Forbes India - Tech Conversations
-
Ayyappan R on plans to make Cleartrip an end-to-end decision-making platform for anyone who wants to travel
In this episode, Ayyappan Rajagopal, CEO of Cleartrip, talks about the next phase of his career at Flipkart group, where, in the past, he has been instrumental in growing various ecommerce categories, from fashion at Myntra to smartphones and furniture at Flipkart. Ayyappan, who took over as chief executive of Cleartrip a little over a year ago, has a clear plan to transform the business from a bookings provider to an end-to-end platform for people to research, discover, plan and shop for travel
-
Prakash Govindan on his love for applied science, and the billion-dollar aspiration at Gradiant
In this episode, Prakash Govindan, co-founder and COO of Gradiant, a water treatment technologies company, talks about how his love for building products took him from academic research to being a first-time entrepreneur. Ten years on, Gradiant has evolved into a mid-sized leader in managing water treatment for global customers including semiconductor companies and pharmaceuticals giants. Gradiant, with its innovation and R&D efforts out of Boston and Singapore, has just won new contracts in India, where the company will soon establish an R&D team
-
Ashwini Asokan on businesses' frustration with AI claims, a new acquisition, and plans at Mad Street Den
In this episode, Ashwini Asokan, co-founder and CEO of Mad Street Den, talks about how businesses are frustrated with tall claims about AI. Mad Street Den is a Silicon Valley and Chennai-based software company offering AI products that help customers organise and "stitch together" their data and extract useful information. On the other hand, there is an "uproar of demand" for products that offer tangible returns on AI investments, she says. The current macroeconomic business environment, however, is tough, with many imposing caps on SaaS spending
-
Vishal Shah at Synersoft Technologies on what it takes to crack the Indian MSME market with a hardware IT product
In this episode, Vishal Prakash Shah, co-founder and CEO at Synersoft Technologies, talks about how his venture went from "miserable failure" to 10,000 installations with paying customers among India's MSMEs — offering an IT-in-a-box product fine-tuned for the needs of small enterprises. He also talks about "cloud-flation" and why small enterprises in India are still wary of the cloud, although Synersoft too is looking for funding to build the infrastructure for its cloud software product for that inevitable future
-
James Foster on cybersecurity outside the firewall, and the growing talent base in India at ZeroFox
In this episode, James C Foster, founder and CEO of ZeroFox, outlines the growing opportunity in cybersecurity outside the enterprise firewall, as social media has changed how businesses interact with consumers. Foster recently visited Bengaluru, where his company has just added enough office space for 300 employees. The US-based company, with customers including NASA, Nike, Uber, United, Costco and AC Milan, doubled its talent base in India this year to 200 and is currently hiring in areas including cyber security operations, cyber threat intelligence, data science, and engineering
-
Vikram Gupta and Yatin Kavishwar at Awiros on their ambition to build an OS and marketplace for video AI
In this episode, Vikram Gupta and Yatin Kavishwar, co-founders of Awidit Systems, talk about how they are developing Awiros, which is best described as an operating system on top of which multiple computer vision and video analytics applications can be brought together. Vikram, who brings the science and tech experience, and Yatin, a veteran tech salesman, are also building a marketplace for such applications. They've raised their first significant round of institutional venture capital recently and also bagged an order from the Bengaluru Safe City project, supported by India's Nirbh
-
Ram Sukumar on how he plans to double revenue to $100 mln at Indium Software
In this episode, Ram Sukumar, cofounder and CEO at Chennai's Indium Software, talks about the opportunities for the digital engineering services company — in not only traditional IT outsourcing, but also in 'horizon 2' areas including modern software product engineering, low-code and gaming. Ram also talks about how he's been reorganising the company to sharpen the focus on valuable customers in both these areas to sustain a compounded annual growth rate of 50 percent, as he aims to hit $100 million in revenue over the next two years
-
Arjun Gupta on ambition to lift millions from energy poverty, tackle carbon emissions and build a world-class company
In this episode, Arjun P Gupta, founder and CEO of Smart Joules in New Delhi, talks about his ambition to play a role in lifting millions of Indians from energy poverty and curtailing carbon emissions in the process. Arjun aspires to build an Indian company that can take on multinational giants such as Honeywell and Siemens in offering a building and energy management automation technology platform. He is currently looking to raise his series B funding for Smart Joules, which he founded in early 2015
-
Mrinal Rai at ISG on the demand outlook for IT services and the opportunity to double down on transformation
In this episode, Mrinal Rai, senior research manager and principal analyst at Information Services Group, a leading technology services outsourcing advisory company, talks about how demand is likely to shape up in the coming quarters for India's top IT companies. With demand still strong, but caution seeping into actual spending, this is also the time for the vendors to do more, by investing and ramping up their business-transformation-oriented IT capabilities, Rai says
-
Varun Badhwar at Endor Labs on the massive opportunity to make borrowing open source software safer
In this episode, Varun Badhwar, Indian-born serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, talks about his latest venture, Endor Labs, which has just come out of stealth mode, announcing a $25 million seed funding round to commercialise a software product aimed at mitigating the risks involved in borrowing software components from the internet — a growing trend. Investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, Dell Technologies Capital, Sierra Ventures, and CEOs and executives from Microsoft, Zoom, Zscaler, Palo Alto Networks and Snowflake
-
Jayanth Kolla on the state of 5G in India and the 'circular data economy' opportunities ahead
In this episode, Jayanth Kolla, co-founder and partner at Convergence Catalyst, a tech consultancy in Bangalore, talks about how India, which once lagged other economies in deploying wireless technologies, has begun to take the lead, starting with 4G and 5G wireless. He also talks about his own work over the last decade, that started with consulting in the telecom space, is evolving into helping companies prepare for the "circular data economy" that is beginning to emerge