THE TIMES OF INDIA, BENGALURU

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 25, 2023 19

On Jan 25, TIMES TECHIES

TECH I’D LIKE TO SEE in Hyderabad,
Panel 1: Accelerating business growth by leveraging

NON-NEWTONIAN COGNITION FOR MACHINES starts

12:30 pm
TECH DRIVE technology – Success stories from Hyderabad
Akshay Chowdhry, Group VP -

O ur physical world strongly mirrors

Newton’s third law – every action has
an equal and opposite reaction. But it is
not true of our cognition. We fail to
notice our clothes and ignore a
room’s smell after a while. This
process is called ‘habituation’.
Nonetheless, we react to novel
events such as someone walking in
with a coffee or an insect on our
t-shirt. Detection systems that
only react to `novel events’
in a stream, or cameras that
Dilawar Singh | co-founder & cto, subcom
store only `novel pixels’ would be very
useful when there are just a few needles
in a haystack. We frequently miss the Theme:
Gemini Edibles & Fats India Ltd
Ravinder Reddy, Director,
Bharathi Cement
latest but rare malicious activity in Fast-tracking
network traffic, because systems are Sri Harsha Bavirisetty, Co-founder
SMB growth
busy processing haystacks. Wouldn’t it & COO, Biliti Electric
be great if there is a general-purpose
through
neural fabric that pays attention only technology
Panel 2: The right tech tools for
to what is relevant and ignores the To register, please
fast-tracked business growth –
rest? We’d have a shot at creating an Keynote: Case studies scan the QR code
edge native intelligence that’ll be at SMBs –
least 1000x more resource- Raj N, Founder & Chairman, Zaggle
Fuelling the Jayesh Ranjan
efficient than the status quo. Capri Jalota, VP – Operations, AIG Hospitals, Hyderabad
Telangana principal secretary – ic & it,
growth story govt of telangana Abhay Egoor, CTO & Co-founder, Dhruva Space

5G, advances in 3D modelling How technology

are drawing metaverse closer is a catalyst for an
Real value will THE CRYPTO QUESTION! METAVERSE
frameworks around crypto are dif-
ferent across countries, and we
still don’t have a common digital
where metaverse use cases are
concentrated at the moment) and
probably get into more main-
inclusive future
come with NEEDS A COMMON DIGITAL CURRENCY currency that can operate in a
world which is borderless, and
stream applications,” he said.
Whether it is human beings or organisations, it is

large-scale
Metaverse is a global
phenomenon, so there are
legal and regulatory challenges
economy of around intellectual property rights,
data privacy, security and user
digital assets, protections, and then the
cryptocurrency part of the
and that will
story which the
government really needs
to address.
I see certain tech trends really which can operate in a way that What students should learn very important to have a purpose. Purpose gives
gaining speed, like spatial you don’t have to be identified For students hoping to contribute you a sense of direction, galvanises people, and
technologies, 3D modelling, and improves productivity.
technologies which will help you to
simulate real physical
with your own physical identity.
So, there are challenges to be first
to the metaverse’s creation, Bikram
Dasgupta, emerging technologies Harish Krishnan | md & chief policy officer,
cisco india and saarc
solved in the real world before we leader at EY’s global delivery ser-
spaces, and that’s
why I am pretty can get to a real asset economy in
the digital world,” he said.
vices consulting business, said
there are still mountains of work Everyone now discredits that old theory that an
optimistic about the
metaverse really Manish Grover, executive direc- left to do in areas like cloud com- organisation’s purpose is to earn profits for its
emerging. tor of strategic information sys- puting, IoT, cybersecurity, digital shareholders – that’s a very 19th century way of thinking.

take time Manish Grover | executive

Akhil George & Sujit John | tnn
director, strategic
Deepak Bhosale |
general manager, it,
tems at Indian Oil Corporation,
said 5G cellular networks will be a
identities & credentials, block-
chain tech (for all the value ex-
Today, you need to stand for something larger
than that.
information systems, asian paints gamechanger and should expedite change models), extended reality Rostow Ravanan | chairperson, nasscom foundation
indian oil corporation the creation of the metaverse. “5G and other immersive technologies,
When it comes to the metaverse, w i l l e n abl e not to men- We have created infrastructure where ideas can

L
ike ChatGPT now, it was the I think NFTs is an area that technology is moving much faster, more immer- tion AI and become startups. Which ideas come to us is a function
metaverse that kindled our corporations will start looking at far the rules and regulations and sive and re- spatial com- of where government funding is needed, areas where
imaginations through much more closely in the metaverse. frameworks are slightly behind, but sponsive vir- puting tech – market formation has not happened – like health,
of last year – a single, immer- That’s how you could build brands I’m sure our regulatory tual experi- the last of agriculture, energy, climate tech.
sive, 3D virtual world where our and you could have a lot of linkages authorities will take ences because which deals Chintan Vaishnav | mission director,
packed in a way you cognizance once the
avatars could do anything we do in the latency with, among atal innovation mission
really want to engage in. tech reaches a certain
the physical world. Today, the more We at Asian Paints size and scale.
will be re- other things,
sensational tones around it are are thinking along Harsh Kumar | duced and an the intrica- Shilpa Phadnis & Sujit John | tnn the country, said that in several
gone, and discussions are centering those lines. increasing cies of how areas, digital interventions will

around building the complex web
of technologies needed to bring it
to fruition. That’s what experts told
us in our webinar last week.
Deepak Bhosale, general man-
ager of IT at Asian Paints, said
that after creating a lot of excite-
ment, the metaverse is trying to
gain a new identity and that it
might take another 7-10 years for
it to exist the way we envision. The
metaverse, he said, is a combina-
tion of multiple digital technolo-
gies, and that he sees a lot of these
technologies now maturing. “5G
is coming, we have seen a lot of
maturity in spatial technologies,
the entire world of 3D modelling
has taken an exponential leap. All
these will help you simulate real
physical spaces and allow you to
get your avatars. And that’s why
I’m pretty optimistic about this
world really emerging,” he said.
Bhuwan Lodha, head of digital at
Aashish Kshetry | vp, it,
asian paints
To create an economy and to have
transactions in the metaverse, we
need to build a common digital
currency, and hence crypto, and
crypto has its own challenges. We
still don’t have a common
digital currency which
can operate in a world
which is borderless.
Bhuwan Lodha | senior vp
& head of digital,
mahindra & mahindra
Mahindra & Mahindra, said the
metaverse should ideally lead us to a
common large-scale economy in the
digital world. “And I purposefully use
the term `world economy’ and not just
`universe’ or `world’, because it needs
to have simulated transactions, one
that will allow people to transact and
interact with each other and have a
technology consulting
partner, ey india
5G is one of the most important
aspects for the metaverse,
because access to high-speed and
low latency is extremely
important for 3D models to be
really rendered and
streamed.
Bikram Dasgupta |
emerging technologies
leader , ey ’ s global
delivery services
consulting
purpose for being in the metaverse.
There is a long way to go before we
have a large-scale economy of digital
assets,” he said.
One of the prerequisites to
building an economy in the
metaverse, Lodha said, is to have
a common digital currency, and
hence crypto. “But the regulatory
amount of
data can be
transmitted in
real time. This
w i l l e n abl e
more realistic virtual environ-
ments and enable the creation of
more complex 3D objects,” he said.
Digital twin tech is another
fascinating area, one that IOC is
already taking a crack at, said
Grover. Digital twins are perfect
replicas of physical objects in the
digital world and the tech is con-
sidered crucial for a truly immer-
sive virtual world. It could lead to
entire cities like New York or
Mumbai having a virtual counter-
part in the metaverse one day.
Aashish Kshetry, VP of IT at
Asian Paints, said people will have
to go through a learning curve to
understand how to interface with
the metaverse. “It will have to get
out of only gaming (which is
people can
interact with
objects in a 3D
environment.
“These are
all technologies that our young
generation can really pick up. If
they are working on one, they can
learn multi-disciplinary technolo-
gies and focus on that, because that
is required to build a solution on
metaverse,” he said.
Harsh Kumar, technology con-
sulting partner at EY India, said
the metaverse is a multi-dimen-
sional problem and such an ap-
proach must be taken by students
looking to break into this space.
“You have to look at content, expe-
riences, hardware, platforms, and
then you’ll have to look at the ena-
blers and the governance matters
which relate to security. And last
but not the least is the business
angle,” he said.
I
n 1970, American economist
Milton Friedman wrote the
epochal essay, `The social re-
sponsibility of business is to
increase its profits.’ From there
emerged phrases like `greed is
good’, and that defined the world
economy in many ways over the
following decades. That theory
now, as Rostow Ravanan, chair-
person of Nasscom Foundation
and co-founder of Mindtree,
said at our webinar last week,
lies in tatters. Customers and
employees, he said, today want
to deal with organisations who
have a purpose beyond just mak-
ing money.
Towards purpose
Harish Krishnan, MD & chief
policy officer at Cisco India and
Saarc, noted a recent study by
consultancy firm Edelman that
found that 70% of employees
want their job to bring societal
transform our ability to deliver
services. “This is true for
healthcare, for agriculture, en-
ergy – anywhere that informa-
tion can transform behaviour,”
he said. Vaishnav provides the
example of watches that today
tell you about your health. “The
measurements they talk about
are biophysical activities. But
you have a digital view of that
biophysical activity, and now
you know, I walked only 4,000
steps today. And that changes
my behaviour. More of that will
happen with more sensing,
more network, cheaper informa-
tion exchange,” he said, noting
that these are areas many start-
ups in India are working on.
Creating capacity
The purpose-driven approach,
combined with the gover n-
ment’s mandate to certain cat-
egories of companies to spend

FINDING A CURE FOR SKIN PIGMENTATION impact, and 2% of their

How this couple if it does

not do that,
it could be a
deal break-
net profit
on CSR ac-
tivities,
has today

built a hit mobile er when

considering
a job.
Organi-
created
substantial
capacity to
g ive. B u t

cricket game
sations are often, non-
responding profits in-
to this sen- vo l ve d i n
timent. social ac-
Akhil.George@timesgroup.com That effort paid off in terms of at- Many today tivities do
tracting a diverse user base. “Very have a larg- n o t h av e

B
etween classes at ISB one day,
Keerti Singh looked around
at her classmates and real-
ised everyone was busy playing
games on their phones. That was
a eureka moment. Her husband,
Kashyap Reddy, had just pitched
an idea to her for a mobile cricket
game. Whatever doubts she had
about it, vanished.
Immediately after ISB, she took
up a leadership role at Amazon. But
within months, she quit to co-found
Hitwicket. That was in 2015. The
startup ecosystem, she notes, was
then dominated by ecommerce, food
delivery, and ed-
tech, and starting a
gaming studio was
CUTTING EDGE
against convention- MADE IN INDIA
al wisdom. “Hit-
wicket was a leap of faith,” she says.
Today, the second iteration of
Hitwicket, called Hitwicket Super-
stars, is a global hit with over
three million downloads across 100
countries. It won the PM’s 2020
Aatmanirbhar Bharat App Innova-
tion Challenge.
It is a free-to-play, multi-player,
cricket strategy game where you
few products in the world are as age-
agnostic, and agnostic to socio-eco-
nomic divides as Hitwicket. And it
appeals to both casual and hardcore
gamers,” says Kashyap.
Hitwicket uses the gaming en-
gine Unity. Unity is relatively easy
to use and perfect to build simple
games, but Reddy says problems
arise when you try to build a more
sophisticated game. “Particularly
when you’re trying to support mo-
bile users in India, where people
have low-end devices, and unstable
internet connections,” he says.
In a game app, latency can be
d ev a s t a t i n g . To
solve for this, Hit-
wicket’s engineers
spent time trying to
make the server re-
quests as lean as possible. “We put
as much of the data in the user’s
device as possible, like their squad
information. That way, they don’t
have to keep hitting the server,”
Kashyap says
Now they are working to create
a machine learning model to re-
duce the latency further. The ML
model will predict what you’re
er mission enough ca-
or purpose. For Cisco, Krishnan pacity to use the resources.
said, that purpose is to power an Ravanan said one of Nasscom
inclusive future for all. And he Foundation’s major work in-
said it’s not just a corporate so- volves giving non-profits tech-
cial responsibility (CSR) pur- nology and mentorship to cre-
pose, but one that’s built into the ate capacity. It also helps Nass-
Ahammune team: Dr Parul Ganju (third from left) and Dr Krishnamurthy Natarajan (fourth from left)
DNA of the company. “Our prod- com’s member companies to
Dr Parul Ganju and Dr Krishnamurthy Natarajan Integrative Biology. Her work on vitiligo ucts and services, they are all connect to the right causes. It
had spent years of research to understand human pathophysiology has been published in leading about connecting people and looks at how technology can be
skin pigmentation. While working with vitiligo journals like Proceedings of National Academy of things. When you connect the used for strategic mission-
patients, they realised the impact that this Science. She has filed for multiple patents. unconnected, magic happens. driven programmes, such as
disease has on them and their families, and the 350 million rural people are con- in healthcare, using the glob-
Dr Natarajan is professor at School of Life nected today, and now you have al experience of the member
lack of options to treat the disease. Sciences in JNU. He obtained his PhD from JNU
amazing gover nment pro- companies. And it has a major
Vitiligo is a debilitating autoimmune disorder and carried out ground-breaking work during his grammes like direct benefit skill development programme
where melanocytes, which are the colour- postdoctoral research at the National Institutes of transfer that have plugged a lot for disadvantaged youth, so
producing cells in skin, are lost. This results in Health, US, and in JNU.
the appearance of white patches. The efficacy The two have completed the first in-human
of leakages, and are promoting
inclusive growth,” he said.
that, as Ravanan said, “In-
dia’s demographic dividend
of existing drugs is limited and can have studies with a non-steroidal small molecule drug Technology is a crucial ele- does not tur n into a demo-
side effects. candidate for vitiligo. The results were accepted ment in ensuring inclusivity graphic noose.”
“The frustration of these patients made us by an independent data safety monitoring board and sustainability, given that it Krishnan said government
resolve to solve this problem,” says Dr Ganju. and the drug candidate was found to have makes it easy to scale and repli- partnerships are often crucial
That was the origin of the drug discovery excellent safety and tolerability. cate projects. Chintan Vaishnav, to the success of CSR pro-
company Ahammune Biosciences that they set up Ahammune’s funders include Anand Deshpande mission director at Atal Innova- grammes. “India is a graveyard
in Pune in 2016. (Persistent Systems), Suman Kant Munjal tion Mission, the government’s of successful pilots. With gov-
Dr Ganju completed a PhD in skin biology from (Rockman Industries), Ganesh Natarajan (former flagship initiative to create and ernment partnerships, if the
National Institute of Immunology in Delhi, and Zensar), Ajith Kamath (former Pfizer) and several promote a culture of innovation pilot succeeds, then they will
was a faculty at CSIR’s Institute of Genomics and institutional investors.  — Shilpa Phadnis and entrepreneurship across take it to the next level,” he said.

23 years in Zoho, never drafted a resume

manage your team, train them, bid
for star players on the game’s mar-
ket, and win championships. Kashy-
ap says it took him, Keerti and a
small team of designers about six
months to build it. They then did
user interviews, acquired data, and
iterated to the point where they felt
likely to do in the app and fetch that
information in the background be-
fore you do it. This will be based on
your past behaviour. For example,
as soon as you start the game, do
you play a match? Or do you per- Sindhu.Hariharan It was a life-changing mo- to network monitoring to appli- a widely used management pro-
form other actions first? Knowing @timesgroup.com ment. She was the first graduate College grads think cation performance tracking and tocol in telecommunications).
this can reduce real- in her family. After graduation, about placements only end-user-experience manage- “We didn’t even have a machine

R
there was a right balance of fun, time server de- ajalakshmi Srinivasan
audio-visuals, and depth of strategy. pendence. grew up in Kurinjipadi in
Cuddalore district of Tamil
Nadu, a town best known for han-
We used AI and a lot of data from previous T20
dloom production. Her father
matches to conceptualise our math engine and
runs a small business, her moth-
determine the odds of various actions. We know
er’s a homemaker. Rajalakshmi
the odds, for example, if a Malinga is bowling
went to school in
to a player like Tendulkar, what are the
kinds of runs that he is likely to score!
Neyveli, about 14
km away.
INSPIRATION
Kashyap Reddy | co-founder & ceo, hitwicket In 1995, she got a
computer science engineering
seat at Anna University’s College
Hitwicket is designed for those looking to of Engineering in Chennai. It
move away from the conventional bat and ball was a struggle to convince most
gameplay by engaging in a format that involves of her family to let her go. Fortu-
strategy and deep thinking. nately, her mother backed her.
Keerti Singh | co-founder & vp, growth, hitwicket “She insisted that I grab the op-
portunity,” Rajalakshmi says.
a chance connection by her pro-
fessor took her to Vembu Sys-
tems (what Zoho Corporation
was called in 1999) as employee
number 55 and fourth woman in
the team.
Rajalakshmi’s into her 24th
year at Zoho. She
has never drafted a
resume in her life,
and hasn’t felt the
need to. “I have had no second
thoughts about my decision; have
always wanted to work at a place
where my personal goals align
with work,” she says.
Rajalakshmi knew Java well
from its early days in 1999. She
joined Zoho as a software devel-
in the last few months, but ment. She says no certification for the protocol; there was only
organisations today are or edtech course can replace on- one system in the US, and I used
looking for people showing the-job learning. “While my to align my work to its availabil-
four years of progressive typical day today involves ity,” she says.
learning.
design discussions and se- Rajalakshmi today also men-
Rajalakshmi Srinivasan |
curity reviews, I make it a tors students at academic institu-
- product management,
director point to sit with the techni- tions, and junior women techies
zoho corp cal team and keep in touch at Zoho. “No one knows how the
oper and is today director
with my coding roots
whenever I can,” she
tech sector will evolve in the fu-
ture, and a willingness to keep
of product manage- says. She was one learning is critical,” she says.
ment, managing a of the first set of Women professionals, she
cloud-based moni- techies at Zoho says, must prioritise their tasks
toring product. digging into at home and work. “If you do
She has g rown TL1 protocol that, you need not multitask and
along with the $1 in the early burn out,” she says. Rajalakshmi
billion revenue days (TL1 or runs marathons, participates in
company – from Transaction cleanup drives, loves travelling
database scaling Language 1 is with her family.