AI’s real role, according to DevRev co-founder; Powering India’s space ambitions

Hello,

The thrill of giving lasts a lifetime.

BrowserStack co-founders Ritesh Arora and Nakul Aggarwal have committed Rs 100 crore to their alma mater, IIT Bombay, to support campus infrastructure development, with a focus on upgrading student residential facilities.

They join other startup founders who found it apt to give back to the institutes that gave them all.

Last year, Zerodha co-founder Nithin Kamath made a generous donation to IISc Bengaluru to honour his father’s memory. Also, Mindtree co-founder Subroto Bagchi donated Rs 55 crore to Ahmedabad University for public health education and research.

Fundamentally, giving back helps people. However, Indian philanthropy lacks drive.

Bain & Co’s India Philanthropy Report 2022 found that India UHNIs only contribute 0.1-0.15% of their wealth to charitable causes. It noted that family philanthropy is expected to grow at 13% per year.

But some startup founders are taking the next step. 

A couple of years ago, Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath became the youngest Indian to join ‘The Giving Pledge’ foundation, founded by Warren Buffet, Melinda French Gates, and Bill Gates. It is a commitment made by wealthy businessmen, individuals and families to give the majority of their wealth to charitable causes.

When you give back, you also pay it forward.

In today’s newsletter, we will talk about 

• DevRev co-founder on AI’s real disruption
• Powering India’s space ambitions
• What Urban Company’s IPO holds

Here’s your trivia for today: Which liquor was banned in many countries in the early 1900s due to its reputation for causing hallucinations and insanity?

Interview

DevRev co-founder on AI’s real disruption

For serial entrepreneur Dheeraj Pandey, the biggest myth about artificial intelligence is still that it behaves like a “magic wand.” 

In a conversation with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory, the DevRev co-founder and former Nutanix CEO believes  that data remains fundamental for any AI system to reason well within an enterprise setting. 

“One of the biggest myths about AI is that people still believe that it’s a magic wand, which doesn't require any extra inputs—because it's intelligent. A lot of it is about data and knowledge that you feed to it. And if you don't do it right, you will get garbage,” says Pandey. 

India’s role in AI:

• AI, he says, is next in that lineage, with the unification of scattered enterprise data. By collapsing the walls between sales CRM, support desks, ITSM tools, and developer platforms, DevRev aims to unify these into a single “enterprise knowledge graph”.
• He argues that India’s IITs are barely doing any research. “We need to get that generation to come out and say that we can be better than the West. We don't have to become engineers. We can become researchers,” he proclaims. 
• “As humankind, it took us 300,000 years to learn about things, understand society, giving empathy, and civilisation. In the next thousand years, it'll be hard for it [AI] to actually be emotionally intelligent without really feeding it a lot of traces of emotions,” Pandey says.

Funding Alert

Startup: KALKI Fashion

Amount: Rs 225 Cr

Round: Equity

Startup: Kult

Amount: $20M

Round: Series A

Startup: Saimirra Innopharm

Amount: Rs 160 Cr

Round: Equity

Startup

Powering India’s space ambitions

N Space Tech, a Hyderabad-based startup, specialises in radio frequency (RF) subsystems, antennas, radar systems, and small satellites (CubeSats) that enable secure, seamless communication between space assets and Earth.  

What started as a two-member initiative has now grown into a 40-member team working on projects with ISRO, DRDO, BDL, BEL, NARL, and CDAC.

To the stars:

• Initially focused on component-level work, the startup is now transitioning to end-to-end systems. It is building a full-stack CubeSat platform integrating solar panels, power electronics, and communication modules. 
• N Space Tech’s SwetchaSat-V0, launched aboard ISRO’s PSLV-C60/POEM-4 in December 2024, demonstrated its UHF communication module in orbit. The data packets from the satellite were successfully received, confirming system reliability under real space conditions.
• It is advancing R&D into electronically scanned arrays, programmable RF modules, and reconfigurable radar architectures for missile tracking, air defence, and strategic surveillance.

Analysis

What Urban Company’s IPO holds

Urban Company is finally having its moment in the sun. The Delhi-NCR-based company is looking to raise Rs 429 crore from a fresh issue of shares, along with investors offloading shares worth Rs 1,471 crore in an offer-for-sale component.

Its bid for a public debut comes weeks after the company converted into a public entity earlier this year, and around a year after it first declared itself profitable on a profit-before-tax level.

Key takeaways:

• The Abhiraj Bhal-led company had initially planned for a Rs 3,000 crore IPO. Earlier this month, it had reduced the size of the fresh issue to Rs 528 crore, and now it's seeking a fresh issue size of Rs 429 crore.
• Promoters and founders Bhal, Chandra and Khaitan collectively own 20% of the company, each with a stake of 6.67%. Coincidentally, founders are not expected to offload any shares in offer-for-sale.
• Urban Company is looking to deploy proceeds from its fresh issue to develop new technology and cloud infrastructure, a crucial part of its core business services.

News & updates

• Course correction: The White House confirmed plans for the Trump administration to soften the impact of automotive tariffs, as the car industry grapples with regulatory uncertainty and additional costs. Current tariffs of 25% on imported vehicles into the US will continue, but the new measures will prevent other adjacent levies.
• Competition: A batch of Amazon satellites hitched a ride to low-Earth orbit. The launch kicks off the first instalment of Amazon’s Project Kuiper, a plan to create a massive constellation of internet-beaming satellites. The effort is poised to compete directly with Starlink.
• Seat-belt off: Commodity prices are set to fall sharply this year and next, as rising tariffs lead to a slowdown in the global economy, easing inflationary pressures but hitting many poor countries hard, the World Bank said. In a report, the bank said the anticipated declines in prices will cap the most volatile period since the 1970s.

Which liquor was banned in many countries in the early 1900s due to its reputation for causing hallucinations and insanity?

Answer: Absinthe.

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