Thejo Kote

From our PearX S25 cohort, meet Pravāh, the AI-native operating system for the electric grid When Mohak Mangal, Dhruv Suri, and Aman Gupta looked at the strain on the U.S. electric grid, they saw a system pushed to its limits. Exploding demand and unpredictable supply have made blackouts increasingly common. This costs the economy more than $150B a year, a number that could 10x in the next five years. Mohak Mangal and team founded Pravāh to help fix it. Their platform helps utilities and grid operators make real-time decisions on load, generation, and congestion, reducing blackout risks, optimizing power procurement, and bringing much-needed stability to the backbone of modern life. We’re proud to support the Pravāh team as they take on one of the toughest and most important infrastructure challenges of our time.

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On February 18, during India's AI Impact Summit, a company called Sarvam shipped a 105-billion-parameter model trained from scratch in India on government-subsidized GPUs, designed for 22 Indian languages. It outperforms DeepSeek-R1 on certain benchmarks at one-sixth the size. The same summit produced $200 billion in investment pledges from Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Reliance. The headlines were about the money. The real story was Sarvam. This post examines in detail why it took this long, what changed, and whether Sarvam is the first crack in an old equilibrium or a lonely exception. "Indians Rule Big Tech. Why Can’t India Build?": Link in comments.

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Cloaked has raised a $375M Series B led by General Catalyst with participation from HUMAN CAPITAL and Lux Capital. I am fortunate to have the opportunity to work alongside Arjun Bhatnagar, Abhijay Bhatnagar, and the team at Cloaked to fight against surveillance, spam, & identity theft.

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IVP is investing in LangChain because it’s a category-defining platform for AI agents — and because of the founders building it. Over the past two years, we’ve gotten to know Harrison Chase and Ankush Gola, who together have built something rare: a developer platform that’s both beloved by the open source community and commercially strong in the enterprise. They’ve galvanized thousands of developers while scaling to serve a third of the Fortune 500. Their approach is simple yet powerful — listen deeply, ship quickly, and build what customers need, just before they realize they need it. It’s the same quality we’ve seen in founders such as Datadog’s Olivier Pomel, CrowdStrike’s George Kurtz and HashiCorp’s Mitchell Hashimoto and Armon Dadgar. LangChain’s evolution — from the original framework to LangGraph and LangSmith — reflects that same instinct and timing. Harrison and Ankush are not only defining the category of agent engineering, they’re shaping how developers build the next generation of intelligent applications. That’s why IVP is leading LangChain’s $125M Series B. Read more about the Series B by Sharon Goldman in Fortune: https://lnkd.in/gMRANPbt    📷 from LangChain offices with Harrison, Ankush, and Taylor Swift. 

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India has abundant expertise across every domain - logistics operators, subject matter experts, local service providers, etc. What's scarce isn't capability. It's the systems that coordinate this capability at scale. Most companies see this fragmentation and default to vertical integration: build everything in-house, own all capabilities, control every aspect of delivery. This works if you have unlimited capital and time. Most companies have neither. But there's an alternative approach that we've noticed two of our portcos execute remarkably well, in completely different industries - 1. When Meesho looked at India's logistics, and they saw thousands of fragmented local operators. Instead of building warehouses and delivery fleets, they built Valmo - an orchestration platform coordinating existing partners. Individual pilots with smartphones earn sustainable incomes, small hub operators build viable businesses, and Meesho gets coverage across 15,000+ pin codes at 12% lower cost than traditional third-party-logistics. 2. Entri saw similar fragmentation in education. India has abundant teaching expertise already running offline/online programs. Entri partners with them for content while owning demand generation, platform infra, quality monitoring, and placements. This allows them to launch new categories in weeks and scale across languages without the capital intensity of building in-house teams for every vertical. If I had to pull a common thread, it's that in fragmented markets like India, the orchestration layer often matters more than asset ownership. Coordinate what exists rather than rebuilding from scratch.

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🌤️ Excited to share — Yatra Saathi: Your Smart Travel Companion! Ever had a trip ruined by sudden weather changes? I have. That’s why I built Yatra Sathi, a platform that helps travelers plan smarter by combining real-time weather data with intelligent travel recommendations. 🧠 What makes it special: • Smart Weather Insights – AI-based analysis of forecast patterns (storms, snow, heat waves) • Interactive Visuals – Responsive SVG charts for 7-day trends • Multi-language Support – 13 Indian regional languages (via Google Translate API) • Fully Responsive – Works smoothly from iPhone 14 to 4K displays • Dynamic Experience – Live weather + destination imagery using OpenWeatherMap & Unsplash APIs 💻 Tech Stack: Vanilla JavaScript, CSS Grid/Flexbox, OpenWeatherMap API, Unsplash API, SVG animations Designed with Indian travelers in mind, Yatra Sathi uses a saffron-gold interface and analyzes weather thresholds to offer actionable insights — from packing tips to severe weather alerts. The platform now intelligently analyzes weather patterns to provide personalized travel advice - from severe weather alerts to optimal activity suggestions. ⭐ If you find this project interesting, please star the repo! 🍴 Want to contribute? Feel free to fork and submit PRs! 🔗 Check it out: • Live Demo: https://lnkd.in/gWRTbVfD • GitHub: https://lnkd.in/gpQDZkdc 💡 Update: The website now includes some exciting new features beyond what’s shown in the demo video. Go check it out and explore the latest version! This project taught me a lot about API integration, responsive design, and crafting meaningful user experiences. The weather-based travel algorithm was one of the toughest yet most rewarding parts to build. #WebDevelopment #JavaScript #TravelTech #AI #OpenSource #ProjectShowcase #ResponsiveDesign #WeatherAPI #TechCommunity #IndianTech

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Here is a framework for nations to work with revolutions such as #AI and #Quantum. First you have your people learn, then dabble and become early/late adopters (hopefully not laggards!), then become effective technical users and finally value creators. It is only then that the economy benefits from your investment, and you create sustainable job growth. While #India is a key market for #Quantum with millions thirsting to learn and actually do things with this technology, there are still large gaps between: 1. Where Quantum Computing is today Vs where it needs to be for mass adoption [Quantum Sensing on the other hand is ready for prime time and GPS compromising incidents are only increasing] 2. The specialist work being done Vs the ability to hire millions of generalists 3. What it costs to tap into the technology Vs perception of what it should cost as a commodity 4. The talent it takes to produce world class indigenous technology Vs the talent that actually exists on the ground 5... Each of these gaps will close over time. In the lead-up and as a first step, India first needs to learn enough about this technology, ideally from the very best, and spread awareness. The starting point of this journey should ideally not be from dull videos or low quality social media content, but from hands-on practical learning that is delivered through high quality polished content. Such practical training effectively complements all the theoretical content you learn in universities. Q-CTRL's Black Opal product is the world's leading interactive learning tool that gives you just enough fundamentals (think 101) required to program a quantum computer. With over 28,000 users worldwide and success across the UK (Tamil Nadu adopted it last year as part of the naanmudhalvan program). And now, we have expanded our presence in India through a network of local resellers. We encourage Indian companies, governments and universities to work with us either directly or through our contacts. https://lnkd.in/gjJWHYB3 We also look forward to aligning with AICTE standards and to make our content even more relevant to India. Waseem Shiraz, Shobhit Gupta, Nagendra Nagaraja, Reena Dayal, Anil Prabhakar, Kamakoti Veezhinathan, Ajai Chowdhry, Harshan Budke, Sunil Gupta, Arindam Ghosh, Ravi Puvvala Dr M Jayaprakasan, ISDS., National Skill Development Corporation, MindTech, Kquanta Research, RV College Of Engineering, Sanjay Chittore, Uttkrist Innovations Private Limited, Subu Gupta, AICTE QRDLab - Quantum Computing in India, IBM DRDO, Ministry of Defence, Govt. of India, Ashutosh Sharma, Urbasi Sinha, Bloq Quantum LTIMindtree, Tata Consultancy Services Abhay Karandikar, NPTEL, National Quantum Mission, Eltech, Andhra Pradesh Information Technology Academy ITE and C Department Government of AP, Jayesh Ranjan, CDAC Bangalore, Kaushalya The skill University

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Today at #TechTides, Pebble (PBL) LTD is officially launched! After 2 years and 8 months of building, testing, refining, and learning how to become a founder along the way, Pebble is finally ready for launch. And today, I’m glad to share a milestone that means a lot both personally and professionally: Our first anchor customer is #NorthWestRegionalCollege. #NWRC has shown real leadership in innovation, real-world learning, and meaningful collaboration between education and industry. Pebble will support the college in formalising Project-Based Learning, evidencing educational gain, strengthening industry partnerships, and giving students real opportunities to build confidence, skills, and experience. This is exactly why Pebble was created. This milestone was only possible because of the support of so many at NWRC, including: #DrCatherineO’Mullan, Gillian Moss, Patrick McKeown #LeoMurphy, #Stoyanovastanislavastoyanova Annette Smith, Thomas Moore, Kevin Ward, and the entire staff who backed Pebble throughout the pilot. Thank you! Thanks also to #AlastairCameron for the opportunity to exhibit at #TechTides — a brilliant platform for innovation across NI. And to #JenniferNeff, everyone at #TheAMP, #ChristianKotey at #Nupitch, and #InvestNI, #GoSucceed, and #TechStartVentures. Pebble is built for people first — where we celebrate lecturers’ and students’ Actual Intelligence supported by Artificial Intelligence® Our new brochure website is now live: www.usepebble.com We will continue to refine and improve Pebble as we grow, ensuring it remains simple, effective, and built around real educational needs. And as one of our students said recently: “put Pebble to the metal!” We’ll definitely build something around that soon. For now, here’s our launch video, capturing the ethos and mission behind Pebble. If you’d like to support us, a repost would be great! :-) #CDN #ProjectBasedLearning #EdTech #SoftSkillsMatter #AIandEducation #LinkedInLearning #FurtherEducationNI #collegedevelopmentnetwork #cdn hashtag #hightophub #theampgrowthincubator #enterprisenorthwestlimited #scqfpartnership #gosucceedni #investnorthernireland #collegesscotland

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Today marks a milestone for Salesforce Ventures, and a defining moment for enterprise security. Alphabet’s acquisition of Wiz has officially closed. Wiz has been a cornerstone of our portfolio since May 2021, when Nowi Kallen, Kartik Gupta, and team first invested in their Series B at a $1.5B valuation. We saw the potential early and invested deeply, backing the team through their Series C, D, and E rounds. From a $1.5B Series B to a $32B acquisition, one of the largest in enterprise tech history, the Wiz team’s execution has been nothing short of extraordinary. This outcome reflects our mission at Salesforce Ventures: identifying the companies that define the next era of technology and staying behind them for the long haul. But the real credit belongs to the entire Wiz team on the ground. Beyond the technology, it was the relentless grit and day one mentality of Assaf Rappaport and the team that turned a vision into a $32B reality. Huge congratulations to the entire Wiz team on this historic achievement.

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This article, co-authored by Vardaan Ahluwalia and me lays out India's significant new Research Development and Innovation Fund initiative in the context of other successful interventions: when governments and the private sector work together, they can make a transformative difference to deep technology entrepreneurship. Equally, initiatives to help manage financial risk should be followed by structural reforms in areas ranging from intellectual property regulation, ease of clearances for start-ups, tax rationalization in capital gains and options that helps start-ups attract talent, and a visa regime that attracts leading global researchers. https://lnkd.in/gk92YSZa

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