Audio
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Vodafone Idea may get Rs 14,000 crore, but is that too little too late?
Perhaps Mumbai being Vodafone country is a distant memory now. And yet, Vodafone Idea remains India's third biggest mobile phone services provider. Forbes India's Salil Panchal joins us on today's ToThePoint to ask if news that Vi is likely to get Rs 14,000 crore in fresh funding is good news. What are the prospects for this company in the long term and when rivals are selling 5G services, can Vodafone Idea find a way out of its entrenched problems? We also speculate a bit about what might be the end game here
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Was there a CoWIN breach, and where do we stand on data privacy today?
Ameen Jauhar, lead, applied law and tech research at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy in New Delhi, unpacks where we are at so far in India when it comes to our data privacy laws. Our conversation in ToThePoint today was triggered by the news of an alleged breach of the government's CoWIN database that threw up sensitive personal information of people who had been vaccinated against Covid. Ameen also talks about a parallel debate on what to do about the so-called non-personal data on which also, the government is formulating a policy
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Dennis Woodside on Freshworks' $1 billion plan and beyond — Part 2
In this episode, Dennis Woodside, president of Freshworks, talks about some of the elements of the longer-term plan for Freshworks, including the role that AI will likely play in that. In about ten days, Freshworks founder Girish Mathrubootham is expected to reveal what he's been up to on the AI front. In this conversation, Dennis talks about the approach to AI that the company is taking. This is part 2 of our conversation, in which he also talks about the dynamics of his relationship with Girish and how that's shaping the culture at Freshworks
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Inside the 14th anniversary special of Forbes India
This year, we are celebrating our 14th anniversary. And Brian Carvalho, editor of Forbes India, gets into the details of this special edition that has invited leaders from business, sports, and entertainment—from TV Narendran of Tata Steel to Kamal Haasan and Viswanathan Anand—to reflect on the journey the world has been on since then.
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Does India need its own ChatGPT, or is there a better question to ask?
OpenAI's CEO Sam Altman, during his recent India visit, made some comments that were later taken out of context, leading to a furore on social media. Jaspreet Bindra, former chief digital officer at Mahindra group, offers his perspective on whether India needs its own ChatGPT and large language models. Bindra reckons that we have the brain power, but, and we speculate with him, that there is a better question: for example, should we instead unleash an Indian tsunami of entrepreneurship on top of what is already there, instead of building it from scratch?
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Dennis Woodside on Freshworks' $1 billion plan and beyond — Part 1
In this episode, Dennis Woodside, who will soon complete a year since he took on the role of president at Freshworks, tells us about what he's been up to at the company alongside Girish Mathrubootham. In part one of our conversation, Woodside puts some of Freshworks' recent numbers in perspective, including turning profitable on a non-GAAP basis for the first three months of this year; and why he thinks the Nasdaq-listed SaaS company can sustain that momentum. He also talks about why winning larger accounts holds the key to the company's long-term success
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Mercedes gets Level-3 certification in California, but can autonomous vehicles navigate Indian roads?
Saurabh Chandra, CEO of Ati Motors in Bengaluru, which offers autonomous mobility technologies for the factory floor and the warehouse, explains different levels of autonomy in the automotive industry and helps us understand the significance of Mercedes-Benz getting its DrivePilot driver assistance solution certified at Level-3 for certain roads in California. The German automaker will offer this solution in certain models in the US starting next year. Saurabh also wagers that such technologies can handle Indian roads too, if we can figure out the "social negotiation" needed
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Prakash Govindan on plans ahead after recent funding that made Gradiant a unicorn
In this episode, Prakash Govindan, co-founder of Gradiant, a rising star in industrial effluent treatment technologies, returns to this podcast to give us an update on the company's plans after a recent $225 million funding round. The investment, led by Centaurus Capital and BoltRock, made the Boston-based company a unicorn. Prakash reiterates his ambition to take the company from an estimated $200 million in revenue for this year to a billion dollars over the next three to four years. He also spoke about a new product and Gradiant's prospects in India
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Women in IT: Is the return to office hurting their prospects, and what can help?
TCS' global head of HR Milind Lakkad's candid comments in the company's latest annual report has put a spotlight on how a domestic "reset" has come in the way of women returning to work in the IT industry. TCS saw a marginal dip in the overall proportion of women in its workforce from 36.2 percent at the end of FY20 to 35.7 percent at the end of FY23. Infosys, over the same period, has seen a 160-basis-point increase to end FY23 with 39.4 percent. Forbes India's Divya Shekhar discusses what she's found and what needs to change to help women stay on
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Jayanta Banerjee on how tech is helping Tata Steel as the multinational behemoth's focus shifts to India
In this episode, Jayanta Banerjee, group CIO of Tata Steel, talks about how the company built successful IT architectures for multiple acquisitions as it ramped up its operations in India. Jayanta, who previously lead the energy and resources practice at Tata Consultancy Services, talks about the big-picture context in which the digital transformation projects at Tata Steel are being implemented and the growth of the business in a sustainable fashion. We began with how he sees his role and the many ways in which it has changed over the years
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Instagram rumoured to be developing an AI bot with 30 personalities — fancy engaging with one?
The latest rumour is that Instagram is working on an AI bot that could offer users as many as 30 personalities to engage with, according to screenshots shared by developer and tipster Alessandro Paluzzi. These AI agents or chatbots can "answer questions and give advice". We speculate on what this might mean for Instagram users on a daily basis, and how this impacts the 'social' aspect of the network