Forbes India - Tech Conversations

Our guest today is Satheesh Kumar, founder and chairman of Enzen Global Solutions, which provides strategic advisory, engineering services and solutions to customers in the power, water, gas, and renewable energy sectors. In this episode, Satheesh talks about Enzen’s ambition for building “templates for net-zero communities.” He also talks about plans for an IPO or a capital raise from private equity companies.

Our guest today is Divyansh Saini, co-founder and CEO of Houseware, whose eponymous data management product recently won the Snowflake Startup Challenge. In this episode, Divyansh talks about making data more accessible to revenue-facing teams so they can “bring intelligence from metrics into their data apps.” He also talks about how India’s SaaS ecosystem has evolved from the days when he first got interested in it, several years ago as an engineering student.

Our guest today is Sirisha Bandla, VP of government affairs and research operations at Virgin Galactic, which is looking to open commercial space tourism operations early next year, offering short rides to near space, around 60 miles above the surface of the earth. In this episode, Sirisha talks about how she always wanted to be an astronaut, and now, helping to run the business end of Virgin Galactic, how she’s looking at collaborations with Indian space tech startups.

Our guest today is Yoav Zeif, CEO of Stratasys, a well-known US-Israel 3D-printing technologies company. In this episode, Yoav, who’s currently visiting his Indian team of 10, talks about the advances in 3D-printing tech, and how lack of awareness, and businesses being locked into traditional manufacturing processes, are the challenges to be overcome for greater adoption of this technology, the demand for which has surged after the disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Our guest today is Krishna Kumar, co-founder and CEO of Cropin Technology Solutions, an agri-intelligence provider to customers around the world. In this episode, Krishna talks about mapping crops and land around the planet and building an AI-based cloud platform for the agri and food sectors. He also talks about a new AI lab and taking Cropin to $100 million in revenue over the next three years.

Notes:

(00:39) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:52) Our guest today — Krishna Kumar, co-founder and CEO, Cropin Technology Solutions

(01:37) A brief backgrounder on Cropin’s tech platform approach

(04:05) On how Cropin has evolved to add multinational customers

(05:17) Cropin’s data and AI journey — the different phases so far

(11:58) And what the company is doing now and investments and projects going ahead

(17:43) How customers use Cropin today and what they’ll be able to do once the AI cloud is up and running

(22:25) On the new AI lab at Cropin, and the $100 million revenue target

(27:32) The future flagship offering from Cropin — how AI will become central to that

(30:03) Some thoughts on growing rapidly, even during the current slowdown

(31:15) Series D funding and 3X revenue growth this year

(32:26) Top priorities over the next 12 months

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds:

https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

Our guests today are Devendra Gupta, Prateek Singhal and Vivek Pandey, co-founders of Pune-based Ecozen Solutions, who offer motor controls, IoT tech, cold storage and energy storage products, powered by solar energy. In this episode, the trio talk about how they started with customers in the Agri sector, establishing a significant market share. They are now looking to expand into other areas, including the EV space, and markets outside India.

Notes:

(00:36) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:47) Our guests today — Devendra Gupta, Prateek Singhal and Vivek Pandey, co-founders of Ecozen Solutions

(01:30) Starting Ecozen straight out of college, at IIT Kharagpur

(05:47) Early years of Ecozen, and taking the plunge into entrepreneurship with commitment

(07:30) The vision for Ecozen today, what it has evolved into and where it’s headed

(14:14) More on the tech developed by Ecozen so far

(20:06) Cost of ownership of newer, more sustainable, tech

(25:12) Some basic points about how Ecozen operates, designs its products, who manufactures them and so on

(28:36) Funding and investors

(32:30) Top priorities over the next 12 months

More about Ecozen

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds:

Our guest today is Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO of Zoho Corp., India’s biggest software products success story. In this episode, Sridhar talks about how the wise entrepreneur will use the current downturn to nurture talent, invest in R&D and lay a solid foundation for a sustainable, long-term business. He also talks about how SaaS companies are yet to reckon with the power of AI to replace software programmers themselves.

Notes:

(00:40) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation and The Big Picture

(01:04) Our guest today — Sridhar Vembu, founder and CEO, Zoho Corp.

(01:57) On the current global economic slowdown

(04:17) What customers might do — more tech but there’s also pressure on budgets

(07:14) A snapshot of what Zoho is today — 75 million users

(09:13) Competing with Microsoft

(11:32) What is Zoho evolving into

(13:01) How staying bootstrapped helped in making very long-term bets

(15:01) Three examples of such bets that became fast-growing commercial products

(16:56) On investments in R&D

(18:18) At a high level, capabilities that would be valuable to Zoho’s customers, where the company is investing in R&D today.

(19:54) Manage Engine

(22:06) Lessons from building Manage Engine

(23:38) On developing a Zoho ecosystem of products and services

(25:15) What next on the talent pipeline development front

(27:57) Cost of developing software versus its price in the market

(29:46) And the role of AI in that process

(31:35) Advice to entrepreneurs in this downturn

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds:

https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

Our guest today is Shruti Kapoor, co-founder and CEO at Wingman, a conversational AI provider for sales teams that has just been acquired by Clari, a Silicon Valley company. In this episode, Shruti talks about the rationale behind the decision to be acquired, some of the conversations that she and her co-founders Muralidharan Venkatasubramanian and Srikar Yekollu had about this, what comes next, and also some thoughts on how AI is overhauling the enterprise sales process.

Notes:

(00:44) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:56) Our guest today — Shruti Kapoor, co-founder and CEO of Wingman

(01:57) A snapshot backgrounder about Wingman and the news of acquisition by Clari

(04:55) More about Clari and what they focus on

(09:46) How Wingman and Clari started to work together

(11:42) What happens after the acquisition — continuing and expanding work from Bangalore, collaborating with Clari’s India team

(14:15) Some basic points about the terms of the acquisitions

(16:52) How AI is overhauling the entire sales process in large businesses

(23:50) Thoughts on the entrepreneurial journey, parallels with setting up Payoneer’s operations in India, and differences as a founder

(28:08) Some of the conversations that went into the decision to be acquired by Clari

(32:44) What went right at Wingman, and what would Shruti do differently if she did it all over again

More about Shruti and Wingman (Now Wingman by Clari)

https://www.trywingman.com/blog-posts/letter-from-founders-wingman-blog

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds:

https://soundcloud.com/freemusicandsounds

Our guest today is Akshay V Singhal, founder and CEO of Log9 Materials, which is building quick-charging, longer-lasting batteries for electric vehicles in the country. In this episode, Singhal offers an update on the pilot plant Log9 opened in April, in Bengaluru, for local cell manufacturing, India’s first, and the plan to expand it into a full-fledged commercial ‘Giga factory,’ with a capacity of cells worth 5GWh (Giga watt-hour), over the next 3-5 years.

Our guests today are Jatin Desai and Venkat Vallabhaneni, managing partners at Inflexor Ventures, a VC firm focused on deep tech ventures in India. In this episode, the duo talk about how India’s engineering based ventures are beginning to mature, in areas ranging from augmented reality to rocket fuel; they also talk about their own aspiration to make Inflexor a pre-eminent technology-focused VC firm in India