Forbes India - Tech Conversations

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 mo...

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 impr...

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 up...

In this penultimate episode of this year’s collection of conversations on deep tech in India, Rohit Grover and Pradeep Thangappan give us an update on the small gas turbine they’re developing at their IIT Madras incubated venture Aerostrovilos Energy. Their first product will be a 100kW unit that will be compact enough to sit below the cabin of a truck, to generate enough electricity that will eas...

Today we bring you another conversation in our series on deep tech in India. Shashwath T Ramkumar and Sharan S Jagathrakshakan started Mindgrove, incubated at IIT-Madras, to build semiconductor systems-on-chip for applications in IoT (Internet of Things), computer vision and automotive sectors. Built on the Shakti microprocessor, developed at IIT Madras, Shashwath and Sharan are hoping that the ta...

In this next episode of our series on deep tech in India Arindrajit Chowdhury and Tausif Shaikh, co-founders of Inspecity Space Laboratories, talk about how they dream of cities in space. Their contribution is their two-year old venture, which is preparing to soon launch a small CubeSat propulsion system the size of a small tiffin box. It will take them one small step forward in developing an ecos...

SuperOps is a Silicon Valley and Chennai SaaS startup that helps small and medium sized managed services providers automate many of their processes. Co-founders Arvind Parthiban and Jayakumar Karumbasalam, both serial entrepreneurs and former Freshworks employees, recently raised $12.4 million in series B funding from March Capital, Addition and existing investor Matrix Partners India. In this epi...

In this episode, Frank Diana, principal futurist at Tata Consultancy Services, talks about how a lot of his work in figuring out where we’re headed is about learning from history. I spoke with Frank last week, a few days ahead of the company’s New York marathon, during which TCS and Dassault Systemes would showcase their digital twin technologies by modelling the heart of a noted elite athlete, De...

As India readies its own deep tech startup policy, this is episode 10 in a short series of conversations with some of the entrepreneurs and VC investors who are building this ecosystem in the country. In this episode Pramod Ghadge and Shahid Memon recount the story of their robotics startup, Unbox Robotics Labs which they founded in 2019. Today their plug-and-play robotics tech for intra-logistics...

In this episode, Jaspreet Bindra, founder of Tech Whisperer, a UK based consultancy, and Sudhir Tiwari, global head of the digital engineering centre at Thoughtworks India, talk about their idea for a “jan AI” as a digital public good for India. They talk about the need for such an AI stack, how we might build it, and what our challenges are in bringing the benefits of AI to the masses without com...

In this episode, Bernard Charlès, CEO of Dassault Systemes, talks about how companies are taking software services back in-house, and on the other hand, how the no-code and low-code model is rising. He also talks about plans for Dassault’s operations in India, which include the country’s biggest conglomerates as customers, India’s largest IT companies as partners, and the French company’s own larg...

As India readies its own deep tech policy, this is episode nine, in a small series of conversations with some of the entrepreneurs and VC investors who’re building this ecosystem in the country. In this episode, Manish Singhal, founding partner at Pi Ventures, talks about his transition from investing in AI startups to disruptive tech ventures. He also has a warning, that there’s a growing intelle...

Vikram Karakoti, global head of the life sciences business unit at TCS, says critical transformational projects have not seen any pull backs by customers in this sector in the US, the IT services industry’s biggest market, where high interest rates and fears of a recession have prompted companies to cut back on tech spending. He also talks about TCS recently joining the Living Heart project, a con...

As India readies its own deep tech startups policy, this is episode eight in short series of conversations with some of the entrepreneurs and VC investors who are building this ecosystem in the country. In this episode, Venkat Vallabhaneni and Jatin Desai, founding managing partners at Inflexor Ventures, talk about how the current funding slowdown is affecting India’s nascent deep tech ecosystem....

Rolant Rott, president and CEO of GE HealthCare’s ultrasound business, talks about how while much has advanced in healthcare in India, the market is also ripe for technology-led disruptions on multiple fronts – from access and affordability to delivery of precision care based on AI-led solutions that can provide insights from data that was not possible earlier. Roland also spoke about the work bei...

As India readies its own deep tech startups policy, this is episode seven in a short series of conversations with some of the entrepreneurs and VC investors who are building this ecosystem in the country. In today’s episode, Aditya Bhatia, an NID alumnus and co-founder of Orangewood Labs, a US-based venture backed by investors including Y Combinator, with its R&D in India, talks about how he a...

As India readies its own deep tech startups policy, this is episode six in a short series of conversations with some of the entrepreneurs and investors who are building this ecosystem in the country. In today’s episode, Maruthi Amardeep Sri Vatsavaya, co-founder and CEO of BluJ Aerospace, talks about how he and his friend Utham Kumar Dharmapuri want to build a 10-seater hydrogen-electric passenger...

As India readies its own deep tech startups policy, this is episode five in a short series of conversations with some of the entrepreneurs and VC investors who are building this ecosystem in the country. In this episode, Karthee Madasamy, founding managing partner at MFV Partners, an early-stage deep tech VC firm in the US, talks about why he thinks robotics is about to take off. He also talks abo...

As India readies its own deep tech startups policy, this is episode four in a short series of conversations with some of the entrepreneurs and investors who are building this ecosystem in the country. Today, Sateesh Andra, managing director at Endiya Partners, talks about helping the entrepreneurs to stay the course and run the marathon, while celebrating the small wins along the way. Investors ha...

As India readies its own deep tech startup policy, this is episode three in a short series of conversations with some entrepreneurs and VC investors building this ecosystem. Today, Jogin Desai, founder and CEO of EyeStem Research, updates us on his company’s effort to commercialise new therapeutics to combat degenerative eye diseases. Desai co-founded EyeStem in 2015, and the venture has raised ab...

As India readies its deep tech startup policy, this is episode two in a short series of conversations with some entrepreneurs and VC investors building this ecosystem. Today, Vishesh Rajaram, founding managing partner at Speciale Invest, discusses why more investors have figured out that deep science and tech-based ventures can be built in India. While the sector is in its infancy, Vishesh points...

As India readies its own deep tech startups policy, we bring you a short series of conversations with some of the entrepreneurs and VC investors who are building this ecosystem in the country. Today, Satya Chakravarthy, head of the national centre for combustion research and development at IIT Madras and co-founder of The ePlane Company, talks about some of the recent milestones at his venture. Ch...

In this episode, Saurabh Chandra, CEO and Naveen Arulselvan, CTO at Ati Motors in Bengaluru, a company building autonomous mobile robots for industrial applications, discuss two new products they recently launched. Ati’s flagship, the Sherpa, is running around in factories of marquee customers such as TVS Motors, Bosch, Hyundai and Ceat. With $10.85 million in a new round of funding led by True Ve...

Arun Vinayak, co-founder and CEO at Exponent Energy, talks about the challenges of fast charging—one of the critical factors preventing India’s EV market from growing much faster. Arun describes an “offboard” method for keeping the battery within the right temperature range. Most damage can happen while the battery is being charged by moving the complexity involved to the charging station. As a re...

Manav Garg, founding partner at Together, talks about the VC firm’s plans for its second fund. At $150 million, the new fund’s target is almost twice the size of the first one, which Together raised in 2021. The firm, founded by Garg, who is also the founder and CEO of Eka Software Solutions, Girish Mathrubootham, founder and CEO of Freshworks, and Shubham Gupta, a career venture investor, has ach...