I had the privilege of attending an enlightening GenAI session by Sriram Natarajan, hosted by Draper Startup House and eChai Ventures in Koramangala, Bangalore. 

It's excited to explore GenAI's potential for startups. LLaMA 3’s advanced language capabilities and ChatGPT’s real-time conversational AI enhance content creation and customer support. Integrating these models with a Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) system and APIs, combined with fine-tuning using specific data, ensures tailored sol

Build a Product that your users can't live without it Says Sriram Natarajan.

Meet Sriram, a TEDx Speaker, Former Engineering Lead at Google, and now building Yuni , a GenAI Startup, Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst | Research, and LEAD from Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

It was such a great opportunity to learn about OpenAI, LLM models and building AI products from Sriram.

He presented a case study on predicting a final exam score using AI, covering everything from prototype design and pilot testing to production with Llama 3.1.

We discussed the policies, guradrails and the billions of parameters required to build AI models, and how domain-specific datasets are essential for developing AI products.

Even though I don't have an engineering background, I was able to understand the design concepts you talked about at the event.

Sriram also explained some challenges in AI, such as predicting simple math problems, where AI incorrectly predicted 9.11 as greater than 9.9.

There's still a lot to improve in AI. However, AI is the next big reality, and it will be exciting to see how it evolves in the coming years.

I really liked your answer about monetizing AI products.
You explained it well with an example: Two years ago, hardly anyone used ChatGPT, but now if you ask people, many would be willing to pay if the free usage stopped. So, the key is to create a product that your users love and encourage users to pay for them.

As you all know, Bangalore is an IT city, and our software engineers had many questions about building great AI products.

If you're building AI products and seeking expert guidance, connect with Sriram Natarajan.

I sincerely thank Sriram for coming and making the event great.

Key Takeaways from the Recent Event with Sriram Natrajan:

✅ Understanding the complexity of AI development and the importance of robust datasets in building effective AI products.

✅ Insights into overcoming AI challenges, such as improving accuracy in simple tasks, highlighting the ongoing need for AI refinement.

✅ Strategies for creating product dependency and effective monetization, ensuring users see the indispensable value in AI solutions.

✅ Networking with industry leaders and gaining valuable perspectives on fostering innovation and collaboration within multidisciplinary teams.

A special thanks to eChai Ventures, Draper Startup House , Mansi Baheti, and Jatin Chaudhary for organizing such an insightful event.

P.S: Follow Bhavik Gupta and Startups Manch for startup ideas and exploring opportunities.

🌟eChai Startup Social in Gandhinagar x GNLU🌟

Pleasure hosting the eChai Startup Social in Gandhinagar x GNLU!

It was an amazing opportunity to connect, share, and collaborate with fellow entrepreneurs, educational leaders, and enthusiastic professionals and students. The small group setting facilitated candid conversations and meaningful exchanges, making it a truly productive gathering.

Here's to more such events that foster innovation and collaboration in the startup ecosystem!

Stay Tuned!🚀

- Ekta Shah, Co-Founder & CEO of Biziverse
- Vishal Dhamecha, Founder of Rhyno EV
- Rushirajsinh Jadeja , A1 Acid Limited
- Harshal Patel, Caxsol
- suraj soni, Cybx Technolabs
- Gajanan Pawar, Team Building Coach from Kreedatantra
- Niravkumar Suthar, Assistant Professor, Computer Department,VGEC
- Zahinraza Asaria, VC Fellow - Anthill Ventures
- Jaydip Solanki, Senior Odoo Developer
- Rohit Kuntal, Event Organiser
- Govind Prajapati, Innovator
- Taksh Patel, Innovrative

Jatin Chaudhary | eChai Ventures | GNLU Legal Incubation Council GLIC | Gujarat National Law University

#Community - That space that always finds new people for you to meet, pushes you beyond limits, and puts you in situations that let you learn even if that means getting out of those formal shoes and playing pickleball barefoot after a fulfilling day at work or being behind the scenes at a large event amongst 50 other volunteers on a Saturday at a brewery.

You don't have to be the best, you need just to show up and magic happens! ✨

The last 4 days have taken me by storm, one that yet again reminded me that relationships and conversations are key to growth. While I continuously shuffled between my hat of being a volunteer at Headstart Network Foundation and leading a community at Razorpay Rize, the core of it all was interacting with founders, investors, enablers, partners and experts from 20+ cities in India that came together for #BangaloreSlushD. 

Huge shoutout to all the volunteers in the frame who have full-time jobs and yet have spent time over the last 4 months to bring this together. Grateful to be a part of this! 🤩 

As I prepare for the week ahead, here's a quick reminder for anyone out there who needs a push - The Time to Startup Is NOW! 🚀 

🦄 Thank you for joining us in the eChai Ventures Fundraising for Startups meetup at Draper Startup House Koramangala, Bengaluru! 🚀

I'm glad that Jatin Chaudhary was onboard when I said I'd curate and moderate a women-only panel for this subject. It wasn't a women-only event. Everyone was welcome. But the fact that I had these amazing women speakers from the world of venture capital spend their Saturday evening with us made it a wholesome gathering!

Sharing some snippets here -

Aditi Sinha believes she and her team at IndiaQuotient don't just invest in a startup but marry them! They grow together, brainstorm, pivot if need be and go beyond the boardrooms to show up in the journey.
💰Heavy on India SaaS owing to the growth potential
💰 Highlighted portfolio company FRND for their tightly knit tech team and immense learnings on consumer behaviour and power users
💰Interesting investments this year include Utsav App in the spiritual tech space and kim.cc
💰Recommends listening to The 20-minute VC by Harry Stebbings
💰Hiring: For founder office roles in Series A and Series C startups in her portfolio companies

Ashna Agarwal believes growing up in a Marwari family fuelled her curiosity since childhood. So she'd not just visit a restaurant for a family outing but also ask questions around how'd they make money to run that business.
💰In her work at Jungle Ventures, they invest in seasoned entrepreneurs and write a cheque size that's relatively bigger at that funding stage
💰Interesting investments this year include NIC Icecreams and Atomberg Technologies
💰Recommends reading The Economic Times and Inc42 Media that covers a large chunk of news without burning a hole in your pocket with all the paid subscriptions
💰Hiring: For a D2C startup in her portfolio company - Brand marketer with 7+ years of work experience

Vaishvi Bansal and her friends ran a Shark Tank style competition in college. From conceptualisation to execution, it was a three-month long rigorous learning that led to a total of eight startups raising around 25 Lacs! That was her first taste of what it takes to raise funds and "once you taste the blood, it's difficult to not go back to it", she quips.
💰 In her work at Marwari Catalysts, they are mostly the first ones to write a cheque for the startups and bring co-investors with them
💰Just the way founders look for a product market fit, they look for a founder market fit to ascertain that it's a good match!
💰Highlighted her portfolio company Turms (Bigphi Technologies Pvt. Ltd.) which has MS Dhoni promoting it
💰Hiring: Her portfolio companies are hiring. You can visit the company's website for details

We ❤️ the elevator pitches from founders along with some thoughtful questions from the audience!

Sunday Cheer: Share a picture with your pet in the Comments! The last pic has Nivin Joseph's Paris 🐶 

Cracking the Code on AI in Business: What We Learned! 🔥

Yesterday’s meetup was a deep dive into how AI is reshaping the business landscape. Yash Shah broke down some fascinating insights that really got us thinking.

Key Takeaways:

- Autopilot vs. Copilot: AI is either doing the work for you or helping you do it better. Think Alexa vs. ChatGPT. Both are game-changers, but in different ways.

- Verticalized AI: It’s not just about having AI; it’s about fine-tuning it for specific industries or even individual clients. The days of generic solutions are fading fast.

- AI-Native Experiences: The real disruptors will be companies that build with AI from the ground up, not just retrofitting old systems.

- Data is King: Accurate data is the fuel for AI. If your data’s off, your AI won’t hit the mark either.

- Distribution Challenges: Even with AI, getting your product in front of the right audience is tougher than ever.

It’s clear—AI is here to stay, but the winners will be those who can think strategically about how to leverage it. Thanks to eChai Ventures and GVFL Limited for hosting the event.

The current controversial job quota bill in Karnataka and the rising hate for migrants in Bangalore remind me of this book that I read last year.

"We are all descended from migrants."

We humans have been a migratory species fundamentally. Most people move in search of work or economic opportunity, to join family, or to study. Others move out of necessity to escape conflict, persecution, etc.

Curiosity has been central to the human species and it continues to remain rightfully so with the global migration that happens to date. Overall, the estimated number of international migrants has increased over the past five decades. As per a UN migration report, a total of 281 million people live in a country other than their country of birth.

Migrants have been central to building and scaling economies across the globe. Be it the Silicon Valley of the USA or the Silicon Valley of India, migrants have played a crucial role in both. Tech giants like Apple, Amazon, Google, and Facebook were all founded by first or second-generation immigrants. According to a report, migrants contributed roughly 10% percent to global GDP.

This book is a history of us all - after all, we have all descended from our migrant ancestors. And the book continues to be ever more relevant in the current geo-political scenario associated with migrants.

Feeling grateful about interacting with co-panelists from various industries for a marketing panel discussion organised by eChai Ventures & Growth School in Bangalore.

Some 'Ahaa' moments for me were:

1) Ayushi Mona Singh gives an incredible example of vimal panmasala to showcase how key it is to know your customer
2) Siddharth Kumar (SK) talking about how topicality can be leveraged for addressing key consumer pain points in your industry
3) Sanjeet Kathuria discussing challenges of tough industries like fintech especially while planning GTMs of various markets
4) Chandana Pitta having an incredible B2B SAAS marketer journey with a hypergrowth start ups and she sharing snippets of this wonderful journey
5) Deepu Sukumaran Nair explaining the 'why', 'what' and 'how' of personal branding on Linkedin.

The audience was incredibly wonderful and Jatin Chaudhary thanks for moderating the session so well :)

About AI - this is how the world reacted....

First, it was - OMG! Applause!! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻

While trying hands-on - Wow! I'm the God with AI super power... 😇

While fine-tuning prompts - **spends 3 hours** - is this really that good? 😱

Once the romance is over - It's good, not great.. HI will prevail over AI. 🤯

Well, some AI enthusiasts met at GVFL Limited yesterday as part of eChai Ventures' AI meet up yesterday. A big shoutout to Yash Shah for putting together his thoughts in a comprehensive deck. Quite insightful.

Happy to see the enthusiasm around AI and some folks doing really epic work in this space. Here's to you guys:

Vinit B Yadav showcased how Veloxhire.AI can solve bulk hiring problem. Ketul Shah at Groundup.ai is making a formidable use case for industry application of AI and Amit Tiwari at ATSN AI is creating awesome chat application using AI.

Thanks Jatin Chaudhary for putting together this meetup. 

🦄 Thank you for joining us in the eChai Ventures Product Growth meetup at Urban Vault 1515, HSR, Bengaluru! 🚀

Recapping a few highlights:

Aditya Vikram believes nothing succeeds like success. People want to be on the winning team.
➤ Helping people in the hour of need (start of Covid) by working on contactless deliveries at Amazon was gratifying. Though it also meant cutting short paternity leave.
➤ If India eCommerce market is growing by 100, Meesho is growing by 65.
➤ Co-signs what his mentor would say, "You become a seasoned product professional - not by building products but by shutting them down"
➤ If there was a product he may have liked to work upon, it'd be eSports FIFA ⚽
➤ Hiring at Meesho for his team 📢

Alok Agrawal says he joined Microsoft because of his wife. He may have been a Chef or a Cricketer in a parallel world 🌎
➤ Loved working on a product that helped people in the refugee camps. Contributing to the social impact it had felt fulfilling.
➤Eye popping numbers - MS Teams grew from 18 mn to 200 mn users during Covid. This growth was massively fuelled by Android phone users in the emerging markets.
➤ Being a PM is not as sexy as it sounds. Go for it if you like it while knowing that it's just a role.
➤ Hiring alert: His team at Mailmodo is hiring talent.

Sumit Malpani shares a hack from his work at Porter. "Follow Your User" and think of your user occupying a chair in every meeting that you sit in.
➤ During Covid, worked on the Ola Emergency product for people in essential services. Contributing to the impact it had was gratifying.
➤ Worked on Moj for Creators and built various Gamification modules for Creators at ShareChat, acquiring ~200k high quality creators, improving creator retention by 8pp. Reference reading: https://lnkd.in/gveZWpfw
➤ If there was a product he may have liked to work upon, it'd be Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. because it is a complex product with a great user experience. It is accessible, reliable and frictionless. From its colour coding to safety-related nudges, visual cues to clear instructions, everything adds to user delight.

It's a wrap! Do share resources - books, podcasts, newsletters, courses, platforms and communities that are helping you with your journey as a product professional. ✨