Forbes India - Tech Conversations

Our guests today are Neeraj Jain, Nikhil Nahar and Shreya Mishra, co-founders of SolarSquare, which became the first Indian startup investment for well-known US investor Chris Sacca’s Lowercarbon Capital. The entrepreneurs are betting they can differentiate themselves with their idiot-proof tech and superior after-sales service to bring solar power to millions of homes in India, which they say is...

Our guests today are Sauvik Banerjjee, founding CTO of Tata Digital, and Anand Chandrasekaran, co-founder and CTO of Mad Street Den, whose AI platform blox.ai plays an important role in the personalisation features of the Tata Group’s new consumer app, Tata Neu. In this episode, Sauvik and Anand talk about bringing the power of AI to the evergreen quest for understanding the individual consumer’s...

Our guest today is Samit Mitra, senior director of programme implementation at Smart Power India, a unit of the Rockefeller Foundation. In this episode, Samit, who’s an expert on mini electricity grids, talks about how such grids connected to renewable sources such as solar power could help local businesses in large parts of the country where the main grid power isn’t reliable. (00:40) Intro to Th...

Our guest today is Shailesh Vickram Singh, founder of Massive Mobility, an EV charging infrastructure company, and founder of Climate Angles, a syndicated climate tech investment platform, backed by other entrepreneur-investors including Phanindra Sama and Vijay Shekhar Sharma. In this episode, Shailesh talks about the need for large institutional investors to enter India’s climate tech funding sc...

Our guest today is Ariel Assaraf, co-founder and CEO of Coralogix, an Israeli data observability startup that sets itself apart with its technology for analysing data in-stream rather than after it’s been stored. In this episode, Ariel talks about takeaways from the early years of the company when they came close to shutting shop; changing roles from CPO to CEO, an innovative Indo-Israeli initiati...

Our guests today are Madhumita Agrawal and Dinkar Agrawal, co-founders of Oben Electric Vehicles, whose first motorcycle Rorr was launched in March—with deliveries expected to start from July. In this episode, Madhumita, the CEO, and Dinkar, the COO, talk about how India’s EV ecosystem is beginning to mature and why their next round of funding may not be too difficult even in the current downturn.

Our guest today is Vivek Mishra, co-founder and CEO at FibroHeal, a startup working on sustainable biomaterials, based on silk proteins, for what is known as ‘wound care’ in hospitals and clinics. In today’s episode, Mishra talks about expanding FibroHeal’s operations with a new manufacturing facility in Bengaluru and his mission to help reduce India’s import dependence for some of these products.

Our guest today is Mohan Krishnaraj, the new chief experience officer in India at Infosys WongDoody, the company’s in-house creative design unit that was expanded around the US-based creative agency WongDoody, that Infosys acquired in 2018. In this episode, Mohan talks about the growing importance of user experience design, that requires not just sophisticated design or tech, but also knowledge of...

Our guest today is Karthee Madasamy, founding partner at Mobile Foundation Venture Partners, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm focused solely on deep tech startups. In this episode, Karthee talks about why deep tech is inherently global. He also talks about his own career, going from a tech entrepreneur to a VC investor, through which he has backed investments in Indian tech startups from when...

Our guest today is Srini V Srinivasan, co-founder and CTO of Aerospike, a real-time data management technology company. In this episode, Srini talks about the idea that became Aerospike—a way of processing ever-larger volumes of data with less hardware, making it possible even for smaller companies and startups to tap the power of real-time data. He also talks about how the 12-year old Silicon Val...

Our guest today is Sanjay Swamy, managing partner at the VC firm Prime Venture Partners which has backed several well known Indian startups from an early stage. In this episode, Sanjay talks about how things will get tougher ahead for Indian startups, but also about how it’s an opportunity for everyone to ignore the chimaera of the unicorn status and focus on real value creation by solving importa...

Our guest today is Anand Anandkumar, CEO and MD of Bugworks Research, a clinical phase drug discovery company that is attempting to develop a new class of antibiotics to tackle what’s called ‘antimicrobial resistance,’ arising out of infectious bugs evolving to become resistant to multiple drugs. In this episode, Anand talks about the many challenges of commercialising scientific breakthroughs fro...

Our Guests today are Ritesh Arora and Nakul Aggarwal, co-founders of BrowserStack. In this episode, Ritesh and Nakul talk about doubling in size every 18-24 months, blasting past the $100 million revenue mark, and the ambition to make their platform the default place for everyone to test their applications on the cloud. They also talk about the need for better governance among startups that are fl...

Our guest today is Jesper Andersen, president and CEO of Infoblox, a leader in enterprise security in the area known as DDI, which combines DNS, DHCP and IP address management — three important sets of rules that govern how devices connect and talk to each other on the internet. In this episode, Jesper talks about how the old security model of perimeter defence is breaking down as cloud computing...

Our guest today is Mahesh Palashikar, President of GE South Asia, who leads the company’s operations in this region in areas including aviation, power, renewable energy and healthcare. In this episode, Palashikar talks about India’s ambitious climate goals, and why everyone — from governments and corporate businesses down to individual consumers — needs to significantly step up their efforts, if w...

Our guests today are Ezhil Subbian and Vinod Kumar, co-founders of String Bio, in Bengaluru which is developing multiple products with applications ranging from animal nutrition to sustainable personal care products. In this episode, Ezhil and Vinod talk about plans for String Bio’s next phase of growth as a full-stack tech company — from the bioengineering tools to multiple commercial products.

Our guest today is Samir Bodas, co-founder and CEO of Icertis, a SaaS specialist in the area of contract lifecycle management. In this episode, Samir talks about how CLM is moving from a good-to-have technology to a must-have system of record, as the world’s biggest companies negotiate complex agreements on the cloud, turning to AI to identify opportunities and risks in those contract. Notes: (00:...

Our guest today is Kelly Forbes, executive director at AI Asia Pacific Institute, in Singapore, a young interdisciplinary research organisation and think tank focused on artificial intelligence and technology policy. In this episode, Kelly talks about how, as the application of AI penetrates every walk of life, figuring out ways to build ‘trustworthy AI’ has become urgent. (00:40) Introduction to...

Our guests today are Deepti Prasad and Sanjay Kumar, a wife and husband team that pivoted from a wedding events business to build Spyne, a startup that offers an AI-based instant studio-in-the-cloud to India’s biggest ecommerce companies. In this episode, Deepti and Sanjay talk about the strong traction for their product — with customers including Amazon India, Flipkart and OLACars — and plans ahe...

Our guest today is Prakash Ramamurthy, chief product officer at Freshworks. Forbes India caught up with Prakash last week after he announced a new tailor-made CRM version that small businesses can find on Shopify’s app store. In this episode, he talks about how getting and using these softwares is as easy as installing an app on a smartphone. (00:40) Introduction to The Daily Tech Conversation (00...

Our guest today is Shweta Jalan, managing director at the private equity firm Advent International. In this episode, Shweta, who’s spent more than 20 years in the industry, based in Mumbai, talks about how the PE industry has evolved in India, sectors that interest her firm, M&A in the IT services industry and why she may not invest in Indian startups just yet.

Our guest today is Harsh Rajat, co-founder of the Ethereum Push Notification Service, or EPNS, a decentralised communications layer for Web 3 users. In this episode, Harsh talks about new funding, and plans ahead, including going multi-chain, building wallet-to-wallet communications features into EPNS, and also a $1 million grant for developers with the best ideas for expanding the reach of EPNS....

Our guest today is Dan Miller, founder and lead analyst at Opus Research, who’s been looking at how conversational technologies have been evolving over almost the last four decades. In this episode, Miller talks about the emergence of the conversational cloud, and how companies ranging from hyperscalers to startups to India’s large IT services system integrators are playing a role in it.  (00...

Our guests today are Nikhil Ramaswamy and Gokul NA, co-founders at CynLr, a Bengaluru startup that is developing computer vision and AI-based guidance technologies that can make industrial robotic arms much more versatile. In this episode, Nikhil and Gokul talk about their experiences, in building a deep tech hardware engineering startup out of India, including the absence of a playbook and the re...

Our guest today is Neil Shah, vice president of research, and co-founder, at Counterpoint Research, who advises businesses about their mobile, telecom, semiconductors, and IoT strategies. In this episode, Neil offers his insights into Apple’s manufacturing strategy and the iPhone maker’s growing share in India. Notes: (00:40) Introduction to The Daily Tech Conversation (00:52) Our guest today — Ne...