Dr Lalitesh Kumar Katragadda is the Founder of Indihood, a crowdsourcing platform making social good by engineering information systems for billions of unserved Indians.
Lalitesh was responsible for setting up the Google India R&D centre and drove the tech operations of the San-Francisco based giant. He co-started several projects, including Google Finance and Hindi Transliteration, and made the best of his pet project – Google Map Maker, a group map-making tool that people around the globe used to map their world.
He’s still working on his personal goal: to collaborate and create growth and development for India.
View on technology
“Technology is a vital means to bring balance to civilisation, making our world safe, fair, free for all eight billion of us. But tech without policy, without activating people, without reimagination is just tech. The final frontier is the poorest, the illiterate, the differently abled and the oppressed.”
“An illiterate mother in deep poverty who raises a healthy, happy child handicapped by a missing or abusive husband, forgotten by governance, going hungry and sleepless is more inspiring than any technology or leader has been or will be. Stories will be told that women could pull this off a century from now and they will be disbelieved. There are millions of such mothers on this planet. The day we allow our privileged tech kids to see them, the day we tell them it's ok, the day they see they have the power to alter this reality, our world will be transformed.” - Lalitesh Katragadda
Key tech focus:
Built Google Maps for India
Indihood is building a scale general purpose platform for the next billion users
Indihood is the only population scale general purpose platform built for the billion
The platform uses crowdsourcing, Hyperlocal and India Stack.
Role of AI and ML
In the past, thorough, in-depth knowledge about a subject was essential. Today, subject matter expertise is no longer a deal-breaker for a role or for talent.
The ability to be resourceful is preferred over being an expert limited by his/her field of work.
A lot of work is now automated, so talent needs to have exceptional skill sets that AI is yet to develop.
Machine Learning and Data Science will accelerate productivity and fuel economic growth. They will also improve efficiency, convenience, and safety.
Top challenges
People: A startup is entirely its people, and their quality, culture, and camaraderie. Currently there is a challenge in finding world-class people willing to build stuff for the average Indian. And also finding people who get excited by food, friends and fun
Pessimism: The only reason India is not growing at 13 percent is we collectively disbelieve
Patience: Everyone needs to have it, investors, management, and team
