Founded in 2001, Wadhwani Foundation is the brainchild of Romesh Wadhwani, a billionaire entrepreneur, technologist, and philanthropist, known for building successful tech companies in the US.
Ajay was formerly the managing director of Symphony Services, a software services company, and has also worked with Autodesk, where he scaled their AutoCAD business. He was also a research scientist at GE working on Computer Aided Design (CAD) products and has published research papers in reputed journals.
Ajay is a graduate in mechanical engineering from IIT Bombay and holds a PhD in mechanical engineering and computational geometry from the University of Rochester.
Ajay spoke to indianexpress.com on the roadmap for energising the entrepreneur ecosystem in India, the necessity to keep the focus on ‘dignified job’ creation, and on working with academic institutions to make their research relevant to a larger social cause. Edited excerpts:
Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you tell us about Wadhwani Foundation’s goals and how tech-centric solutions play a role?
Ajay Kela: Our founder, Romesh Wadhwani, is a tech pioneer and has been working on AI since long. He was the founder of robotics companies as early as the 1970s, and was making robots and competing with Japanese robotics manufacturers. Now he is also an investor in enterprise AI companies. So tech is in our DNA. We all come from a tech background.
Our goal at the foundation is to provide ‘dignified family wage jobs’ for five million people by 2030, and upskill 25 million people with new age job-ready skills by 2030.
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We understand that tech is the key to scale and we have invested in the ecosystem for a long time. We work on the axes of entrepreneurship, skilling, innovation, research, and working with governments for digital transformation of their services.
We work with the entrepreneur ecosystem in India and abroad by supporting startups, teaching entrepreneurship, and working with various academic institutions working on the theme of entrepreneurship. On skilling, we have now built AI tools to enhance skill-based training.
We support research in emerging tech to help resolve real-world problems. We network with researchers, students, institutions as well as entrepreneurs to drive the development of impactful solutions. The research in academic institutions typically ends up as research papers and it goes no further. We want to translate relevant research into products and startups for the social good.
Finally, we also work with government and policymakers to sensitise them on the evolving tech ecosystems, helping them to make informed decisions for the public good.
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Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about the Wadhwani Innovation Network and its initiatives.
Ajay Kela: We are now working with Anusandhan National Research Foundation (ANRF) to accelerate the transformation of India’s research ecosystem. ANRF is a government body formed to provide high-level strategic directions for research, innovation, and entrepreneurship in India.
The partnership between Wadhwani Innovation Network and ANRF is a first-of-its-kind collaboration between a government research institution and a philanthropic foundation. Through this, we want to co-fund and scale up research to drive visible social impact. We are co-funding this initiative to the tune of USD 150 million.
The Wadhwani Innovation Network (WIN) centres at top research institutions will drive research commercialisation and partner with ANRF for jointly funding late-stage projects. It will also focus on supporting research that can be translated into products and ventures in sectors like AI, biosciences, health tech, and space tech. These will be done through grants, government support, venture investment, and corporate partnerships.
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We will invest in these research efforts across the country and connect them through superhubs and hubs of specialisation at top universities.
We will have a superhub for AI and Intelligent Systems at IIT Kanpur and one for biotechnology at IIT Bombay. We have also announced support for 10 hubs at premier institutes, 100 innovation centres, and co-funding of projects through ANRF and AICTE’s Innovation centres.
Venkatesh Kannaiah: As part of your entrepreneurship initiative, can you name some interesting startups/innovations that you mentored?
Ajay Kela: There are many successful companies that have been mentored by us through our entrepreneur development initiatives. We have supported more than 7000 startups in their journey, and have trained more than two lakh students with entrepreneurship skills.
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There is Practo, India’s leading online app for booking appointments and consulting doctors. It also has a comprehensive medical directory with detailed, verified information about more than one lakh doctors across the country. This was part of our early cohort in the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN).
There is Mukunda Foods, which began with the aim of selling dosas but later pivoted and decided to focus on automation of Indian food products. They decided to start designing their first product, Dosamatic, which is an automated dosa making machine. This too was part of NEN.
Venkatesh Kannaiah: As part of your innovation and research, what areas do you focus on from an impact perspective?
Ajay Kela: We think that two technologies are going to dominate the future. One of them is AI, and the other is synthetic biology. For that we are working with two super hubs. For AI, we are working with IIT Kanpur and for biosciences, we are working with IIT Bombay. We are working on a hub and spoke model and are working with 10 directly funded institutes on a variety of areas, ranging from quantum computing and health to medtech.
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Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about interesting innovations that have come out of your research or research support efforts.
Ajay Kela: One of the areas that we work in is with the Wadhwani Research Centre for Bio Engineering, founded in 2014 by IIT Bombay and Wadhwani Foundation. It was set up to leverage IIT Bombay’s expertise in bioengineering to incentivise innovation in diagnostics, therapeutics, MedTech, and synthetic biology.
Three interesting startups come to mind. There is Algorithmic Biologics, which is bringing the power of algorithms to biotechnology-based industries. Their work will have far reaching applications in molecular testing for diagnostics and research. It is into what is called smarter molecular testing and, with the use of AI, has made image-based diagnostics affordable.
Then there is Immunoact, which works on innovative, affordable, and accessible cell and gene therapies. Their cell therapies are personalised for each patient and are specifically designed to limit their side effects and make them safer. There is Clarity Bio Systems, a pioneer in delivering advanced solutions in diagnostics, bioprocess development, and genome-scale metabolic modelling.
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Venkatesh Kannaiah: How are you using AI tools in your skilling initiatives?
Ajay Kela: We have built Genie AI, an AI-powered personalised education platform, and we are working with academia, industry, and the government to scale the same.
Our focus is on training workers on new-age job skills for a period of 6-12 months or 1000 hours of training, which would help them in their job search journey. And for this, we have built a knowledge dissemination layer with interactive video content. Based on user feedback and knowledge levels, it would morph into a personalisation tool and provide answers based on the knowledge levels of the users.
We have also built an AI layer with 24/7 AI agents working as counsellors, and helping the course takers with information and queries. And on top of it is the human layer, with volunteers and paid experts who would with the help of matching algorithms help users and enable live sessions to help job seekers.
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Venkatesh Kannaiah: Can you tell us about areas where your interventions have led to better delivery of government services?
Ajay Kela: We work with the government in a variety of ways. We have helped the government in recruiting AI experts, and they are now working in the departments of agriculture, labour, women and child development and education. There they are working with the government to build an AI roadmap for the particular departments and also identify projects which can be carried forward.
We are now working with the government in building citizen services platforms. For instance, we are working on a farmer service platform, where farmers would know about all the schemes started by the government for them, interact with the platform and benefit from the same.
We have programmes where we bring state and central government officials at the joint secretary level, and sensitise them to themes and issues in AI. We also hold five-day workshops where we help select government officials to work on AI-related projects identified by them. We also incubate these projects for a period of three to six months and later work with them to scale it up.
One of the interesting projects was our courses in iGot, an online learning platform for Indian civil servants. We have a dozen courses on this platform, and around four lakh government employees have taken these courses.
Venkatesh Kannaiah: Tell us about the international footprint of the Wadhwani Foundation and the work that you do.
Ajay Kela: Apart from India, we are in 12 other countries. These are all countries in the global south, emerging economies, and where there is a growing youth population. We are working in countries like Indonesia, Brazil, South Africa, Kenya, Egypt, and Nigeria