Drones for India’s defence; NVIDIA exec on India’s distinctive AI needs
In the dorm rooms of BITS Pilani, where startups like Pixxel took flight, Ahmad Faraaz, Sashakt Tripathi, and Harshit Awasthi founded Kalam Labs in 2018. What began as a gamified edtech platform teaching children about space has now evolved into a deeptech enterprise.
Hello,
Ever since the dawn of the modern era, humans have wondered how they could extend their lives on the planet. However, it may be the planet that’s stopping them from hitting 200.
According to a hypothesis by Deepinder Goyal’s science initiative Continue Research, a big part of human ageing might be brain-first and gravity-driven, and not body-first.
The solution? Do 10-minute inversions daily, i.e. headstands.
For millionaire Bryan Johnson, it’s all but an experiment. The US tech entrepreneur has given up meat, and now has even pursued magic mushrooms in an attempt to defy death. But he now believes the ‘whole thing has gotten out of control.”
Meanwhile, science is pointing towards multilingualism. An international team of neuroscientists have found that people who speak two or more languages appear shielded from accelerated ageing.
Ageing, certainly, is a mystery.
In today’s newsletter, we will talk about
- From classrooms to the battlefield
- NVIDIA exec on India’s distinctive AI needs
- Inside Maharashtra’s single women sangathans
Here’s your trivia for today: What was the first general-purpose credit card in India?
Startup
From classrooms to the battlefield
In the dorm rooms of BITS Pilani, where startups like Pixxel took flight, Ahmad Faraaz, Sashakt Tripathi, and Harshit Awasthi founded Kalam Labs in 2018. What began as a gamified edtech platform teaching children about space has now evolved into a deeptech enterprise redefining India’s defence capabilities.
“Our transition was in doing the edge of space mission with Hrithik Roshan (as part of promotions for his film Fighter) on January 26, 2024, where we unfurled the Indian flag in space. That made it clear to us that we wanted to do more than educate,” Faraaz tells YourStory.
National interest:
- The spacetech startup’s first mission was with the India Meteorological Department (IMD) in March 2025. “We assisted them by building our UAV that was attached to the balloon along with the weather module,” he shares.
- Kalam Labs’ drones are currently deployed at Pokhran and along the Indo-China Line of Control. Its key models include the Stratospheric ISR UAV for surveillance, the Stratospheric Retrievable Radiosonde for weather monitoring, and the Stratospheric Kamikaze UAV Swarm currently in final testing.
- The company is further working on manoeuvrable airships for dynamic surveillance and real-time mapping of terrains. Faraaz says his startup is in discussions with the Indian Navy for potential collaboration.
TechSparks
NVIDIA exec on India’s distinctive AI needs
India stands at an unusual intersection in the global AI landscape. Jigar Halani, Director of Solution Architect and Engineering, NVIDIA, believes the constraints in India’s AI trajectory lie not in a shortage of talent or manpower but in the demand for a uniquely Indian approach to building and deploying AI systems.
“The architecture needs to be sorted out. It should be so pervasive that it should work everywhere. It should be built with that resilience in play. The ROI matters, and what the technology curve that’s futuristically going to come in, all these things need to be catered to it essentially,” he said at TechSparks 2025.
A truly Indian AI:
- Efficiency is a major driver. The infrastructure must be robust enough to support hundreds of millions of concurrent users, because downtime has an outsized impact in a country as large as India.
- Jigar emphasised that data curation forms the true backbone of any meaningful system. Models trained solely on publicly scraped data remain generalists and cannot meet the level of precision that real organisations require.
- He further noted, “See what is the fastest route I can make it reach. That just runs on one GPU for the whole of the US for the entire pizza delivery throughout the day.” This demonstrates not only efficiency but also the maturity of practical AI deployments.
Social Impact
Inside Maharashtra’s single women sangathans
Ekal Mahila Sangathan, a collective of single women, helps widowed, deserted and unmarried women access rights and state support. The collective also enables women in Maharashtra affected by farmer suicides to become anganwadi workers through steady encouragement, sharing information, and building the confidence to navigate difficult bureaucratic systems.
As one woman from the collective puts it: “What is family—the one you are born into or the community you live with? When I am struggling with something, personal or bureaucratic, ten or twelve women show up within minutes. That is what empowerment looks like.”
Single women's collectives in Maharashtra
News & updates
- Handshake: Disney and YouTube TV reached a new deal to bring channels such as ABC and ESPN back to the Google-owned live-streaming platform, ending a blackout for customers that lasted over two weeks.
- Trimming: Berkshire also reduced its Apple stake to 238.2 million shares, down from 280 million in the previous quarter. The company has now sold almost three-quarters of the more than 900 million Apple shares it once owned.
- Handover: Apple is stepping up its succession planning efforts as it prepares for Tim Cook to step down as chief executive of the tech giant as soon as next year. John Ternus, Apple's senior vice president of hardware engineering, is widely seen as Cook's most likely successor, the Financial Times reported.
What was the first general-purpose credit card in India?
Answer: CentralCard, launched by the Central Bank in 1981.
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