India is catching up in the AI race: Neysa Founder Sharad Sanghi

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to disrupt all industries, including banking, insurance, and healthcare, which have been early adopters of the technology, believes Sharad Sanghi, Founder of platform-as-a-service startup Neysa.

However, there remains widespread scepticism around AI, its applications, and its scalability in India.

Addressing these concerns at TechSparks Bengaluru 2024, Sanghi acknowledged that while India lags behind the US and China, the country is catching up in the global race. 

“When we started, we thought we had to do a lot of hand-holding, but we were pretty amazed by what some of the startups we worked with have built,” he remarked during a fireside chat with YourStory Founder and CEO Shradha Sharma.

”AI is not new. Gen AI may [have come around in the] last two years, but AI has been there for a while. So, for example, some of the banks that we work with had data scientists and AI machine learning engineers work,” Sanghi said. 

Neysa primarily helps businesses discover, plan, deploy and manage their generative AI projects in a cost-effective manner.

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Sanghi also noted the government's role in promoting AI, and referred to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to the US where he advocated for a strong partnership between the two countries in AI research and development. 

“They (the government) have earmarked Rs 10,000 crore, which I think is small. I think they need to earmark more, but I think that’s a good start,” he added, talking about the IndiaAI mission aimed at bolstering AI infrastructure and innovation in the country.

He also noted that there is a lot of hype in the market about AI being a "cure for everything". A report by General Dynamics Information Technology released earlier this year revealed that 58% of AI pilot projects failed to move forward because of scalability issues. However, Sanghi believes that there's a lot more maturity in the ecosystem, especially the focus on getting the business priorities right.

Sanghi previously founded customer-focused IT Infrastructure Services organisation Netmagic Solutions and sold it to Japan’s NTT Communications in 2018. 

He founded Neysa in 2022. The company last raised $20 million in seed funding earlier this year led by Matrix Partners India,  Nexus Venture Partners, Menlo Park, and California-based NTTVC.

“We are just about to close our Series A,” Sanghi said.