Forbes India - Tech Conversations
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Razorpay's Shashank Kumar and Murali Brahmadesam on aspiration of global recognition for product excellence
In this episode, Razorpay's co-founder and MD Shashank Kumar and CTO and Head of Engineering Murali Brahmadesam, talk about what they are doing to preserve the Bengaluru fintech company's engineering-first culture as it grows bigger. With a 1,000-person engineering team, Shashank talks about how it was time to find a CTO who would help the company in its next phase of growth and give him the space to focus on product development and strategy. The aspiration is to see Razorpay named among the globally recognised names for product engineering
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Lentra AI's D Venkatesh on plans for his fintech SaaS venture after recent $60 million funding
In this episode, D Venkatesh, founder and CEO of Lentra AI, talks about how his company is living up to its name, from the idea of transforming lending. With customers such as HDFC Bank and Aditya Birla Finance, four-year-old Lentra is today one of the fastest-growing fintech SaaS companies in India. After a recent $60 million funding round, led by Bessemer Venture Partners, SIG and Citi Ventures, Venkatesh is planning Lentra's expansion into southeast Asia, and eventually, America
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Akash Gupta and Abhinav Roy at Clean Electric on the dream to build hardware-centric global tech company from India
In this episode, Akash Gupta and Abhinav Roy, co-founders of Clean Electric, talk about plans for their electric battery technologies company, after $2.2 million in funding from investors including Kalaari Capital and Climate Angels. Akash and Abhinav also talk about their dream of building a strong engineering-based company that can turn out high-quality hardware products made in India that can find recognition in markets around the world
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Rafi Shaik at Carbanio on the opportunity to digitalise the chemicals supply chain in India for SMBs
In this episode, Rafi Shaik, founder and chief scientific officer of Carbanio, a B2B marketplace for chemicals, talks about the opportunity to modernise and streamline the supply chain in this segment, a $300 billion industry in India alone, by dragging it into the era of the internet. Rafi, a scientist-turned-entrepreneur, raised $1.3 million in seed funding in February, and he is in talks to raise $20 million in series A funding to expand Carbanio's operations. Small and medium-sized business customers are an important area of focus, he says
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Rohan Murty on tackling the 'toggling tax' with Soroco's work graph, bringing empathy to the digital worker's last mile
In this episode, Rohan N Murty, founder and CTO of Soroco, talks about bringing empathy to dealing with the last mile friction that the modern digital enterprise employee faces, by harnessing data. Soroco offers a 'work graph,' which in essence, is a map of how teams execute digital work, and it lies at the intersection of people, work, and technology. Once discovered, the work graph enables teams to collaborate and work more effectively, raising the overall productivity of the enterprise
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Ayyappan R on plans to make Cleartrip an end-to-end decision-making platform for anyone who wants to travel
In this episode, Ayyappan Rajagopal, CEO of Cleartrip, talks about the next phase of his career at Flipkart group, where, in the past, he has been instrumental in growing various ecommerce categories, from fashion at Myntra to smartphones and furniture at Flipkart. Ayyappan, who took over as chief executive of Cleartrip a little over a year ago, has a clear plan to transform the business from a bookings provider to an end-to-end platform for people to research, discover, plan and shop for travel
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Prakash Govindan on his love for applied science, and the billion-dollar aspiration at Gradiant
In this episode, Prakash Govindan, co-founder and COO of Gradiant, a water treatment technologies company, talks about how his love for building products took him from academic research to being a first-time entrepreneur. Ten years on, Gradiant has evolved into a mid-sized leader in managing water treatment for global customers including semiconductor companies and pharmaceuticals giants. Gradiant, with its innovation and R&D efforts out of Boston and Singapore, has just won new contracts in India, where the company will soon establish an R&D team
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Ashwini Asokan on businesses' frustration with AI claims, a new acquisition, and plans at Mad Street Den
In this episode, Ashwini Asokan, co-founder and CEO of Mad Street Den, talks about how businesses are frustrated with tall claims about AI. Mad Street Den is a Silicon Valley and Chennai-based software company offering AI products that help customers organise and "stitch together" their data and extract useful information. On the other hand, there is an "uproar of demand" for products that offer tangible returns on AI investments, she says. The current macroeconomic business environment, however, is tough, with many imposing caps on SaaS spending
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Vishal Shah at Synersoft Technologies on what it takes to crack the Indian MSME market with a hardware IT product
In this episode, Vishal Prakash Shah, co-founder and CEO at Synersoft Technologies, talks about how his venture went from "miserable failure" to 10,000 installations with paying customers among India's MSMEs — offering an IT-in-a-box product fine-tuned for the needs of small enterprises. He also talks about "cloud-flation" and why small enterprises in India are still wary of the cloud, although Synersoft too is looking for funding to build the infrastructure for its cloud software product for that inevitable future
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James Foster on cybersecurity outside the firewall, and the growing talent base in India at ZeroFox
In this episode, James C Foster, founder and CEO of ZeroFox, outlines the growing opportunity in cybersecurity outside the enterprise firewall, as social media has changed how businesses interact with consumers. Foster recently visited Bengaluru, where his company has just added enough office space for 300 employees. The US-based company, with customers including NASA, Nike, Uber, United, Costco and AC Milan, doubled its talent base in India this year to 200 and is currently hiring in areas including cyber security operations, cyber threat intelligence, data science, and engineering
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Vikram Gupta and Yatin Kavishwar at Awiros on their ambition to build an OS and marketplace for video AI
In this episode, Vikram Gupta and Yatin Kavishwar, co-founders of Awidit Systems, talk about how they are developing Awiros, which is best described as an operating system on top of which multiple computer vision and video analytics applications can be brought together. Vikram, who brings the science and tech experience, and Yatin, a veteran tech salesman, are also building a marketplace for such applications. They've raised their first significant round of institutional venture capital recently and also bagged an order from the Bengaluru Safe City project, supported by India's Nirbh