AI's Happy Hour

“This is scary good." - That's what a healthcare client's own security team said on a call, watching an AI agent book appointments and resolve scheduling conflicts inside their regulated clinical software.

Rakesh Vaddadi, CEO of Beacon.li, tells host Sujit Janardanan how his team builds AI agents that don't just answer questions about enterprise software - they operate it, with zero backend integration and a knowledge graph learned straight from the UI.

Also: the claim that Beacon beat OpenAI to a multi-agent orchestrator by six months, and a rapid-fire round on exactly which tasks Rakesh does (and doesn't) trust an AI agent to handle alone.

Six thousand images a day with zero room for error!

Girish Vadharajan, Chief Data and AI Officer at Innoviti, built the AI system verifying field agents' proof of work across thousands of payment terminals nationwide - and it broke every assumption a standard LLM API prototype makes.

Karan Kirpalani gets into the black-on-black detection problem, the checkbox that made a top-tier model hallucinate, and a case study of a client cutting their monthly AI bill from roughly 80,000 dollars to a flat 9,000.

A real production build story, you cannot afford to miss as a builder.

A bank spent $60 million on a core system migration. It failed and shipped nothing.

Aravind Jayendran, Co-founder of Latentforce, is betting the opposite way - an AI built to do one thing, code migration, with enough precision to touch a 20-year-old ERP system that nobody at the company fully understands anymore.

Plus: why your code is your IP, and why that changes everything about which AI you trust with it.

Tune in to the complete episode to dive into his approach.

A bank spent $60 million on a core system migration. It failed and shipped nothing.

Aravind Jayendran, Co-founder of Latentforce, is betting the opposite way - an AI built to do one thing, code migration, with enough precision to touch a 20-year-old ERP system that nobody at the company fully understands anymore.

Plus: why your code is your IP, and why that changes everything about which AI you trust with it.

Tune in to the complete episode to dive into his approach.

You're worried about latency, model quality, and fundraising.

You should also be worried about export controls, GPU choke points, and the single executive order that could rewrite your entire roadmap.

Pranay Kotasthane (Chairperson Takshashila Institution, co-author of When the Chips Are Down) breaks the AI race into four competing narratives - nuclear standoff, arms race, innovation race, or diffusion game - and maps the five-layer supply chain that decides who actually gets to build.

Plus: why "self-reliance" is the wrong ambition, and what "self-strength" looks like instead.

A geopolitics playbook for builders, not diplomats.

Tune in and share with the builders, policy makers and AI adopters you know would benefit from the insights. 

You're worried about latency, model quality, and fundraising.

You should also be worried about export controls, GPU choke points, and the single executive order that could rewrite your entire roadmap.

Pranay Kotasthane (Chairperson Takshashila Institution, co-author of When the Chips Are Down) breaks the AI race into four competing narratives - nuclear standoff, arms race, innovation race, or diffusion game - and maps the five-layer supply chain that decides who actually gets to build.

Plus: why "self-reliance" is the wrong ambition, and what "self-strength" looks like instead.

A geopolitics playbook for builders, not diplomats.

Tune in and share with the builders, policy makers and AI adopters you know would benefit from the insights. 

Your AI just denied someone's loan. Who's responsible?

Not in your policy doc - actually, functionally responsible.Beni Chugh (Dvara Research Foundation) opens Season 2 with a conversation about AI accountability that most boardrooms haven't had yet: the Air Canada chatbot that promised something the company wouldn't honor, the aviation-safety analogy for AI (and where it collapses), and why "human in the loop" is starting to mean rubber-stamping thousands of decisions an hour.

Grab a seat at the table nobody's saving for the customer.

In this episode of AI’s Happy Hour, our host & CMO, Sujit Janardanan, sits down with the winners of the AIBoomi Startup Weekend, Bengaluru—a 24-hour idea-to-MVP buildathon that brought together a new generation of AI builders turning curiosity, local insights, and ambitious ideas into real-world applications.

From investment banking professionals and startup founders to postgraduate students, these innovators share what it takes to build under pressure, validate ideas quickly, and create solutions that address real-world challenges rooted in cultural and local contexts.

We explore:

• The shift from AI hype to meaningful, outcome-driven use cases
• Building impactful AI solutions with limited resources
• What it takes to go from idea to MVP in just 24 hours
• Balancing rapid experimentation with long-term scalability
• The difference between an everyday builder mindset and a hackathon builder mindset
• How collaboration, curiosity, and execution come together to drive innovation

This episode is a must-listen for emerging founders, aspiring builders, and AI enthusiasts who want a firsthand look at how the next wave of AI innovation is being created.

Tune in now and follow AI’s Happy Hour for more real conversations shaping the AI future.

In this episode of AI’s Happy Hour, our host & CMO, Sujit Janardanan, sits down with Varun Malhotra, CTO of Capri Global Capital Ltd., to explore what it really takes to embed AI into the fabric of a financial institution as a core operating infrastructure.We explore:

• Why data readiness is the foundation of every successful AI initiative
• The hidden challenges that cause AI projects to fail during integration
• Building trust in AI within compliance-driven environments
• Aligning technology, governance, and business objectives
• What it means to create an AI-ready culture across diverse teams and geographies
• The realities of deploying AI in regulated industries where reliability and accountability matter

This episode is a must-listen for technology leaders, financial services professionals, and AI practitioners looking to understand how AI can be successfully implemented in complex, highly regulated environments.

Tune in now and follow AI’s Happy Hour for more real conversations shaping the AI future.

In this episode of AI’s Happy Hour, our host & CMO Sujit Janardanan sits down with Praveen Pankajakshan, Chief AI Scientist at UrbanKisan, for a deep, thoughtful conversation on the foundations and future of AI.

From medical research and energy systems to agriculture and physical AI, Praveen shares how first principles, reproducibility, and grounded engineering shape real-world AI systems.

We explore:

• Why reproducibility is non-negotiable in science and AI
• The limitations of today’s generative models
• What it takes to build sovereign AI systems
• Moving AI from the cloud into farms and physical environments
• Using Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) to build better teams
• A powerful surfing analogy for deploying AI responsibly

This episode is a must-listen for AI practitioners who believe the future isn’t just smarter models, but wiser systems.

Tune in now and follow AI’s Happy Hour for more real conversations shaping the AI future.