Forbes India - Tech Conversations

In this episode, Ankita Thakur, co-founder and chief data officer at GeoIQ, talks about how her fascination with data brought out the idea that became her first successful startup. She also explains the connection between the availability of rich location data and real-world business outcomes for customers—made easy through APIs that GeoIQ offers, with all the heavy lifting happening in the backen...

In this episode, Umakant Soni, co-founder and CEO of ARTPARK (AI and Robotics Technology Park) in Bengaluru, talks about supporting AI-led innovations with the hope that they will make a billion lives better and perhaps yield a trillion-dollar tech company from India. He also looks back at his entrepreneurial journey, and how the Indian startup ecosystem is changing, with a bit more depth today th...

In this episode, Nitesh Nandy, co-founder and CTO at Hiver, talks about the long haul that he and his IIT Kharagpur senior Niraj Ranjan, embarked upon, and the multiple pivots they made, and the email-centric customer support product they've built for small and medium-sized businesses. With a recent $22 million series B funding, Nandy also talks about plans ahead at Hiver, which he expects will do...

In this episode, Dhruva Goyal, co-founder and CEO of BugBase, talks about how he and his schoolmate Kathan Desai went from tackling hackathons to dropping out of engineering college to set up their ethical hackers’ marketplace. He also talks about bug bounties as a career choice and plans at their Bengaluru startup that has already won the second round of funding, after finding early backing from...

In this episode, Jaideep Singh Bachher, Akshay Joshi and Madhusudhan Anand, co-founders of Datair Technology, better known for their flagship brand Ambee, talk about their startup journey from air quality monitors in Bengaluru to hi-tech SaaS company providing hyper-local emission information to customers around the world. They also talk about how they are about to break into the big league, with...

In this episode, Howard Wolk, an American entrepreneur, who was also an advisor to the US government under President Bill Clinton, and John Landry, an economics and business historian and former editor at Harvard Business Review, talk about their new book, Launchpad Republic: America’s Entrepreneurial Edge and Why It Matters that will be released tomorrow. They also talk about how upstarts always...

Our guest today is Vanya Seth, a principal consultant and head of technology in India at Thoughtworks, widely known in the software world as one of the companies that pioneered the ‘agile’ way of writing software. In this episode, Vanya talks about the approach to software and products at Thoughtworks, and some of the work that the company has been doing out of India, where it has been present for...

Our guests today are Aniket Bajpai and Nikhil Gupta, co-founders of Limechat, a Bengaluru startup that offers conversational AI tech to growing ecommerce businesses. In this episode, Aniket and Nikhil, who met at IIT Delhi and chose the entrepreneurial route straight out of college, talk about what makes Limechat stand out in a segment that has larger, better-funded rivals.

Our guest today is Ketan Patel, CEO of Mswipe Technologies, a point-of-sale tech company that wants to take on Paytm with its soundbox. In this episode, Ketan talks about how Mswipe will become a platform that will add opportunities like facilitating a large number of pay-later transactions. He also talks about why he thinks credit on UPI will be a real game changer in India.

Our guest today is Karthik Rajaram, vice president for India and ASEAN at Freshworks, one of the country’s top software product companies, which has recently been empanelled as a vendor on India’s Government e-Marketplace. In this episode, Karthik talks about his reasons for joining Freshworks, his mandate to add many more customers in this market, including from among the larger established enter...

Our guests today are Neha Singh and Abhishek Goyal, co-founders of Tracxn Technologies, which over the last eight odd years has become a sought-after provider of private market intelligence to investment firms and corporate businesses customers in 50 countries. In this episode, Neha and Abhishek talk about the counter-intuitive play in starting Tracxn in the US but then shifting base to India. The...

Our guest today is Alok Goyal, a partner at Stellaris Venture Partners, an early-stage VC firm in Bengaluru. In this episode, Alok—who focuses on SaaS companies—talks about the opportunities and challenges for such ventures, presented by the current downturn that many expect will last for a while. He also talks about how the Indian SaaS ecosystem is moving from me-too software to cutting-edge solu...

Our guest today is Bipin Preet Singh co-founder and CEO of One MobiKwik Systems, better known for its eponymous app, MobiKwik. In this episode, Bipin talks about how the company is emerging as a leader in the buy-now-pay-later category, how MobiKwik aims to build on that, the bigger picture vision for the future, and also what lies ahead in 2022 and 2023.

Our guests today are Saji Varghese, an associate professor of English at Christ University, co-founder of Brown Reed Agri-Waste Innovations, and Shailesh Vickram Singh, founder of Massive Mobility and Climate Angels. In this episode, Saji and Shailesh talk about innovations that could replace single-use plastic, including Saji’s idea of making straws from coconut leaves. That idea is now a reality...

Our guests today are Prasanta Sarkar and Rochan Sinha, co-founders of NewTrace, where they’ve just raised some funding to develop a new class of ‘membraneless’ electrolysers, largely built with locally available materials and components in India. The aim is to make a dent in the ‘green hydrogen’ market. In this episode, Prasanta and Rochan talk about their efforts to get to the commercialisation o...

Our guest today is Satheesh Kumar, founder and chairman of Enzen Global Solutions, which provides strategic advisory, engineering services and solutions to customers in the power, water, gas, and renewable energy sectors. In this episode, Satheesh talks about Enzen’s ambition for building “templates for net-zero communities.” He also talks about plans for an IPO or a capital raise from private equ...

Our guest today is Divyansh Saini, co-founder and CEO of Houseware, whose eponymous data management product recently won the Snowflake Startup Challenge. In this episode, Divyansh talks about making data more accessible to revenue-facing teams so they can “bring intelligence from metrics into their data apps.” He also talks about how India’s SaaS ecosystem has evolved from the days when he first g...

Our guest today is Sirisha Bandla, VP of government affairs and research operations at Virgin Galactic, which is looking to open commercial space tourism operations early next year, offering short rides to near space, around 60 miles above the surface of the earth. In this episode, Sirisha talks about how she always wanted to be an astronaut, and now, helping to run the business end of Virgin Gala...

Our guest today is Yoav Zeif, CEO of Stratasys, a well-known US-Israel 3D-printing technologies company. In this episode, Yoav, who’s currently visiting his Indian team of 10, talks about the advances in 3D-printing tech, and how lack of awareness, and businesses being locked into traditional manufacturing processes, are the challenges to be overcome for greater adoption of this technology, the de...

Our guest today is Krishna Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Cropin Technology Solutions, an agri-intelligence provider to customers around the world. In this episode, Krishna talks about mapping crops and land around the planet and building an AI-based cloud platform for the agri and food sectors. He also talks about a new AI lab and taking Cropin to $100 million in revenue over the next three years....

Our guests today are Devendra Gupta, Prateek Singhal and Vivek Pandey, co-founders of Pune-based Ecozen Solutions, who offer motor controls, IoT tech, cold storage and energy storage products, powered by solar energy. In this episode, the trio talk about how they started with customers in the Agri sector, establishing a significant market share. They are now looking to expand into other areas, inc...

Our guest today is Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO of Zoho Corp., India’s biggest software products success story. In this episode, Sridhar talks about how the wise entrepreneur will use the current downturn to nurture talent, invest in R&D and lay a solid foundation for a sustainable, long-term business. He also talks about how SaaS companies are yet to reckon with the power of AI to replace s...

Our guest today is Shruti Kapoor, co-founder and CEO at Wingman, a conversational AI provider for sales teams that has just been acquired by Clari, a Silicon Valley company. In this episode, Shruti talks about the rationale behind the decision to be acquired, some of the conversations that she and her co-founders Muralidharan Venkatasubramanian and Srikar Yekollu had about this, what comes next, a...

Our guest today is Akshay V Singhal, founder and CEO of Log9 Materials, which is building quick-charging, longer-lasting batteries for electric vehicles in the country. In this episode, Singhal offers an update on the pilot plant Log9 opened in April, in Bengaluru, for local cell manufacturing, India’s first, and the plan to expand it into a full-fledged commercial ‘Giga factory,’ with a capacity...

Our guests today are Jatin Desai and Venkat Vallabhaneni, managing partners at Inflexor Ventures, a VC firm focused on deep tech ventures in India. In this episode, the duo talk about how India’s engineering based ventures are beginning to mature, in areas ranging from augmented reality to rocket fuel; they also talk about their own aspiration to make Inflexor a pre-eminent technology-focused VC f...