AI100 Sixth Cohort: Diamonds, disruptions and DigiLocker
From fintech innovations to AI-powered governance, personalized jewellery to enterprise transformation, the 6th cohort of AI100 leaders is shaping AI into a mindset, building intelligent systems and scaling businesses - now.
In a world where AI breakthroughs make headlines daily—from reshaping the hiring landscape to new breakthroughs in model costing—staying ahead of the innovators can feel impossible. That’s where AI100 comes in.
The 6th AI100 cohort brings together the next generation of AI trailblazers reshaping how India lives, works, and transacts. From hyper-personalized services and AI-first customer experiences to smarter payments, fraud prevention, and immersive digital platforms, these innovators are turning AI into a mindset, not just a tool. Across fintech, e-commerce, and consumer tech, they are blending imagination with action—building intelligent systems that empower people, scale businesses, and redefine everyday experiences. Packed with visionaries who think of AI as more than a tool—treating it as electricity powering entire industries—the 6th AI100 cohort is proof that the future isn’t just coming; it’s being coded today.
Narendra Babu
Narendra Babu, Chief Technology Officer at PayU, has seen AI go from a niche tool to an everyday enabler across the organization. What began with fraud prevention and personalization has expanded into a company-wide mindset shift—where sales teams move faster, marketing campaigns run smarter, and developers solve problems more efficiently with AI-driven solutions.
Babu credits this transformation to the democratization of AI. Affordable compute, stronger processing power, and matured platforms have made once-complex tasks—like training models—accessible to non-specialists. At PayU, AI is no longer confined to engineering; it’s a tool for everyone, championed both top-down by leadership and bottom-up by enthusiastic teams eager to experiment.
In digital payments, he believes AI bridges the gap between ease and security. By analyzing device, merchant, and transaction data in real time, it enables smoother, safer transactions. Personalization is another frontier—helping customers complete purchases even when funds are tight, while building trust between buyers and merchants.
Beyond payments, Babu sees AI transforming healthcare, education, and even infrastructure development—shrinking timelines from decades to years. Partnering with AWS has accelerated PayU’s journey, giving teams the frameworks to build faster. For Babu, AI’s true promise lies in amplifying human potential and reshaping lives for the better.
Debabrata Nayak
When Debabrata Nayak, Chief Technology Officer, Digital India Corporation, began his government career in 1994, computers were new and mistrusted. “People thought computerisation would take away jobs—the same way they talk about AI today,” he recalls. But for Nayak, technology was never about replacing people—it was about efficiency.
From digitizing land records in rural districts to leading national platforms like DigiLocker, UMANG, and CoWIN, Nayak has helped script India’s digital transformation. Each decade taught him a new lesson: adoption accelerates impact, scalability rests on smart architecture and success is a blend of policy and code.
With DigiLocker, he proved that digital documents could be as trustworthy as paper. At the height of the pandemic, CoWIN became the backbone of India’s vaccination drive—built on modular systems that scaled under pressure.
Now, as CTO of Digital India Corporation, Nayak envisions the roadmap for the future: AI in governance. From automating citizen services and improving welfare targeting to helping developers code and test faster, he sees AI as the next gateway to efficiency.
For him, technology is a legacy project. “If you want to build something that outlives you, build for the government,” he says—a reminder that true innovation isn’t about speed, but about building what lasts.
Gurukeerthi Gurunathan:
For over 2 decades, Gurukeerthi Gurunathan, Co-founder and CTO of CaratLane, has worked to reimagine one of India’s oldest industries through a digital-first lens. When CaratLane was launched in 2008, jewellery was still a rare luxury - locked behind a display, accessible to few. Gurunathan was on a mission to change that, to digitise diamonds and position jewellery as an everyday accessory through transparent and trustworthy technology.
He introduced AI and ML to CaratLane as early as 2017, and gradually shifted from traditional programming to leveraging data for a more in-depth understanding of customer behaviour. From personalized design recommendations to smarter inventory allocation across 340+ stores, AI today powers nearly every aspect of the business. Customer experiences are where CaratLane has truly leveraged technology with creativity - be it through AI-enabled consultants in showrooms or Postcards, an initiative that embeds emotional messages into rings.
CaratLane’s partnership with AWS has been central to this journey, providing scale, platforms, and talent to experiment and innovate faster. For Gurunathan, the future will be a blend of imagination and action—via virtual try-ons, immersive retail experiences, and AI-driven personalization. With his beliefs grounded in trust and transparency, he aims to make jewellery an indulgence for the masses and not the privilege of a few.
Anagh Prasad
Anagh Prasad, Vice President – Investment at Accel, spent his early years in Ranchi. His first encounter with computer science came at IIT Delhi. Surrounded by professors experimenting with machine learning, he caught the AI bug early. A 2015 trip to Vancouver—then buzzing with dialogue on AI’s future—only fueled his curiosity further.
Back in India, Anagh explored the ins and outs of AI. His job at Goldman Sachs revealed the gulf between academic theory and real-world application. That discovery led him to venture capital almost by accident. In 2019, he began his investment journey with Stellaris Venture Partners, before moving to Accel, where he now focuses on the intersection of founders, technology, and markets.
For Anagh, evaluating AI startups comes down to timeless fundamentals: market potential and the strength of the founding team. What excites him today are AI agents designed for knowledge-heavy professions, and India-specific consumer applications that leverage the country’s unique digital ecosystem. Above all, he insists on ethics as a non-negotiable foundation for any venture.
Beyond work, Anagh is a passionate foodie who experiments with fusion cooking and hunts for authentic local flavours. “Ninety percent AI, 10 percent cooking,” he jokes about his balance.
Naveen Setia
Naveen Setia, Senior Vice President (Risk and Data Platforms, Data Science), Paytm began his professional journey on a trading desk at a top investment bank, where he first applied predictive AI across real estate, loans, and credit portfolios. His journey with AI began much earlier — as a finance student who loved to experiment with models like logistic regression, linear models, and random forests.
Over the years, his curiosity transformed into deep expertise. Today, as Senior Vice President (Risk and Data Platforms, Data Science) at Paytm, Setia oversees systems that power everything from data infrastructure to fraud prevention and customer care. He bridges both sides of AI: producing clean, reliable datasets and consuming them to build smarter models that scale across millions of users. His work spans risk platforms detecting account and instrument fraud in milliseconds, hyper-personalization of services, and AI-first customer interactions that anticipate intent and deliver seamless support.
At Paytm, AI is not just a tool—it’s embedded into the organisation’s operating DNA. Although the road is littered with obstacles: from managing petabytes of data to staying ahead of rapidly evolving AI frameworks, the payoff is worth it. Paytm boasts secure transactions, personalized experiences, and empowered teams.
Outside work, he channels the same curiosity into family, markets, and learning, building AI agents to summarize research and personalize insights or to teach his daughter lessons from school. For Setia, AI isn’t just about today—it’s a launchpad for the future.