Sandeep Murthy
20th March 2020
Rashmi Guptey
Tanvi Bhalinge
13th March 2020
29th January 2019
17th November 2020
1st January 2020
20th November 2017
16th May 2017
9th September 2020
3rd September 2020
6th September 2017
Sid Talwar
4th January 2017
16th February 2021
7th December 2020
20th January 2020
14th January 2020
4th February 2021
Karthik Jayaramam
30th May 2020
25th February 2020
Akshat Jain
12th February 2021
31st May 2020
16th April 2019
Atharva Purandare
9th August 2020
26th March 2019
2nd June 2018
19th June 2020
13th December 2019
20th November 2020
Shivani Daiya
20th February 2020
17th August 2014
18th July 2019
Maansi Vohra
28th January 2021
10th January 2021
31st October 2020
15th November 2014
8th March 2020
7th August 2018
27th December 2016
4th May 2014
29th September 2020
24th September 2020
26th July 2020
12th June 2020
15th October 2018
26th June 2018
13th June 2017
4th January 2016
Stemming from our own curiosity, we organised a small event at our office to dig deeper into AI and its impact on Indian businesses and consumers.
Popular consensus states that the advances that have taken place in deep learning over the last couple of decades are as fundamental as the advent of electricity. What we've seen so far is only the first wave of AI, and we're only starting to scratch the surface of what's possible. We wanted to understand what is happening in India and how it's being used.
On a balmy Wednesday evening in March, we hosted 'Recoding Business', to explore AI from specific vantage points. Lightbox partners Sandeep, Prashant and Sid spoke one-on-one with three experts knee-deep in solving India-specific problems in areas such as hyperlocal delivery, conversational interfaces and fashion.
Dale Vaz, Head of Data Science & Engineering at Swiggy"We want to be able to understand what the customer needs even before they state that need."
Aakrit Vaish, Co-founder & CEO at Haptik"If I was to start another company, one of the first three people I would hire would be a data scientist."
Ganesh Subramanian, Founder & CEO at Stylumia"The approach to solving the problem [of waste in fashion] has been 'Let's use recycled materials', but nobody looks at how to make less... Sustainability is improving the prediction accuracy and making the industry more effective."
Highlights from the event
Biggest takeaways:
– AI helps us understand consumers, their context and better predict their needs. Which is then used to create products that they actually want.
– AI recognises patterns that we wouldn't expect.
– More than a consumer-facing tech play, this needs a data-driven culture wherein every employee feels that they're contributing to a business' intelligence. Data is a raw material currently being overlooked.
– Faster insights and capturing trends as they emerge enables companies to be more sustainable. By effectively forecasting demand, we can limit supply and reduce wastage of resources.
– AI is critical to achieve scale. The volume of data being produced and moving parts cannot be tackled by humans alone.
– The data scientist has become an integral role for startups as well as established companies, to collect, catalogue and make sense of all the data coming in.
People spend on education because of employability. Employability leads to a better livelihood, a better quality of life. You don’t get to that kind of prosperity via MOOCS; you get there via cracking massively competitive exams. The world of exam prep has stayed largely offline, and it presents a very interesting opportunity. Technology coupled with data science can have a very meaningful impact on those exams.
Food is the only consumer product, where small, local brands have power. We don’t say “the guy at the end of the street makes the best computers". But we routinely say “that Mexican hole-in-the-wall place makes the best tacos ever”. Food is the most differentiated, most personal, most emotional of everything out there (barring your life partner).
AI in Indian education technology is probably the most advanced in the world. It is challenging traditional western models as well as integrating effectively with public and private systems in India.