Forbes India - Tech Conversations
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AI for India: Vivek Raghavan on Sarvam's dream of building for a billion Indians
In this episode, which was recorded on Sep. 5, Vivek Raghavan provides an update on Sarvam AI, where he and his fellow founder Pratyush Kumar have open-sourced Sarvam 2B, a text-based AI model, and various voice-based AI agents and tools — all focused on supporting Indian languages. Raghavan talks about why and how Sarvam was founded, the challenges faced by what the startup's founders set out to do, and how delivering real value around the right use cases will be critical to making Sarvam a population-scale success
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Sarvam's story: Chasing the dream of AI that will benefit a billion Indians
In this episode, recorded on Sep. 5, Vivek Raghavan talks about the vision he and Pratyush Kumar have for Sarvam AI, their Bengaluru startup. Both are among the leaders of India's digital public infrastructure community and the plan for Sarvam is also to find "use cases" that will touch the masses, helping them to complete everyday tasks easily. Sarvam's technologies, including voice-based assistants, or agents, are also being evaluated by some of India's biggest companies to provide better experiences to their end consumers
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Rajesh Ganesan at Zoho's ManageEngine on plan for small AI models for IT management
In this episode, Rajesh Ganesan, president of ManageEngine at Zoho Corp, India's biggest software company, talks about how generative AI is beginning to influence IT management. It's an area where ManageEngine offers a suite of some 65 products to enterprise customers. Ganesan also talks about building small AI models focused on specific needs such as observability of data, for example, or specific cybersecurity functions. He also spoke about developing such solutions to support various regional languages spoken in India
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LTTS CEO Amit Chadha on plan for multiple billion-dollar units in the coming years
In this episode, Amit Chadha, CEO and MD at Larsen & Toubro Technology Services (LTTS), gives us a quick update on the company's progress after a recent reorganization along three large opportunities, each of which could become a billion-dollar operation. Chadha, who's based in the US, also talks about the sentiment among his biggest customers on technology spending, the impact of generative AI on the engineering services industry, and how AI is indeed a source of new revenue for LTTS. This interview was recorded on Aug. 26
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Anant Adya at Infosys on how AI is influencing the shift to the cloud
In this episode, Anant R Adya, executive vice president and Head Cloud, Infrastructure and Security Services (CIS) for Americas and APac at Infosys, talks about the evolution of the IT services company's cloud services. In this conversation, Anant also talks about the shift towards extracting business outcomes by moving various operations to the cloud, how generative AI is influencing the shift to the cloud, and how the combination of cloud computing, edge, IoT, 5G, data and AI will influence the future of tech services
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Anurag Begwani at Bessemer Venture Partners on emerging opportunities in Indian fintech
In this episode, Anurag Begwani, a vice president in India at Bessemer Venture Partners, talks about the areas within India's fintech landscape that the firm is optimistic about--from niche software to retail wealth management to cyber insurance. In this conversation, which was recorded on Aug. 21, Begwani also talks about how the fintech opportunity is spreading well beyond the tier-1 cities into the next 30 cities and the 30 after that
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Rahul Munjal at Hero Future Energies on green hydrogen and other clean energy opportunities
In this episode, Rahul Munjal, chairman and managing director of Hero Future Energies, gives us a quick update on the company's projects, including a green hydrogen technology demonstrator pilot plant soon to be commissioned. Munjal also talks about his vision for the the company in the context of India's net-zero targets: today Hero Future Energies has about 1.9GW of capacity and he expects that to reach close to 5GW over the next two to three years. He also talks about opportunities overseas in markets including Vietnam, and Britain
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Simmi Sareen and Shravan Shankar on funding climate tech for a billion people
In this episode, Simmi Sareen and Shravan Shankar, founders of Climake, a climate finance platform provider and ecosystem builder, discuss the top takeaways from their latest annual report on the state of climate finance in India. They highlight the importance of climate adaptation, and not just mitigation. They talk about ways to bridge the pipeline gap between early-stage ventures and larger companies and discuss five climate adaptation areas they've identified that offer the best opportunities from the point of view of VCs
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Deep Tech India: Why startups should play a bigger role in nuclear energy
In this episode, Prateek Tripathi, a research assistant at the Centre For Security Strategy and Technology at the Observer Research Foundation, in New Delhi, unpacks the significance of the nuclear energy proposals in the government's latest budget, including support for a Bharat Small Modular Reactor. Tripathi gives us an outline of India's civilian nuclear energy capabilities and explains the global interest in small modular reactors. He also talks about why the private sector should play a bigger role in India's nuclear energy sector
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Indian SaaS: Anant Vidur Puri at Bessemer on the AI upside to $50 billion by 2030
In this episode, Anant Vidur Puri, a partner in India at the VC firm Bessemer Venture Partners, gives us a quick overview of the firm's latest annual report on India's software-as-a-service sector. Bessemer projects the sector at $50 billion in annual recurring revenue by 2030. Puri also discusses his view that artificial intelligence software and solutions will likely provide an upside to that number. He also expects that the more number of cloud software startups touching $100 million in annual recurring revenue will see a jump
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Deep Tech India: Kaushik Mudda on building Ethereal, a precision machining-as-a-service venture
In this episode, Kaushik Mudda talks about how he and his friend Navin Jain turned a problem into an opportunity with their award-winning five-axis CNC machine to build a manufacturing services venture from Bengaluru--Ethereal Machines. Today, backed by Blume Ventures, Peak XV Partners and Steadview Capital, the 10-year-old startup is pioneering what the entrepreneur duo calls machining-as-a-service in India. Ethereal is evolving as a promising deep tech company. This episode was recorded on June 6