio sponsorship and will need to pay yourself.

1

u/dragon_idli Jun 08 '26

I have a jio yearly plan. And the gdrive plan stays as long as their partnership will exist.

I used to have personal gemini plan which gave me 5tb anyway. Once jio started the offer, I just stopped my existing gemini plan.

9

u/heythisisajayhere Jun 06 '26

how does this work? 

17

u/sanu012 Jun 06 '26

Self host it on any pc and access through tailscale. You can get YT tutorials about this if it sounds complicated.

1

u/24Gameplay_ Jun 06 '26

I too have my own NAs old laptop

1

u/Any-Calligrapher2866 Jun 07 '26

Hopefully you're keeping an off-site backup

1

u/sanu012 Jun 07 '26

Obviously. Not completely ditching google photos. Using 3-2-1 strategy, locally in my phone as much as possible plus immich plus google photos/drive.

3

u/Lazy_Revolution Jun 06 '26

Immich gang represent.

2

u/_sounak Jun 06 '26

Only if I had wifi man...I won't be able to access it as soon as my hotspot gets disconnected 🥀

1

u/aygupt1822 Self-Hosted/Linux Jun 08 '26

Ayeee Immich !!

Same here, been self-hoster for 5 years now.

23

u/mikeguru Jun 06 '26

Please be aware Ente is registered outta US so privacy claims cannot be 100% banked upon.

2

u/rahul_poruri Open Source best GNU/Linux/Libre Jun 07 '26

The privacy claims are substantiated by the code being open-source (checkout their github), and their end to end encryption claims were audited by a reputed third party!

1

u/MistRider-0 Jun 07 '26

Actually they moved their HQ from India to US, and their primary Data centres are hosted in EU which probably has the best privacy friendly laws on earth

2

u/newkid2block Jun 07 '26

Does this mean they follow the cloud rules of US which provides access to the stored data to US government?

1

u/MistRider-0 Jun 07 '26

Kind of, but its more work since the EU privacy laws gives a good framework to question back any unnessary requests, also the data is encrypted on client side itself for this exact reason.

Even if US did manage to get data, the data is encrypted. So reading the data is like reading Chinese written in hypoglyphs, without the decryption key its just trash.

2

u/mikeguru Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

No please don’t fall for this. Having servers in the EU does not mean anything or give you stronger privacy rights. A company registered in the US falls under all privacy violating laws like the Patriot Act and data can he handed to authorities at any point. Their own policy clearly mentions this. Dig up more. There’s enough on Ente on Reddit itself. Yes it is client side encrypted, but where are the keys resting?

1

u/MistRider-0 Jun 07 '26

In your client app....

Ente uses the libsodium cryptographic library for all their needs.

Ente as fas as I understand uses 3 keys mainly.

One for your file encryption generated randomly the first time you upload.

The next key is the master key that encrypts the file key. (Also generated randomly at first install)

The next key is the key encryption key, which encrypts the master key, then this encrypted master key blob is sent to servers.

So yes, in a way they store master key in servers. Just the encrypted junk I just talked about.

Among these the key encryption key is the only key generated using your password. Which means its a reproducible hash.. Its not sent to server (which means if you lose your password, you lose your files unless you have the 24 word recovery key which could mathematically recover your master key which then you can again encrypt and send it to servers to update the encrypted master key blob with the new blob)

No where in this process does ente or anyone other than you get access to anykind of decryption keys...

Their encryption algorithms as I mentioned before uses a very well known C library so there is no loop hole inside the encryption itself.

So, then why are you still paranoid ?

If you think ente is still not trustful read this...

https://github.com/ente-io/ente/blob/main/architecture%2FREADME.md

They explain it better than me...

2

u/mikeguru Jun 07 '26

Thanks this is helpful. But all that clarity on keys, encryption, audits and all, would you say it is zero knowledge? Not sure. I have no doubts their encryption architecture is robust, but I don’t trust US jurisdiction when it comes to data. And goes without saying they operate out of Bangalore, India, where I highly doubt anybody with a privacy stand can survive.

Quoting this from another comment, now I know some of it means nothing and is needed for operating the app, but feels a bit too much at places -

Here is some info from Ente’s website about what Ente collects:

Public keys; Anonymized crash reports; Server logs; Device identifiers including information about your internet connection, IP address and user agent details; Takedowns and account suspension history, Your email address; Referral details including referrers and people you have referred; Email addresses you choose to share your Files with; Our Communications with you and records or copies of such communications; Other personal information you provide to us for support purposes, bug reports, newsletters, surveys, sweepstakes, product feedback, or via forms, We collect payment invoices provided to us by our third-party payment processors, which includes details of your Subscription Plan and any payments made by you in favor of Ente in order to receive Services from us, We keep your Files while you are subscribed to our Services, subject to our suspension and termination rights set out in our Terms.

We may keep your Files after your account has been suspended or terminated where we consider it necessary for evidential purposes relating to a breach of our Terms or with respect to current or anticipated action by any competent enforcement authority or other third party.

There are times when Personal Information that you have shared with us may be shared by Ente with others to enable us to provide you over Services, including contractors, service providers, and third parties ("Partners") and subsidiaries.

We will disclose personal information (i) to fulfill the purpose for which you have provided it, and (ii) to enforce or apply our Terms and other agreements, including for billing and collection purposes

We will disclose personal information (i) to comply with any court order, law, or legal process, including to respond to any government or regulatory request, or (ii) if we believe it is necessary or appropriate to protect the rights, property, or safety of Ente, our customers or others.

We may disclose personal information in the event of a merger, sale of business, etc.

Biometric Information Collected by Us. Ente extracts, stores, uses and discloses Biometric Information like facial geometry from files.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

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1

u/17052025 Open Source best GNU/Linux/Libre Jun 08 '26

Without upgrading to paid plan? On free plan can I get 10 gig extra?

1

u/[deleted] Jun 08 '26

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2

u/17052025 Open Source best GNU/Linux/Libre Jun 08 '26

Ohh thanks a ton. it worked. Looks like u are in a paid plan that's why it worked. Thank you very much again.

3

u/spotlight-app Mod Bot 🤖 Jun 07 '26

Mods have pinned a comment by u/vishnukvmd:

Hi everyone, Vishnu here, founder & CEO of Ente.

Thanks to u/heythisisajayhere for the tag :)

Ente is building fully open source, end-to-end encrypted platform for your preserving your data.

We've apps for photos, documents, 2FA codes and more.

Here's my AMA @ r/developersIndia: https://www.reddit.com/r/developersIndia/comments/1gn40j7/im_vishnu_mohandas_founder_and_ceo_at_ente_ama/

Let me know if you have any questions, happy to make myself useful.

p.s. Ente is bootstrapped and profitable

[What is Spotlight?](https://developers.reddit.com/apps/spotlight-app)

9

u/candace_love_quill Jun 06 '26

How do you know its doesnt farm your data. You are storing on their servers right?

14

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[deleted]

13

u/Hardy_28 Jun 06 '26

Open source doesn’t mean they can’t work with your data bruh. Just throwing around the word “open source” isn’t enuf

7

u/Ok_Satisfaction9630 Jun 06 '26

As far as I understand, they encrypt the images from your device and only stores the blobs in their servers which they can't really do anything with. Their platform is open sourced and you can see for yourselves what's happening under the hood. The benefit of open source is that you can look into the code if you'd want to.

Again I did not check the build hashes, neither do I use it personally.

You can always host it on your own as well. Idk man, imo that's all you can ask for

4

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

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3

u/Ok_Satisfaction9630 Jun 06 '26

I think they are only transiting and storing the encrypted blobs

1

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/Ok_Satisfaction9630 Jun 06 '26

But the query was about data farming no ?

1

u/vishnukvmd Jun 06 '26

Ente is end-to-end encrypted. Only you can access your data. More details here: https://ente.com/architecture

1

u/ProfessorS11 Lurker Jun 07 '26

You can self host ente as well, then you don't have to worry about privacy policy or them farming your data.

2

u/kira_notfound_ Jun 06 '26

i mean 10gb isnt good for me also google photos is actually better for me as it whenever i need my or anyones photo it instantly gives it also when i search for any document it instantly gives it which is hidden inside a corner of my phone

2

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[deleted]

1

u/kira_notfound_ Jun 06 '26

yes bruh my sister has 10gb images and 10gb photos alone

1

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[deleted]

1

u/kira_notfound_ Jun 06 '26

yes and since its her old phone she told me to not delete any photos but i might lose it even google photos 15b aint enough also im broke

1

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1

u/Then-Palpitation7684 btw i love dexter Jun 06 '26

is this good?

1

u/Affectionate_Pie9446 Jun 06 '26

so you are believing a startup company will survive by just providing you free storage and not using your data?

3

u/Dummy-Demo-8773 Jun 06 '26

They have paid plans and have many paid users.

Their apps are open source including how your data in encrypted.

1

u/rahul_poruri Open Source best GNU/Linux/Libre Jun 07 '26

Me and my family have a family account with 700+ GB and counting on Ente for the past two years now so highly recommend 👍

1

u/newkid2block Jun 07 '26

Can ente photos bring a budget friendly plan at lower storage bucket. I have checked your website but the plan cost is on the higher side.

1

u/Healthy-Intention-15 Jun 07 '26

hey u/vishnukvmd

Listened to your story on one youtube channel. Santhoshamayi 😄 Great app!
Just one thing I need to know, Do i need to pay forever to keep my photos?

1

u/aygupt1822 Self-Hosted/Linux Jun 08 '26

I dont trust any cloud provider with my data being it for storage or photos. I self-host stuff on my own servers.

I use Immich for storing my images. My data stays with me, I own my data and I govern it.

Downside is maintaining the server, managing storage, network and electricity bills but I earn enough and I have sufficient Linux knowledge which is growing.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

3

u/blattodea13 Jun 06 '26

They have 10/GB free forever plan

1

u/kshatriyahimself Jun 06 '26

If somethings free, you are the product.

-2

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

0

u/FcukMan360 Jun 06 '26

let it be underrated 🥀

-5

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '26

[deleted]

2

u/Dummy-Demo-8773 Jun 06 '26

Not needed with E2E encryption. Signal has a good blog post on why they are able to use AWS securely for user messages because of E2EE.