Forbes India - Tech Conversations
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Welcome to Forbes India’s Tech Conversations, where we bring you insights from tech entrepreneurs, CxOs and investors. Capturing stories from across India’s tech startup and enterprise technology ecosystems, catch a new episode every Tuesday and Thursday on forbesindia.com or on your favourite podcast app. Hosted by Harichandan Arakali, Editor – Tech & Innovation
299 Episodes
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In this episode, which was recorded on May 12, N Krishnakumar, founding managing partner at Mela Ventures, a technology-focused VC firm in Bengaluru, talks about how the deep-tech landscape is evolving, with AI rapidly becoming mainstream. He gives us a quick update on some of the companies in Mela’s portfolio from its first fund, some contrarian lessons from those investments, and also talks about plans for the firm’s second fund. Krishnakumar expects the second fund to be in the ballpark of Rs. 1,000 crore.
In this episode, Jaicky Kumar and Deepak Mishra, co-founders of Voltanova Energy, give us an overview of their thermal battery energy storage system. Voltanova Energy is a startup incubated at the Indian Institute of Science’s Foundation for Science and Innovation Development. In collaboration with Professor Saptarshi Basu at the Institute as their technical advisor, Jaicky and Deepak have developed a carbon-free product that offers a lifespan of more than 40 years, and costs one-fifth that of traditional solutions, according to the Foundation's annual impact report for 2024.
In this episode, Amit Gupta, co-founder and CEO of Yulu Bikes, talks about the opportunity for his company to scale on the back of the rise of quick commerce in India’s metros and large cities. Gupta also talks about the many lessons from having painstakingly built an asset-heavy business – an approach that’s not the first preference of VC investors – to the point where the company turned EBITDA positive, last year. And if a few things fall into place, including funding, Gupta expects to turn PAT positive as well by the end of 2026.
In this episode, Dushyant Mishra, Abhinay Vyas and Jot Singh, co-founders of Rapid Claims talk about their conviction in building AI products from India. They give us a quick update on their New York based venture, which has its entire product and engineering team in India, developing modern revenue cycle management software for the healthcare sector. They also speak about their own entrepreneurial experience and how it’s time that anyone who is passionate about building products from India should make that leap of faith.
In this episode, Brijraj Bhuptani, founder and CEO at Spry Therapeutics, talks about how he and his co-founder Riyaz Rehman found an opportunity in helping small and mid-sized physical therapy clinics in the US to become more efficient and innovative, with an AI-led revenue cycle management platform. Bhuptani also talks about pivots along the way; thinking about outcomes first that sharpened their go-to-market focus; and plans for going after bigger customers now, all while delivering the product development and engineering completely from India.
In this episode, recorded on January 2, Anand Anandkumar, V Balasubramanian and Santanu Datta, co-founders of Bugworks Research, give us a quick update on their quest for a novel antibiotic to tackle the problem of anti-microbial resistance. The trio, winners of the Forbes India Leadership Award 2025 under the Emerging Innovators category – alongside their Chief Scientist P Shahul Hameed – are also taking a ‘platform approach’ to develop a small molecule that they hope will fight some types of cancer.
In this episode, Alok Goyal, partner at Stellaris Venture Partners, and Khadim Batti, co-founder and CEO of Whatfix, a digital adoption platform provider, talk about their partnership from a VC who was skeptical about the venture to his fastest term sheet, to product market fit to $100 million in annual recurring revenue on the horizon. They talk about lessons from this experience and how the playbook has evolved for Indian SaaS companies selling enterprise software in the world’s biggest tech markets.
In this episode, Anand Daniel and Prayank Swaroop, partners at Accel, talk about the venture capital firm’s views on the next decade of Indian startups. Accel recently announced its eighth India-focused fund, at $650 million. In this conversation, Anand and Prayank also talk about how both startup founders and venture capitalists in India are evolving, and new generations come to the fore, bringing more original ideas to the market and more technical and business knowhow to their endeavours.
In this episode, Vishal Katariya and Suraj Nair, AVPs at Ankur Capital, an early-stage VC firm in Mumbai, talk about the need for playbooks for different segments within the growing deep tech startup ecosystem in India. Vishal and Suraj, who’re both part of the investment team at Ankur, known for its investments in agritech, biotech, and health care startups, among others, hope for greater industry involvement in 2025 in supporting deep tech startups in India. They also talk about what they’d like to see in the budget next month.
In this episode, Aneesh Reddy, founder and CEO of Capillary Technologies, a well-known SaaS company in Bengaluru, talks about his experiments in leadership. As part of Forbes India’s recent issue on Founder’s Mode, this interview was recorded on November 22. In this conversation, Reddy talks about what he learnt from bringing in a professional chief executive, how execution holds the key to long-term success of a venture and what traits he looks for himself as an angel investor in a large number of startups.
In this episode, recorded on November 19, Avinash Krishnamurthy, co-founder of Biome Environmental Trust, a sustainable development think tank and consultancy, and Vikas Brahmavar and Gowthaman Desingh, co-founders of Boson Whitewater, a water treatment venture backed by investors including Rainmatter, talk about a landmark collaboration to return potable-quality treated wastewater to communities in Devanahalli town, on the outskirts of Bengaluru city. They also talk about how this project can be a model with lessons relevant across India.
In this episode, recorded on November 21, Christopher Young, EVP of business development, strategy, and ventures at Microsoft, talks about how AI is evolving from generating responses to actually fulfilling various tasks on behalf of human users. Young gives us a quick overview of how Microsoft aims to become a platform, underpinning AI innovation and adoption in markets around the world, including India. He expects that some AI innovation, in healthcare, for example, will start first in India, to be adopted in other parts of the world.
In this episode, Leena Walavalkar, Global Head of TCS PACE, talks about the IT giant’s innovation network comprising centres around the world, called Pace Ports, where teams of multidisciplinary experts from TCS brainstorm and collaborate with customers on cutting edge solutions. In this conversation, Leena gives us a peek into how TCS is using its experience in a variety of areas to go from assisting and augmenting its customers’ tech operations to innovating solutions that could potentially transform those businesses for the better.
In this episode, Vishnu S talks about how his fascination for opensource software set him on a journey of entrepreneurship, and how he started Jarvis Labs – a data centre orchestration startup for India’s AI needs that’s ready to go global. Jarvis, based on the outskirts of Coimbatore, not only offers affordable GPU options, but also a software layer that allows customers to quickly start focusing on their own work rather than worrying about the complexities of spinning up cloud infrastructure for AI
In this episode, NP Sridhar, CEO and MD of Titan Engineering and Automation Ltd. (TEAL), a wholly owned subsidiary of Titan and its only B2B unit, talks about global opportunities in automation and manufacturing services. The automation business offers turnkey assembly automation across India and overseas. The manufacturing services operation caters to aerospace, defence and will soon expand its footprint in the semiconductor sector. TEAL expects to finish the current fiscal year with revenues of about Rs. 900 crore.
In this episode, Shailendra Singh and Rajan Anandan, managing directors at Peak XV Partners, talk about their venture capital firm’s Surge programme for early-stage startup founders, which today revealed its 10th cohort. In this interview with Forbes India, the two VC investors talk about why Surge was started, its design around the objective of improving the chances of success of the participating entrepreneurs, and how it’s becoming increasingly global. Expect a couple of IPOs, even, over the next two years, they said.
In this episode, Tanvi Lall, director of strategy at People+ai, talks about the potential that micro data centres hold in supporting the development of AI in India. People+ai is a non-profit organization working to identify and support population-scale use cases of AI that are relevant to India. Lall is the head of a project called Open Cloud Compute, within People+ai, to support the growth of micro data centres in India. In this conversation, recorded on Aug. 27, she gives us a quick update on the project.
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.
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.
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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