Forbes India - Tech Conversations

In this episode, Dr. Jahnavi Phalkey, founding director of the Science Gallery Bengaluru, talks about how she got to be a historian of science and technology.

Jahnavi, who recently won the Infosys Prize for 2023 in the humanities category, harnesses a historian’s discipline and a storyteller’s craft to try and make science accessible to everyone. And, in her own words, to show that science doesn’t happen in isolation.

In this conversation, she also talks about the interplay of various factors that have influenced scientific research in India, and her aspiration that the Science Gallery should become a welcoming space for young people to explore whatever fascinates them, be it math or gaming or theatre, free of expectations.

In this episode, Annu Talreja, founder and CEO of Accacia, talks about how her company is helping real estate businesss accelerate their efforts to decarbonise their operations. Annu, an architect and urban planner by training, is building a carbon tracking and decarbonisation recommendation platform as a service platform at Accacia, her second venture, backed by marquee investors including Accel, B Capital, Blume Ventures and Rainmatter.

In this episode, Rafee Tarafdar, chief technology officer at Infosys, talks about what generative AI might mean for the future of the IT services industry. Rafee, who’s also a senior vice president and the head of the company’s strategic technology group, explains how becoming an “AI first” company, back-to-back with adapting to the “cloud-first” transformation in the industry, is changing Infosys from within, even as it helps customers implement and benefit from generative AI applications.

In this episode, Sidhant Rastogi, managing partner at Zinnov, a technology consultancy in Bengaluru, talks about why engineering R&D services is a promising area of outsourcing at the cusp of its next big phase of growth. As the world makes the energy transition from fossil fuel to renewables, the scope of the work that the Indian providers can offer is set to approach close to tier-1 supplier levels, going beyond software, catalyzed by the convergence of multiple technologies, he says.

Jyoti Gera, global general manager at GE HealthCare for general imaging and primary care ultrasound, talks about the future of precision medicine, including in markets such as India where access and affordability are crucial factors. Gera also talks about her own career, starting out as an engineer and rising to running a multi-billion-dollar engineering-intensive business, and why someone starting out today should equally care about the long run.

In this episode of Deep Tech India, GS Madhusudan, co-founder and CEO of Incore Semiconductors, gives us a sense of how we missed the bus on the semiconductor opportunity, decades ago. He also talks about how we have the opportunity today, and most of the ingredients, to build our own semiconductor ecosystem that could supply the world with made-in-India chips, starting with embedded applications.

In this episode, tech entrepreneur Madan Padaki talks about his journey from founding MeritTrak to the Head Held High Foundation and OneBridge. The foundation is a non-profit organisation that focuses on training rural youth.

Over the last 15 years or so, it has touched about 30,000 youth. Padaki also talks about how he sees philanthropy and entrepreneurship as two faces of a coin – with the former well suited to boost capabilities of large numbers of India’s youth, and the latter acting as an engine to generate economic opportunities for the same young people.

Welcome to another episode of EcoPreneurs. In this episode, Bhaktha Keshavachar gives us a quick update on his four-year old company Chara, in Bengaluru, where he and his fellow co-founders are close to commercializing a type of motor that eliminates the need for rare-earth metals.

In this conversation, Bhaktha walks us through the significance of this, explains the technology they’ve developed, and talks about the commercial launch later this year. Applications of such motors range from electric vehicles to industrial and HVAC systems, and even household appliances like washing machines.

Chara is backed by VC investors including Exfinity Venture Partners, Kalaari Capital and CIIE.

EcoPreneurs is a series of fortnightly conversations with entrepreneurs who are trying to make a difference in the global fight to mitigate climate change.

In this episode, Harrick Vin, CTO, and Sivaraman Ganesan, head of the AI.Cloud business unit at Tata Consultancy Services, talk about the company’s AI and generative AI strategies. With software and AI-based automation set to accelerate through this year and beyond, the aim is to augment customers’ ability to get more from technology in every aspect of their operations, and help them become owners of creativity, they say.

In this episode, Satish Ramchandani, co-founder and chief business officer of Updapt, gives us a quick update about the company which offers software solutions for businesses to manage their ESG, meaning environment, sustainability and governance, reporting. Updapt’s software product is past the product-market fit, Satish says, and the company has about 75 enterprise customers. The product is built for businesses anywhere in the world, he adds.