Forbes India - Tech Conversations

In this episode, Vineet Dravid, Co-Founder and CEO of Oorja Energy, talks about his ambition of building a world-class deep tech company from Bengaluru, in the field of computer-aided engineering. Vineet gives us an update on the physics and machine learning based simulation and analytics product Oorja has developed. While the product is relevant to many industries, an immediate application is in the electric vehicles sector and the startup has already won customers including large OEMs in the US and Europe.

In this episode, Euro Beinat, global head, AI and data science at Prosus, and his colleague Paul Van Der Boor, senior director, data science, explain how they went about building a 1000-person AI ecosystem across the global technology investor’s companies, around the globe. They also talk about Prosus’s internal AI efforts and what they learnt, for example, when an AI assistant they’d developed and introduced in team environments resulted in user behaviour that surprised them.

In this episode, Peter J Arduini, president and CEO of GE HealthCare Technologies, talks about his plan to expand R&D and manufacturing in India. GE HealthCare has committed to investing a billion dollars in expanding these capabilities via its local joint venture Wipro GE HealthCare — a partnership that’s endured over more than three decades. Arduini also talks about how India is uniquely positioned to take ownership of more GE HealthCare product development because of its software prowess and growing applied AI capabilities.

In this episode, Nimeet Dhokai, co-founder of Happi Planet Eco Products, talks about how he and his friend Mayank Gupta started their venture, determined to convert consumers to sustainable home care products. The two-year-old startup is backed by investors including 100X.VC and Fireside Ventures. Dhokai also talks about how he and Gupta found a successful combination of effective products and meeting consumers’ perception of cleanliness, while sticking to their goal of producing genuinely sustainable cleaners.

In this episode, Jaya Jagadish, Country Head and Senior Vice President at AMD India, talks about why the company is very optimistic about the prospects of India’s fledgling semiconductor ecosystem over the next decade. Jaya also talks about how, over the last 20 years, AMD India has become the company’s biggest global R&D location at a time when the multinational chip maker is ramping up its efforts to produce processors specifically suited for artificial intelligence applications.

In this episode, Dr. Jahnavi Phalkey, founding director of the Science Gallery Bengaluru, talks about how she got to be a historian of science and technology. Jahnavi, who recently won the Infosys Prize for 2023 in the humanities category, harnesses a historian’s discipline and a storyteller’s craft to try and make science accessible to everyone. And, in her own words, to show that science doesn’t happen in isolation. In this conversation, she also talks about the interplay of various factors that have influenced scientific research in India, and her aspiration that the Science Gallery should become a welcoming space for young people to explore whatever fascinates them, be it math or gaming or theatre, free of expectations.

In this episode, Annu Talreja, founder and CEO of Accacia, talks about how her company is helping real estate businesss accelerate their efforts to decarbonise their operations. Annu, an architect and urban planner by training, is building a carbon tracking and decarbonisation recommendation platform as a service platform at Accacia, her second venture, backed by marquee investors including Accel, B Capital, Blume Ventures and Rainmatter.

In this episode, Rafee Tarafdar, chief technology officer at Infosys, talks about what generative AI might mean for the future of the IT services industry. Rafee, who’s also a senior vice president and the head of the company’s strategic technology group, explains how becoming an “AI first” company, back-to-back with adapting to the “cloud-first” transformation in the industry, is changing Infosys from within, even as it helps customers implement and benefit from generative AI applications.

In this episode, Sidhant Rastogi, managing partner at Zinnov, a technology consultancy in Bengaluru, talks about why engineering R&D services is a promising area of outsourcing at the cusp of its next big phase of growth. As the world makes the energy transition from fossil fuel to renewables, the scope of the work that the Indian providers can offer is set to approach close to tier-1 supplier levels, going beyond software, catalyzed by the convergence of multiple technologies, he says.

Jyoti Gera, global general manager at GE HealthCare for general imaging and primary care ultrasound, talks about the future of precision medicine, including in markets such as India where access and affordability are crucial factors. Gera also talks about her own career, starting out as an engineer and rising to running a multi-billion-dollar engineering-intensive business, and why someone starting out today should equally care about the long run.

In this episode of Deep Tech India, GS Madhusudan, co-founder and CEO of Incore Semiconductors, gives us a sense of how we missed the bus on the semiconductor opportunity, decades ago. He also talks about how we have the opportunity today, and most of the ingredients, to build our own semiconductor ecosystem that could supply the world with made-in-India chips, starting with embedded applications.

In this episode of Deep Tech India, GS Madhusudan, co-founder and CEO of Incore Semiconductors, gives us a sense of how we missed the bus on the semiconductor opportunity, decades ago. He also talks about how we have the opportunity today, and most of the ingredients, to build our own semiconductor ecosystem that could supply the world with made-in-India chips, starting with embedded applications.

In this episode, tech entrepreneur Madan Padaki talks about his journey from founding MeritTrak to the Head Held High Foundation and OneBridge. The foundation is a non-profit organisation that focuses on training rural youth. Over the last 15 years or so, it has touched about 30,000 youth. Padaki also talks about how he sees philanthropy and entrepreneurship as two faces of a coin – with the former well suited to boost capabilities of large numbers of India’s youth, and the latter acting as an engine to generate economic opportunities for the same young people.

Welcome to another episode of EcoPreneurs. In this episode, Bhaktha Keshavachar gives us a quick update on his four-year old company Chara, in Bengaluru, where he and his fellow co-founders are close to commercializing a type of motor that eliminates the need for rare-earth metals. In this conversation, Bhaktha walks us through the significance of this, explains the technology they’ve developed, and talks about the commercial launch later this year. Applications of such motors range from electric vehicles to industrial and HVAC systems, and even household appliances like washing machines. Chara is backed by VC investors including Exfinity Venture Partners, Kalaari Capital and CIIE. EcoPreneurs is a series of fortnightly conversations with entrepreneurs who are trying to make a difference in the global fight to mitigate climate change.

In this episode, Harrick Vin, CTO, and Sivaraman Ganesan, head of the AI.Cloud business unit at Tata Consultancy Services, talk about the company’s AI and generative AI strategies. With software and AI-based automation set to accelerate through this year and beyond, the aim is to augment customers’ ability to get more from technology in every aspect of their operations, and help them become owners of creativity, they say.

In this episode, Harrick Vin, CTO, and Sivaraman Ganesan, head of the AI.Cloud business unit at Tata Consultancy Services, talk about the company’s AI and generative AI strategies. With software and AI-based automation set to accelerate through this year and beyond, the aim is to augment customers’ ability to get more from technology in every aspect of their operations, and help them become owners of creativity, they say.

In this episode, Satish Ramchandani, co-founder and chief business officer of Updapt, gives us a quick update about the company which offers software solutions for businesses to manage their ESG, meaning environment, sustainability and governance, reporting. Updapt’s software product is past the product-market fit, Satish says, and the company has about 75 enterprise customers. The product is built for businesses anywhere in the world, he adds.

Chaitanya Sarawate, president and CEO for India and South Asia at GE HealthCare Technologies, talks about why he thinks India can leapfrog in healthcare delivery. Sarawate, who is also the managing director of the Wipro GE HealthCare joint venture, also talks about opportunities in India, a year after GE HealthCare became an independent company, listed on the Nasdaq, with the idea of becoming a more integrated medical technologies company and not just a provider of imaging equipment for medical diagnostics.

Today we bring you the first episode in EcoPreneurs, a new series of conversations with entrepreneurs who are trying to make a difference in combating climate change. In this episode, Bhagyashree Bhansali Jain, founder of The Disposal Company, gives us a brief overview of her work, trying to get businesses to reduce and recycle their plastics. In the process, Bhagyashree is also attempting to improve working conditions and earnings for rag pickers. In July last year, The Disposal Company, a three-year-old venture, was among the 10 tech startups selected to the first Accenture Sustainability Value Accelerator Programme, in partnership with the Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship at the Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad. We caught up with her at the centre last month, at a startup conclave. Bhagyashree says her solutions are geography agnostic, and she aims to expand into overseas markets as well. (00:47) Intro to Tech Conversations and today’s guest – Bhagyashree Bhansali Jain, founder, The Disposal Company (02:11) Background on The Disposal Company and how Bhagyashree started it (04:30) Low-value plastics – the need to tackle this problem (06:46) Early work that Bhagyashree did (09:05) Developing local solutions (11:26) More on what The Disposal Company does – plastic footprinting, working with rag pickers and waste aggregators, making recycling attractive (13:42) Going from one customer to multiple celebrity backers and 85 customers today (15:54) Convincing businesses and other areas of work – carbon neutrality via GHG assessment, decarbonization plans and then carbon offsets (18:07) Making it viable to switch to sustainable alternatives (20:17) Trying to improve working conditions for rag pickers (21:42) Going overseas – now in Singapore and Qatar (24:04) A made-in-India global solution (26:26) Thoughts on more funding (28:43) Last quick thoughts – need to design sustainably from the start

This is the last in a series of conversations, this year, on deep tech in India. In this episode, In this episode, Rohan Ganapathy and Yashas Karanam talk about how their company Bellatrix Aerospace, in Bengaluru, is transitioning from a propulsion systems maker to an in-orbit space mobility business – like an Uber pool for satellites, they say. In this conversation, the two founders give us an update on how far they’ve come in their commercialization journey, and plans for the year ahead.