Forbes India - Tech Conversations

Our guest today is Gautam Nimmagadda, founder and CEO of Quixy, a no-code software development cloud platform provider in Hyderabad. The concept and even some of the tech has been around from as far back as when Visual Basic programming language was introduced some 30 years ago, Gautam says. Cloud computing, and the needs of a post-pandemic world, are moving the idea from geeks to business users

(00:40) Introduction to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:58) Our guest today — Gautam Nimmagadda, founder and CEO, Quixy

(2:00) Quixy, a no-code software development platform that business users can use to put together applications without any knowledge of coding

(04:30) Lost in translation between the business customers needs and the software coder’s efforts; and other challenges of the transitional way of developing applications

(07:30) An idea that has been around for decades, but wasn’t called ‘no-code’; and had some limits

(08:30) Today, fairly complex applications can be built on these platforms and remote work has increased interest in them.

(11:45) Examples of popular applications in various verticals

(14:45) Digitalisation has become complex — this is part of the context for no-code software

(15:12) No-code simplifies these processes and allows more people to participate; therefore makes the processes more efficient; reduces the ‘cognitive overhead’

(17:18) Increasingly on the cloud

(21:10) What no-code development will mean for chief information officers and CTOs and their teams

(25:43) sticking to the guns on the idea of ‘no-code’ and not diluting it with a low-code approach, so that business users can use Quixy and not just developers

(27:08) Challenges in the way of broader adoption of no-code solutions

(28:30) Quixy’s growth so far

(31:05) On staying bootstrapped in an ecosystem awash with money

Our guest today is Om Malviya, President, of Tezos India, who is working to popularise the Tezos blockchain in this region. In today’s conversation, Malviya talks about some of Tezos’s unique characteristics, such as how it started with proof-of-stake from the get-go and its self-amending feature. He also spoke of various initiatives to grow the Tezos ecosystem in India.

(00:40) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:56) Our guest today — Om Malviya, president of Tezos India

(02:45) About the Tezos blockchain

(03:08) How Tezos is different — began with proof-of-stake from launch; ease of upgradability

(05:52) Tezos as a security friendly blockchain to write smart contracts

(06:48) About Tezos India — working to grow the ecosystem in the region

(08:30) The significance of proof-of-work based validation — advantages over proof-of-work

(10:45) “The more stake you have … the more likely you are to mine a block”

(12:54) Liquid proof-of-stake

(15:40) Who created Tezos, when was it launched?

(17:00) Strong uptake of Tezos

(18:28) Tezos for security tokenisation

(21:10) Self-amending feature of the Tezos blockchain

(24:34) Tenderbake — the ninth upgrade to Tezos, bringing much faster consensus on transactions

(27:44) Tezos in India — projects and efforts to grow the ecosystem

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds

Our guest today is Shrini Viswanath, co-founder at Upstox, one of India’s most popular online brokerages. In this conversation, Shrini talks about the long haul of entrepreneurship — taking the company from a proprietary trading outfit to a rapidly growing consumer-facing tech company used by millions of people to invest in the capital markets.

(00:40) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(01:00) Our Guest today — Shrini Viswanath, co-founder at Upstox

(02:15) Coming back to India and starting the company as a proprietary algorithmic trading business … “just the three of us”

(05:00) Self-funded in the initial years to 2012 when the retail business was launched

(06:40) NSE Now and an opportunity that not many other brokers saw

(08:00) The first plan on offer — unlimited trading for a flat fee

(09:50) Figuring out the big themes — building the company’s own software, and going mobile-first

(12:20) Rapid changes in the market due to multiple factors including Aadhaar and 4G and cheaper smartphones with better performance … “going all-in on mobile”

(14:45) How investing behaviour has changed; and changing from expert traders to investing on one’s own; changing demographics; changes in information to trade on

(17:45) “More people have more disposable income”

(18:40) Tech innovations at Upstox — enabling rapid information dissemination to creating communities and social aspects

(20:25) Still a growing number of traders and they want “smart tools” like “automated triggers”; and enabling easy trading in options

(23:55) Two ways of community building around common interests

(25:50) What the success of companies like Upstox means for India’s startup ecosystem — more product and design expertise locally, “building for India”

(29:15) Surging to 7 million customers and growing; 500 employees, many working remotely

(31:40) Ongoing funding and investors including Tiger Global

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds

Our guest today is Israeli serial entrepreneur Ofer Bengal, co-founder and CEO of Redis, a data management company in Silicon Valley. In this conversation, Bengal talks about how Redis has grown to be a popular data management platform for customers around the world to make their software applications go faster. Bengal also has some simple advice for Indian entrepreneurs aspiring to build deep engineering-based companies.

(00:40) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:57) Our guests today — Ofer Bengal, co-founder and CEO of Redis

(1:55) Redis — a data management company tackling the data-latency bottleneck to make software apps go faster

(04:10) The founding of Redis — identifying the data layer choke point and the parallel development of open source software and Redis Enterprise

(06:20) The first commercial product and its capabilities; adding additional versions of Redis Enterprise

(09:55) Scale of operations and popularity of Redis; revenue well above the $100 million mark; growth of 50 percent year over year

(11:50) Examples of how customers are using Redis — credit card companies, large e-commerce operations and online ad serving businesses

(14:40) Trends in open source software adoption among developers, communities and enterprise businesses

(18:45) India as a market for Redis and customers like Freshworks, GoMechanic, Razorpay, Sharechat, Sony Liv; plans to start a development centre in India

(22:15) Funding and plans ahead — promoting Redis’s adoption as more than a caching system, as a primary database itself; applications of AI

(25:50) The serial entrepreneurship experience — taking RIT Technologies public; designing aerospace components; selling toy concepts to US and Japanese toy makers

(28:05) Advice for India’s aspiring deep engineering entrepreneurs — don’t wait too long to talk to potential customers

(33:04) On taking Redis public

Our guests today are Ritesh Kumar, Sharad Sen Sharma, and Rohan Sen Sharma, co-founders of TranZact, a five-year-old Mumbai startup that has recently raised its series A funding to take its digitalisation platform to more small and medium enterprise customers in India. The next, net-savvy generation of SME entrepreneurs is more willing to try out such solutions than its forebears. Eventually, TranZact’s founders aim to build a data sciences based marketplace for millions of SMEs.

(00:40) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(00:58) Our guests today — Ritesh Kumar, Sharad Sen Sharma and Rohan Sen Sharma, co-founders of TranZact

(01:41) How TranZact came about — stumbling upon the lack of tech for more than 15 million SMEs

(4:45) The first commercial version — connecting different functions with an SME to manage their workflows better

(07:06) Excel sheets and Tally for accounting and the need for better solutions with growth

(09:26) An important product challenge — making it as attractive and user friendly as a consumer app on a mobile phone

(10:28) Moving towards a data sciences driven marketplace model

(11:52) Cloud software and freemium pricing

(12:51) Product innovations — automating estimations and costing

(15:25) Examples of the kinds of customers using TranZact — a Coke bottle  wrapper maker to an elevator springs manufacturer

(17:14) SMEs going from being tech averse to experimenting with new software; multiple software startups coming up with solutions tailored to SME needs and push from the government

(18:04) The younger generation is getting into running their parents’ businesses — they are more internet savvy

(19:53) Freemium pricing

(22:00) Takeaways from building TranZact so far

(27:02) Recent funding, and plans ahead

Theme music courtesy Free Music & Sounds

Our guest today is Rajeev Shah, co-founder and CEO of Celona, a Silicon Valley company specialising in the field of 5G wireless-based private cellular networks for enterprise customers. Rajeev has spent more than 20 years working on wireless communications technologies. With Celona, founded in 2019, he is equipping businesses with their own 5G-based private cellular networks—from industrial warehouses to hospitals. Much of the software for Celona is being developed at the company’s centre in Bengaluru.

(00:40) Intro to The Daily Tech Conversation

(01:00) Our guest today — Rajeev Shah, co-founder and CEO, Celona Inc.

(01:55) How Celona was started — A snapshot of Rajeev’s career, and the idea of cellular networks instead of wifi

(06:04) Celona’s first commercial product — Replacing wifi networks with cellular ones

(07:45) What Celona is evolving into — Early customer adoption and the basic premise of a cloud network for the physical world

(09:48) The core technology developed by Celona

(11:10) Innovations built into Celona’s product and business model — Bringing enterprises and cellular networks—hitherto considered separate—together

(14:02) Explaining the idea of enterprise cellular networks as a new paradigm for cloud — For industries based on the physical economy

(18:41) Examples — How Celona’s network helps a retailer’s warehouse robots stay connected; and a manufacturer to deploy remote-controlled driverless trucks

(23:15) Advances in AI, automaton and 5G wireless networks enabling remote operations around the world

(25:42) What sets 5G apart — Two main characteristics

(29:00) Celona’s centre of excellence in Bangalore and work in India

(31:14) Product development division of labour between Silicon Valley and Bangalore

(32:52) Next big plans at Celona

Low-code software development has been around for several years. So has the idea of the ‘citizen developer,’ a term which the business technology consultancy Gartner is said to have coined. After the Covid-19 pandemic, however, they have become truly relevant. In this conversation, from earlier in December 2021, Leonard Langsdorf, CTO of Digital Innovation Labs at Wipro’s Capco, talks about why the time has come for both low-code and no-code, and the rise of the citizen developer

Mark Papermaster wears multiple hats within AMD, where he is chief technology officer and executive vice president and in the semiconductor industry and forums such as the IEEE. Papermaster is one of the people credited with AMD’s turnaround over the last decade—a turnaround for which CEO Lisa Su became a widely acclaimed business leader. In this conversation from November 2021, Papermaster talks about what helped; the future of semiconductors; the company’s work in India; and his advice to aspiring engineers

As the world prepares for the cloud, technology has become central and strategic to banking—not just an enabler. New financial products, like buy now pay later, as well as new fintech partnerships via open APIs, are becoming all the rage. Traditional banks find themselves seeking a fine balance between not losing out on the opportunity and running up a roster of defaulting consumers. In this conversation from November 2021, Sanat Rao, CEO of Infosys Finacle, unpacks some of these emerging trends

Ericsson is one of the world’s biggest telecom equipment makers, supplying gear to more than half of the world’s telecom operators rolling out 5G networks. The Swedish company has had a presence in India since 1904. Today, it has more employees in India than at home—spanning operations and R&D. In this conversation, from October 2021, Magnus Ewerbring, Ericsson’s CTO for Asia Pacific, speaks about the innovation that could come out as the world moves to an estimated 3.5 billion 5G connections by 2026