Mala Ramakrishnan

Mala's Podcast

Business EN ↓ 32 episodes

Welcome to Mala’s Podcast, where honest conversations meet the future of AI, startups, and leadership. Mala sits down with CEOs, founders, and innovators leading the world’s most exciting AI companies — from Silicon Valley to Singapore and beyond. Each episode uncovers what really happens behind the scenes: building teams, surviving chaos, scaling products, and shaping the next era of intelligent technology. If you’re curious about how the AI revolution is being built — one decision, one founder, one story at a time — you’re in the right place.

Author

Mala Ramakrishnan

Episodes

What CPOs Need to Know Before Shipping AI | From Product Management Leader 20.01.2026 42:38

Mala Ramakrishnan sits down with Abhijit Kakhandiki, SVP & GM, Digital Business Automation at BMC Software and former EVP, Product & Engineering, Automation Anywhere, to unpack what it really takes to build AI-powered products that work in production — not just in demos. Drawing from years of experience creating the RPA category, scaling to thousands of enterprise customers, and shipping e...

From Founder to Funder: The Journey of Mala Ramakrishnan 20.01.2026 25:43

Mala Ramakrishnan — founder of Progressive Ventures, serial entrepreneur, and investor — joins Indian Tech Icon Spotlight to share her journey from growing up in India to building companies, leading exits, and backing underrepresented founders in Silicon Valley. In this candid conversation, Mala reflects on starting her first company at 21, the power of belief and sponsorship, why women must think...

How AI is transforming cybersecurity | With Meerah Rajavel | CIO, Palo Alto Networks 16.01.2026 33:30

Meera Rajavel, CIO at Palo Alto Networks, joins Mala Ramakrishnan to share a candid journey from a small town in India to the C-suite of global technology companies. Meera breaks down what it really takes to build a long-term career in engineering, IT, and cybersecurity. She shares lessons from startups and large enterprises, how CIOs think about outcomes, why security must be frictionless, and ho...

AI Journey with Google Maps | In conversation with Miriam Daniel 13.01.2026 29:08

Miriam Daniel, VP and General Manager of Google Maps , joins Mala Ramakrishnan to discuss building and scaling one of the world’s most used consumer platforms in the age of AI. From her early engineering career in India to leading Google Maps with over 2 billion monthly users, Miriam shares lessons on career pivots, the power of sponsors, learning from failure at Amazon’s Fire Phone, and helping b...

Open Source Business Models in the AI Era 13.01.2026 28:08

Dave McJannet, CEO of HashiCorp, joins Mala Ramakrishnan to break down how real infrastructure companies are built across cloud, open source, and now AI. From starting his career as a chartered accountant to leading multiple platform shifts, Dave explains how cloud, open source, and AI follow repeatable patterns. He shares why HashiCorp bet early on multi-cloud, how open source businesses actually...

How IBM Healthcare Embraces AI | With Cheong Ang 07.01.2026 24:15

Cheong Ang, Field CTO at IBM, joins Mala Ramakrishnan to break down what it really takes to innovate in healthcare. From saving healthcare systems $90M annually, Cheong explains why healthcare is a people-and-process business, where AI helps, where it fails, and how founders can survive regulation, monetization, and scale. A clear look at startups vs incumbents, and what actually moves patient out...

On becoming the CEO of Windsurf | Jeff Wang X Mala 15.10.2025 23:52

In the first episode of Mala’s podcast, Mala sits down with Jeff Wang, CEO of Windsurf (formerly Codeium). When a big tech bidding war erupts, Jeff unexpectedly finds himself stepping into the CEO role overnight. He opens up about building Windsurf’s enterprise wedge, surviving Anthropic’s API shutdown, and keeping an $82M ARR business alive — all while navigating a merger with Cognition to launch...