Forbes India - Tech Conversations
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Ankit Jain and Sidhant Pai on StepChange's new funding, and climate decision platform for large financial clients
In this episode, Ankit Jain and Sidhant Pai talk about how they arrived at their sharper focus on large enterprise customers for their software platform, StepChange, for climate change-based decision-making. Of particular interest is their ability to help large financial clients model the likely implications and trajectories of investments from a climate impact perspective and form an impact-due-to-climate point of view. The entrepreneurs recently raised $4 million in seed money, which will help them invest in further product development and target a 4-5X increase in their customer portfolio t
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Rajen Vagadia unpacks Qualcomm's invent-and-licence model that made Snapdragon a household name
In this episode, Rajen Vagadia, vice president at Qualcomm and president of its India and SAARC operations, explains the semiconductor company's hugely successful invent-and-licence model, with its chips such as the Snapdragon line being a dominant force in smartphones around the world. They will increasingly be found in connected vehicles as well, he says. Vagadia also gives us an overview of the company's operations in India, where Qualcomm has been present for 27 years, and today employs 17,000 engineers, who helped generate more than 1,600 patents for the company last year
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Climake's Shravan Shankar and Simmi Sareen on the glass-half-full climate tech finance scene in India
Shravan Shankar and Simmi Sareen, co-founders of Climake, a platform for climate tech funding and market access, discuss the latest edition of their flagship annual report—The State of Climate Finance in India 2023. Equity funding for climate tech decreased by 34 percent in 2022 from the previous year, although 2021 numbers were a bit skewed by eight large strategic, IPO, and post-IPO deals, they note. They also found that, on the positive side, investments in sectors beyond renewables—like agritech and waste and circularity—which urgently need to grow, increased
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Nitin Jayakrishnan and Abhijeet Manohar on their plan for Pando after recent $30 mln funding
In this episode, Nitin Jayakrishan and Abhijeet Manohar, co-founders of Pando, a supply chain fulfilment cloud platform provider, talk about plans for their five-year-old venture, after a recent series B funding of $30 million. Investors in the SaaS startup include Nexus Venture Partners, Chiratae, Iron Pillar and Uncorrelated Ventures, the latter two leading the new round. Jayakrishnan and Manohar are second-time entrepreneurs, and they talk about how Pando represents a new generation of Indian SaaS startups that are building software for the world's biggest companies
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Jaspreet Bindra on the broader conversation needed to avoid the 'Hiroshima moment' of AI
Jaspreet Bindra, founder of Tech Whisperer, a consultancy in the UK, and former chief digital officer of Mahindra Group, talks about the rapid rise of generative artificial intelligence and offers five practical tips to make smarter use of tools like ChatGPT. He talks about how AI could be the first technology that could replace humans and how, like nuclear technology, it could bring terrific advancement to society or terrible acts of destruction. And he gives us a peek into his current academic work in AI and ethics to which he is attempting to bring learnings from Indian philosophy
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The Big Picture: Alok Nanda on the future of sustainable aviation and GE Aerospace's work in India
In this episode, Alok Nanda, CTO of GE South Asia and CEO of GE's India Technology Center, talks about the next decade of growth of the aviation and aerospace industry—a lot of which will happen in India. Over more than the last two decades, GE Aerospace's Indian team has made significant contributions to every important engine platform the company has developed, Nanda says. He also gives his perspective on where the industry is headed in sustainable aviation, ranging from the development of planet-friendly fuels to using AI to more accurately estimate when engines need repair
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Sean Duca at Palo Alto Networks on the company's growing prospects and ops in India
Sean Duca, vice president and regional chief security officer for Asia Pacific and Japan at Palo Alto Networks, one of the world's largest cybersecurity technologies providers, talks about how while businesses can differ in their products and services, their security needs are similar. As bad actors become more brazen, Sean wants to impress upon everyone that the threats are real. He also talks about some of the products at the company that are seeing strong demand and how the company's Indian operations have expanded strongly, with both enterprise customers and product development
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SwitchOn's founders on how they're helping ITC, Unilever and SKF automate quality checks on the go
In this episode, Aniruddha Banerjee and Avra Banerjee, cousins-turned co-founders, talk about how the quality inspection processes at some of the world's largest manufacturers are ripe for innovative interventions, as much of those remain manual. To that end, they're building an IoT, computer vision and machine learning-based platform at their five-year-old venture, SwitchOn, with customers such as ITC, Unilever and SKF. SwitchOn has recently raised $4.2 million in series A funding, and the Banerjees are looking to increase their revenue by 10X this year to $15 million
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Vishal Salvi at Infosys on why the company's cybersecurity practice team has grown 5X in four years
In this episode, Vishal Salvi, chief information security officer and head of cyber security practice at Infosys, talks about the increasing complexity of cybersecurity as it often evolves separately from the business-oriented technologies and digital solutions used by enterprises. He explains how security is becoming more "sentient" as the need for real-time context increases with the scale of operations of the company's multinational customers; and how this all adds to the challenge of finding experienced people in this area, making it an evergreen field for any young aspirant
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PupilMesh's founders on their dream of building Iron Man's helmet for Indian soldiers
In this episode, Riya Gangamma, Milind M Manoj, and Pradeep Parthasarathy, co-founders of PupilMesh in Bengaluru, talk about their augmented reality hardware technologies company. The trio started straight out of college, got incubation support at IIMB, won a DRDO programme and got to work on a multi-purpose augmented reality headset. One important application would be as a soldier assistance device. Along the way, they also developed a hands-free navigation aid for two-wheeler drivers, which they are already commercialising in partnership with MapMyIndia
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Pari Natarajan, tech whisperer, on India's shift from the world's back office to global innovation sandbox
In this episode, Pari Natarajan, founder and CEO of the consultancy Zinnov, talks about how India's tech industry is changing. Once seen as the world's back office, India's IT services sector today prides itself as a digital transformation partner to the world's biggest companies. Pari is among the figures who played an important role in the metamorphosis of India's tech services industry itself. Today, Indian techies are ready for the next phase of this evolution, as every global CIO has an India playbook, he says.