Forbes India - Tech Conversations

In this episode, which was recorded on May 12, N Krishnakumar, founding managing partner at Mela Ventures, a technology-focused VC firm in Bengaluru, talks about how the deep-tech landscape is evolving, with AI rapidly becoming mainstream. He gives us a quick update on some of the companies in Mela’s portfolio from its first fund, some contrarian lessons from those investments, and also talks abou...

In this episode, Jaicky Kumar and Deepak Mishra, co-founders of Voltanova Energy, give us an overview of their thermal battery energy storage system. Voltanova Energy is a startup incubated at the Indian Institute of Science’s Foundation for Science and Innovation Development. In collaboration with Professor Saptarshi Basu at the Institute as their technical advisor, Jaicky and Deepak have develop...

In this episode, Amit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Yulu Bikes, talks about the opportunity for his company to scale on the back of the rise of quick commerce in India’s metros and large cities. Gupta also talks about the many lessons from having painstakingly built an asset-heavy business – an approach that’s not the first preference of VC investors – to the point where the company turned EBITDA p...

In this episode, Dushyant Mishra, Abhinay Vyas and Jot Singh, co-founders of Rapid Claims talk about their conviction in building AI products from India. They give us a quick update on their New York based venture, which has its entire product and engineering team in India, developing modern revenue cycle management software for the healthcare sector. They also speak about their own entrepreneuria...

In this episode, Brijraj Bhuptani, founder and CEO at Spry Therapeutics, talks about how he and his co-founder Riyaz Rehman found an opportunity in helping small and mid-sized physical therapy clinics in the US to become more efficient and innovative, with an AI-led revenue cycle management platform. Bhuptani also talks about pivots along the way; thinking about outcomes first that sharpened their...

In this episode, recorded on January 2, Anand Anandkumar, V Balasubramanian and Santanu Datta, co-founders of Bugworks Research, give us a quick update on their quest for a novel antibiotic to tackle the problem of anti-microbial resistance. The trio, winners of the Forbes India Leadership Award 2025 under the Emerging Innovators category – alongside their Chief Scientist P Shahul Hameed – are als...

In this episode, Alok Goyal, partner at Stellaris Venture Partners, and Khadim Batti, co-founder and CEO of Whatfix, a digital adoption platform provider, talk about their partnership from a VC who was skeptical about the venture to his fastest term sheet, to product market fit to $100 million in annual recurring revenue on the horizon. They talk about lessons from this experience and how the play...

In this episode, Anand Daniel and Prayank Swaroop, partners at Accel, talk about the venture capital firm’s views on the next decade of Indian startups. Accel recently announced its eighth India-focused fund, at $650 million. In this conversation, Anand and Prayank also talk about how both startup founders and venture capitalists in India are evolving, and new generations come to the fore, bringin...

In this episode, Vishal Katariya and Suraj Nair, AVPs at Ankur Capital, an early-stage VC firm in Mumbai, talk about the need for playbooks for different segments within the growing deep tech startup ecosystem in India. Vishal and Suraj, who’re both part of the investment team at Ankur, known for its investments in agritech, biotech, and health care startups, among others, hope for greater industr...

In this episode, Aneesh Reddy, founder and CEO of Capillary Technologies, a well-known SaaS company in Bengaluru, talks about his experiments in leadership. As part of Forbes India’s recent issue on Founder’s Mode, this interview was recorded on November 22. In this conversation, Reddy talks about what he learnt from bringing in a professional chief executive, how execution holds the key to long-t...

In this episode, recorded on November 19, Avinash Krishnamurthy, co-founder of Biome Environmental Trust, a sustainable development think tank and consultancy, and Vikas Brahmavar and Gowthaman Desingh, co-founders of Boson Whitewater, a water treatment venture backed by investors including Rainmatter, talk about a landmark collaboration to return potable-quality treated wastewater to communities...

In this episode, recorded on November 21, Christopher Young, EVP of business development, strategy, and ventures at Microsoft, talks about how AI is evolving from generating responses to actually fulfilling various tasks on behalf of human users. Young gives us a quick overview of how Microsoft aims to become a platform, underpinning AI innovation and adoption in markets around the world, includin...

In this episode, Leena Walavalkar, Global Head of TCS PACE, talks about the IT giant’s innovation network comprising centres around the world, called Pace Ports, where teams of multidisciplinary experts from TCS brainstorm and collaborate with customers on cutting edge solutions. In this conversation, Leena gives us a peek into how TCS is using its experience in a variety of areas to go from assis...

In this episode, Vishnu S talks about how his fascination for opensource software set him on a journey of entrepreneurship, and how he started Jarvis Labs – a data centre orchestration startup for India’s AI needs that’s ready to go global. Jarvis, based on the outskirts of Coimbatore, not only offers affordable GPU options, but also a software layer that allows customers to quickly start focusing...

In this episode, NP Sridhar, CEO and MD of Titan Engineering and Automation Ltd. (TEAL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Titan and its only B2B unit, talks about global opportunities in automation and manufacturing services. The automation business offers turnkey assembly automation across India and overseas. The manufacturing services operation caters to aerospace, defence and will soon expand its f...

In this episode, Shailendra Singh and Rajan Anandan, managing directors at Peak XV Partners, talk about their venture capital firm’s Surge programme for early-stage startup founders, which today revealed its 10th cohort. In this interview with Forbes India, the two VC investors talk about why Surge was started, its design around the objective of improving the chances of success of the participatin...

In this episode, Tanvi Lall, director of strategy at People+ai, talks about the potential that micro data centres hold in supporting the development of AI in India. People+ai is a non-profit organization working to identify and support population-scale use cases of AI that are relevant to India. Lall is the head of a project called Open Cloud Compute, within People+ai, to support the growth of mic...

In this episode, recorded on Sep. 5, Vivek Raghavan talks about the vision he and Pratyush Kumar have for Sarvam AI, their Bengaluru startup. Both are among the leaders of India’s digital public infrastructure community and the plan for Sarvam is also to find “use cases” that will touch the masses, helping them to complete everyday tasks easily. Sarvam’s technologies, including voice-based assista...

In this episode, Rajesh Ganesan, president of ManageEngine at Zoho Corp, India’s biggest software company, talks about how generative AI is beginning to influence IT management. It’s an area where ManageEngine offers a suite of some 65 products to enterprise customers. Ganesan also talks about building small AI models focused on specific needs such as observability of data, for example, or specifi...

In this episode, Amit Chadha, CEO and MD at Larsen & Toubro Technology Services (LTTS), gives us a quick update on the company’s progress after a recent reorganization along three large opportunities, each of which could become a billion-dollar operation. Chadha, who’s based in the US, also talks about the sentiment among his biggest customers on technology spending, the impact of generative A...

In this episode, Anant R Adya, executive vice president and Head Cloud, Infrastructure and Security Services (CIS) for Americas and APac at Infosys, talks about the evolution of the IT services company’s cloud services. In this conversation, Anant also talks about the shift towards extracting business outcomes by moving various operations to the cloud, how generative AI is influencing the shift to...

In this episode, Anurag Begwani, a vice president in India at Bessemer Venture Partners, talks about the areas within India’s fintech landscape that the firm is optimistic about – ranging from niche software to retail wealth management to cyber insurance. In this conversation, which was recorded on Aug. 21, Begwani also talks about how the fintech opportunity is spreading well beyond the tier-1 ci...

In this episode, Rahul Munjal, chairman and managing director of Hero Future Energies, gives us a quick update on the company’s projects, including a green hydrogen technology demonstrator pilot plant soon to be commissioned. Munjal also talks about his vision for the the company in the context of India’s net-zero targets: today Hero Future Energies has about 1.9GW of capacity and he expects that...

In this episode, Simmi Sareen and Shravan Shankar, founders of Climake, a climate finance platform provider and ecosystem builder, discuss the top takeaways from their latest annual report on the state of climate finance in India. They highlight the importance of climate adaptation, and not just mitigation. They talk about ways to bridge the pipeline gap between early-stage ventures and larger com...

In this episode, Prateek Tripathi, a research assistant at the Centre For Security Strategy and Technology at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, unpacks the significance of the nuclear energy proposals in the government’s latest budget, including support for a Bharat Small Modular Reactor. Tripathi gives us an outline of India’s civilian nuclear energy capabilities and explains the glo...