Intelligence meets intent in AI100’s 7th cohort

In a year where AI is no longer just accelerating innovation but redefining leadership itself—from how enterprises are built to how intelligence is embedded into everyday decision-making—keeping pace with true AI-native thinkers is the real challenge. That’s where AI100 steps in. The 7th cohort brings together a powerful mix of investors, enterprise leaders, founders, and technologists who are not merely adopting AI, but reshaping its role across capital, industry, platforms, and culture.

United by the belief that AI must be purposeful, responsible, and deeply human-centric, the 7th cohort reflects India’s growing voice in shaping global AI narratives – where technology is not a bolt-on, but a force multiplier, an enabler, and amplifier of true human potential.

Harsh Vardhan

Standing at the forefront of AI-driven smart manufacturing is Harsh Vardhan, Global Head of Digital Innovation, AI, Industry 4.0 & Innovation Culture at Apollo Tyres. This transformational leader began his AI journey during his engineering years at NIT. Initially, his interest in technology stayed firmly within the confines of textbooks and academia. However, working in the fintech sector on analytics-led credit solutions for financial inclusion turned a theoretical interest into practical application and appreciation. In the last two decades, Vardhan has used his passion for technology to transform industrial AI, and is today steering Apollo Tyres’ digital transformation across a vast manufacturing ecosystem. His strategies expertly blend an AI-first culture with enterprise-scale deployment and human-centric Industry 5.0 principles. At its core, Vardhan’s approach to AI ensures that technology doesn’t replace human potential but amplifies it.

At Apollo, he has pioneered AI-powered conversational analytics for factory floors, scaling across 400+ automated machines and enabling real-time decision-making without technical dependencies—showcasing the power of democratized AI. A mentor to the Telangana government and T-Hub on advanced manufacturing, and an active open-source contributor through Deep HiMind, he continues to shape the future of intelligent, sustainable production. Outside work, he channels his “inner academic” into teaching students at government schools and colleges and long drives from one metro city to the next.

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Poorvi Vijay

It’s a new era of AI-focused venture leaders, and Poorvi Vijay, Principal Investor at Elevation Capital, is leading the way, focused on finding the right balance of technical depth and human-centered thinking. Her journey kickstarted at IIT Guwahati, where early explorations in design, wearable computing, and XR sparked a deep fascination with AI. This curiosity was further shaped by a stint at Amazon India, and later in the UK as a part of the Alexa speech team, where she worked at the intersection of voice, emotion, and digital personality—an early immersion into conversational AI. After the completion of her MBA at Harvard Business School, she joined Elevation Capital, where her focus on SaaS neatly dovetailed with the rise of generative and agentic AI.

Today, Vijay champions the enterprise shift from AI-enabled to AI-native, investing in founders who dare to dream the impossible and are shaping intelligence as the next frontier of enterprise software. She is also a strong advocate for ethical AI, pushing for greater transparency, fairness and accountability for early-stage founders. What’s on her agenda? Recognising India’s potential as a cradle for multiple global AI leaders. She’s committed to finding ambitious founders, and reinforcing India’s tech ecosystem. Outside investing, she can be found reading, cooking, travelling or spending time with innovators who broaden her horizons.

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Avinash Naik

If there is one belief that drives Avinash Naik, CIO at Bajaj General Insurance, it is this: innovation must be driven by purpose. As a young computer science engineer he wanted to build meaningful solutions. Over the years, he has evolved from solving problems at scale in IT services to pioneering AI-led transformation in the insurance sector.

At Bajaj, Naik has been instrumental in reshaping the organisation’s innovation strategy—reimagining the insurance value chain with AI, from computer vision–powered claims automation to GenAI assistants supporting over a lakh agents. Under his stewardship, Bajaj has built a robust governance framework and a unified cloud data platform that powers scalable AI adoption across the enterprise. With a focus on collaboration and continuous learning, he champions AI as a force that amplifies human judgment rather than replaces it, balancing innovation with regulatory integrity and transparent risk management. He has also played a critical role in strengthening partnerships with global technology ecosystems, accelerating experimentation and creating replicable AI frameworks that can scale across diverse use cases. Grounded yet futuristic in approach, Naik believes the true power of AI lies in solving real human problems and enabling trust-driven digital experiences. Beyond work, he stays anchored by family time, tennis, cricket, and his love for ’90s Bollywood music.

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Karthikeyan Krishnaswamy

AI, anime, and entrepreneurship: three words that define Karthikeyan Krishnaswamy’s journey in innovation. As CTO and Co-founder of KreditBee, this tech leader is driven by his deep knowledge of engineering and entrepreneurial vision. Growing up in Tirupur, India’s textile and business hub, nurtured his instinct to build for real-world impact.

His fascination with intelligent systems began early, starting with glimpses of what was possible from science fiction and Japanese anime like Ghost in the Shell. It only grew stronger through his academic work in computer vision and natural language processing through early statistical models.This unique blend of technical curiosity and business acumen culminated in KreditBee, which started as a student-focused credit platform and rapidly evolved into a large-scale digital financial services company serving millions.

As CTO, Krishnaswamy is guided by a clear philosophy: technology must serve the business, not the other way around. He led KreditBee’s decision to go fully serverless on Amazon Web Services, building a secure, scalable, and resilient digital lending platform powered by AI-driven risk and fraud systems. Today, he steers the company through both pre- and post-GenAI eras, using machine learning and generative models to augment human judgment while maintaining strict standards of security, compliance, and reliability. A strong believer in responsible innovation, Krishnaswamy balances ambition with caution, ensuring AI amplifies impact without adding complexity. Outside work, his curiosity comes full circle through comics, anime, and futurist storytelling—continual reminders of why he chose to build technology for the future.

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Varun Mayya

Founder and media-tech entrepreneur Varun Mayya confronts real world problems with technology, human effort, and smart business models. With over 13 years of entrepreneurial experience, Mayya is driven by internal conviction, even in the face of doubt. In 2022, he co-founded Aeos with his wife Achina Mayya, building a bootstrapped, closed-loop media-tech company that integrates content creation, distribution, talent scouting, and GenAI-driven workflows.

Serving global B2B clients across entertainment and consumer brands, Aeos has demonstrated how AI-native operations can unlock scale and profitability—achieving billions of views with lean teams and significantly higher margins than traditional media services. Known for his strong internal compass, Mayya no longer chases external validation, instead emphasizing clarity of thought, resilience, and founder self-awareness as core leadership skills. A pragmatic early adopter of AI in content creation, he views the technology not as a threat to creators but as a force multiplier—one that rewards originality, brand trust, and human creativity. For Mayya, the future of media will be defined not by tools alone, but by founders who stay problem-first, think independently, and build the mental resilience required to operate at internet scale.

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