Building AI for the next 6bn
Artificial Intelligence will completely redefine our society and businesses, adding $15.7 tn of new economic value globally by 2030(PWC). Companies with AI at their core will be the dominant companies for tomorrow. Tomorrow's car company is going to be an autonomous car company... Tomorrow's hospitals may not look like the ones today. Further, AI-driven cars built in Silicon Valley will not work in India, given a very different environment. However autonomous cars built in India might work in Silicon Valley. The AI talent, data diversity and magnitude (Aadhaar, the unique ID platform by Govt. of India has 1.36 billion people enrolled) that countries like India offer, make them the best place to build robust AI - AI that will work everywhere, is ethical and that will be good for humanity too. We call it AI for next 6 billion people in the developing world.
AI foundry is an investment company to build leapfrog AI companies and ecosystem for 6bn people. We partner with great entrepreneurs and AI rockstars to build these next generation AI first companies.
AI-driven finance for gig workers
Karmalife is AI driven financial platform for gig workers' financial needs. Post Covid19, gig working is becoming mainstream, but current financial systems are built with traditional employment channels with physical asset driven risk modelling. We are leveraging AI driven KarmaScore(based on financial, work, social and personal data collected through mobile sensors with privacy safeguards) to develop a digitally connected partner ecosystem for ‘gig workers’ — comprised of employers, merchant vendors, financial institutions, and solution providers, and establish a subscription-based business model. It is 100% digital operating model for the delivery of financial services, like credit, insurance, savings & investments, that is on-demand, personalized, modular, affordable and flexible. Gig workers are becoming data rich before becoming asset rich. Currently the largest in India, they are looking to expand to other geographies. Future of banking is not in physical assets, but rather in understanding of data assets.
What are we building now?
K-12 learning for AI age
In the AI age, learning is not about remembering answers (which ChatGPT can do easily), but rather learning to learn. In an age, where knowledge and information will be everywhere, key would be to figure out where to apply it and how. Self learning, peer to peer learning and learning by doing are critical pillers for "AI for learning age".
$100mn Venture fund for AI & Robitics companies
Human like AI is going to create the next disruptive generation of companies. ChatGPT has shown a glimpse of what is possible, however in next 10-15 years, AI first companies will disrupt every single vertical by driving down costs, while increasing accessibility. India with its massive data and talent, in collaboration with global ecosystem can produce such winners. ART Venture Fund (Cat2 AIF) aims to back such AI first companies.
Intelligent enagagement for healthcare providers
vEngage provides a platform for Healthcare Providers to keep engaged with patients while they recover at home. It brings a holistic approach (not just vital) to patient engagement with symptom monitoring, medication, diet & exercise compliance, health tips and early warning signs. Currently working across 3 continents.
AI & Robotics Technology Park
ARTPARK (AI & Robotics Technology Park) is a joint initiative of Indian Institute of Science & AI Foundry, set up as a section 8 company (Not for Profit) with seed grant of 230 cr/$32mn from Department of Science and technology (Govt. of India). It is set up as the premier research translation park with a global collaborative ecosystem.
How do we help?
We bring data, talent, domain and research apart from the capital to help you create the leapfrog AI venture all the way from Idea to scale.
1. Ideate & Research : We work with leading entrepreneurs, universities or partners/govt. to trigger potentially leapfrog ideas in the chosen sectors. We work deeply with them to bring validated AI research to a level where it can be prototyped.
2. Prototype : We help prototype the research to create a product with our resources and network of EIRs (Entrepreneurs in Residence) and TIRs (Technologists in Residence). We provide capital and infra support for product design, development and distribution.
3. Product to market : Once the idea reaches the product market fit, we help launch it as a company along with entrepreneurs in residence, the team & strategic investors/VCs. We continue to work closely with the company post the launch as cofounders.
4. Scale : We help the company scale by providing capital, data sets, cutting edge AI research talent, partner network and IP access, in the growth and scale stage.
5. Capital : AI companies have distinct need for smart capital, which understands the whole ecosystem from data, talent . We help companies by marrying their vision with capital from the right ecosystem.
This way we aim to grow a cluster of 15-17 AI companies for next 6bn users over this AI decade.
Our Team
We like to roll up our sleeves and help our entrepreneurs in building AI technology, products, strategy, raising money, business development & anything else that is there on their minds
Umakant Soni
Co-founder, Chairman
Before co-founding AI foundry, Umakant co-founded piVentures, a $35m early stage fund for AI (India’s first & only AI focused fund), investing in close to 15+ leading AI companies in India (Sigtuple, Niramai, Locus.sh & others). He also advisor at generative AI startup, Pixis. He has spent more than 10 years in AI space (Founded India’s first AI bot startup in '09) as an entrepreneur, strategy thinker and investor in enterprise, healthcare & logistics. He is also co-founder of ARTPARK, India's first AI & Robotics technology park promoted by IISc and seed funded by DST & GoK to the tune of 230 cr($32mn). He is an advisor to Govt. of India in AI policy and research ecosystem creation. Ex-Director India for Science Inc., he spent time in strategy and innovation roles at Wipro Ltd., one of the leading IT Services companies. IIT Kanpur Alum. Abstract painter in his spare time.
Subhashis Banerjee
Co-founder, CEO
Subhashis is an entrepreneur and investment banker from his background and has previously worked for Standard Chartered Bank Real Estate Private Equity Fund, Tata Housing Development Company, Sequoia Capital, Tishman Speyer Private Equity Fund. He also confounded and served as CIO(Chief Investment Officer) at ARTPARK, growing an ecosystem of 19+ AI startups. He has worked and lived in most major cities of India and understands the real estate dynamics of those cities well. The list includes Mumbai, Bangalore, NCR, Chennai, Hyderabad, and Kolkata. He has been deeply involved in deals for both the residential market and office market as an investment banker and advised companies in domains like AI, financial sector, travel & logistics, defence apart from real estate. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Calcutta.
Pulkit Agrawal
Co-founder, Chief Scientific Advisor
Pulkit is an academic and an entrepreneur focused on working in common sense/Humanlike AI, one of the next big evolutions in AI. He is Asst. Professor at MIT CSAIL leading "Improbable AI" lab, which helped create "MIT Mini Cheetah". He is also Co-founder of SafelyYou Inc, which is applying computer vision to prevent falls in elder care homes. His research focuses on curiosity driven machines & common sense problem in Robots. He has a PhD from BAIR (Berkeley AI Research) and Bachelors from IIT Kanpur. He was awarded the Director’s Gold Medal for best all round achievement and leadership at IIT Kanpur and is excited by the quest for singularity. He is also an accomplished musician.
Neeraj Gupta
Co-founder, IP & AI Global Ecosystem
Neeraj Gupta was one of the early contributors to Torch, the deep learning framework, back in the days when neural nets used to work only on super-compute. He founded FormulateIP, based in India and Canada with focus on helping AI businesses using IP protection, licensing and strategic planning. He also co-founded Excubator, one of the leading startup incubators in Bangalore. He is the Governing Council Member at IIT Alumni Centre Bengaluru, IITACB. Masters in Mathematics from KTH, Stockholm with a Minor in Machine Learning. Alumnus of IIT Roorkee.
Rohit Rathi
Pioneer, Co-founder Karmalife
Rohit Rathi shouldered the responsibility of technology and product development for Smartron, one of the most innovative mobile phone companies out of India. He spearheaded advanced R&D, innovation and IP creation in the areas of smart, sensors, robotics, artificial intelligence, cloud and big data technologies. In the past, he has been Founder-Director and CTO of Notion Ink and pioneered the effort to make the country’s first tablet device. Prior to that, he worked with Xilinx-India in 2008-2009. Mr. Rathi is an IIT Kharagpur graduate and likes to think about design deeply.
Dr. Vijay Chandru
Pioneer
Vijay Chandru is an academic entrepreneur having spent nearly 40 years as an academician. After completeing his PhD from MIT he has been a tenured professor at Purdue University for a decade in the 1980s and the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore since then. A fellow of both the academy of science and engineering, he is currently an Indian National Academy of Engineering's Distinguished Technologist in Bio-Engineering at IISc. He co-founded Strand Life Sciences, India’s leading precision medicine solutions company, an offshoot of IISc in 2000 & served as Executive Chairman till 2018. Vijay is also co-founder of OPFORD Foundation, a non-profit in India with an open platform for orphan diseases and with a mission to support the development of affordable and accessible therapeutics for orphan diseases of which many are rare genetic disorders.
Dr. Lalitesh Katragadda
Pioneer
Dr. Lalitesh Katragadda is a pioneer in crowdsourcing. His creation, Google Map Maker, quadrupled the world's digital maps corpus, bringing maps to 4 billion in 187 countries that had no maps before. His startup was Google’s first acquisition in 2002 after which he co-founded Google India, acting as Country Head, Google India Products until 2014. He now builds population scale platforms for India's Billion including Avanti for financial inclusion and Indihood, crowdsourcing for communities and core development challenges. Lalitesh received his Ph.D. and MS from CMU in Robotics and Computer Science, where he led the CMU Lunar Rover Initiative. He holds an MS, Design Division, Stanford, MS, Aerospace, Iowa State and B-Tech, IIT-Bombay.
Dr. Arjun Jain
Pioneer
Dr. Jain is the co-founder of Perceptive Code a Silicon Valley AI startup that builds intelligence into automobiles using Deep Learning. He also co-founded Uavio, a drone company focused on GPS denied environment. He is part of the Theano development team and a contributor to Torch - both of which are widely used libraries for Deep Learning. Dr. Jain received his Ph.D. from the Max Planck Institute in Germany and his post-doc from NYU where he worked with Yann LeCun.
Badal Malick
Pioneer, Co-founder Karmalife
Badal has worked for 20 years in India and the US and has extensive experience in financial services, technology, innovation and business transformation having worked with Fortune 500 companies and Governments, public-private partnerships, and large-scale innovation programs. Previously, he was Founding CEO at Catalyst, a USAID and Ministry of Finance sponsored program. He has advised the National Payments Corporation of India. He has also worked as VP at SnapDeal, Group Product Manager at Intuit, Senior Engagement Manager at McKinsey & Co., and Economist at the World Bank. Badal holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management, a Masters of Science in Economics from the University of Wisconsin, and a BA in Physics & Economics from Brandeis University. He is a 2019 Chevening Financial Services Fellow recognized by the UK Government. .
Navin Buddha
Pioneer, Co-founder Karmalife
Naveen Budda is the co-founder of Karmalife. In his previous avatar, he has created AI labs at Smartron under the tronX platform, one of the most innovative mobile phone companies out of India. His expertise in the area of Computer Vision , Mobile Security and Data Science.Has 10 patents in different areas. Worked at Samsung R&D, Celstream, Sasken.
We are collaborative partners
We are creating an "idea to impact innovation engine" globally to help solve large problems with AI, specially looking at developing world. For that we need to bring together global universities, AI research parks and labs, Global VCs, Investors and AI ecosystem together.
Partners
Indian Institute of Science
ARTPARK
QS World University rankings ranked IISc second in the world in terms of citations per faculty. With more 2000+ PhD students it is one of the leading universities in India and Asia too. IISc has one of the largest AI & Robotics research cluster with more than 60+ faculty members and 400+ masters and Ph. D. students.
Sweden India Business Council
Sweden-India Innovation Bridge
Sweden-India Business Council is one the world’s most active country to country networks. are the secretariat on the Swedish side for the India Sweden Business Leaders' Roundtable under the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi CEO forums.
Contact Us
First floor, Indiqube Orion, 24th Main Rd, Garden Layout, Sector 2, HSR Layout, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560102
Google maps link : AIfoundry
© 2020