Forbes India - Tech Conversations

Tata Consultancy Services’ software engineering prowess is well known. CEO Rajesh Gopinathan, however, is on a mission to get the rank and file of the half-a-million-strong organisation to see themselves from a different perspective. In this conversation, from September 2021, Rajesh, one of the youngest CEOs in the Tata Group, did some impressive plain speaking about what needed to change within TCS and the efforts that were on to orchestrate that change.

Shekhar Kirani couldn't have imagined that a little Chennai outfit called Freshdesk (now Freshworks), started by a couple of nondescript engineers, would go on to deliver Accel's first US IPO from its Indian portfolio—and an Indian-founder-led software products company at that. In this conversation, from September 2021, Kirani talks about standing on the floor of the Nasdaq stock exchange, thinking about the power of entrepreneurship, and what makes for great founders and VC investors.

In September 2021, Girish Mathrubootham and co-founder Shan Krishnasamy made corporate and tech history in India with their company Freshworks becoming the first SaaS venture started by Indian entrepreneurs to list on the Nasdaq. In this conversation, from February, Girish talks about marrying the art of Indian entrepreneurship with the science of building billion-dollar businesses in Silicon Valley.

Atlassian's team collaboration software is used by customers around the world. And a little over three years ago, the Nasdaq-listed Australian tech company set up its third global R&D centre — in Bangalore. In this conversation, from August 2021, Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and co-CEO, talks about how Atlassian has grown through the pandemic and plans ahead for the India centre, which has emerged as the fastest-growing talent location for the company

Indegene, when it started more than 20 years ago, was ahead of its times in trying to bring technology to 'medico marketing.' Manish Gupta—a former Infosys executive—and his co-founders persevered and built a profitable multinational business offering AI and NLP platforms to the world's biggest drugmakers. Covid-19 took the demand for the Bengaluru company's technology to a whole new level. In this conversation, from July 2021, Manish recalls the journey and talks about what lies ahead

In recent years, interest and investments in quantum computing have picked up considerably with technology companies, as well as national governments, committing billions of dollars to develop commercial quantum computers. In this conversation from June 2021, Heike Riel, IBM Fellow, Head of Science and Technology and Lead, Quantum, IBM Research Europe, and Gargi Dasgupta, Director of IBM Research India and CTO of IBM India and South Asia, discuss the promise of this emerging technology.

Our guest today is Krishnan Ramanujam, president and head of business and technology services at Tata Consultancy Services, India’s biggest IT services company. In this concluding part of a two-part conversation, Krishnan talks about TCS’s strategy to build cloud ecosystems for customers—as the cloud model starts delivering much more than cost benefits—and the investments the company will need to make for it

Our guest today, is Krishnan Ramanujam, president and head of business and technology services at Tata Consultancy Services—India’s biggest IT services company. In this two-part conversation, Krishnan talks about TCS’s strategy to build cloud ecosystems for customers—in partnership with the ‘hyper scalers’ including AWS, Microsoft and Google—as the cloud model starts delivering much more than cost benefits

Our guest today is Abhinav Shashank, co-founder and CEO at Innovaccer. It is a Silicon Valley and Noida-based cloud software company in the health care vertical. In today’s conversation, Abhinav talks about Innovaccer’s latest funding round that saw the seven-year-old venture’s value nearly triple to $3.2 billion—from nine months ago—and the ambition to become a comprehensive platform for a proactive digital health services ecosystem

Our guest today is Sakshi Chopra, a managing director at Sequoia India, focused on growth investments at the VC firm. In today’s conversation, Sakshi unpacks the firm’s Spark programme, specifically aimed at helping women founders in India and South-East Asia. The programme has selected its first cohort of 15 women founders for a $100,000 no-strings-attached grant, each, and a year-long mentorship and networking exercise