Tell me about yourself and your journey as an entrepreneur

I'm the founder and CEO of Blue Sky Analytics, a climate-Tech start-up using satellite data and AI to build environmental monitoring and climate-risk assessment products. I'm a Fulbright scholar, Yale and IIT alum with over 8 years of work experience in private equity, big data analytics, product development and environmental policy.

I began my career at age 22, as a Research Associate at J-PAL, working on air pollution regulation with the Ministry of Environment, India. Subsequently, I went on to work on building flexible solar cells in Dublin, kickstarting solar products and asset financing startup at PEG Africa and clean energy investing as an Associate at GoldenSet Capital.

These experiences solidified my life & career choices, making me realize that environmental protection was not someone else’s job but our own. Hence, I returned to India in 2018, to start Blue Sky Analytics as I believed that “data has the capacity to change an entire ecosystem". I see Blue Sky as a focal point of enabling global climate action with high quality, accessible environmental data.

Blue Sky has been on a rocketship journey since then, from closing its seed round, becoming a 20+ member team across India, US and EU, getting partners like MIT Solve, ESA, GreenTown Labs, working with Climate TRACE etc.

What's your area of expertise in AI and why did you choose this?

I have zero expertise in AI. I did write an algorithm to optically read and identify characters on a number plate using Neural Networks back in 2008 when I was 17 years old, and I presented it in an Electronic Seminar and won second prize, but my experience of writing it and building the whole thing wasn't pleasant. People said I was doing it to bolster my resume, many boys I asked for help with various bugs or challenges instead either patronized or flittered. So, I left AI or any sort of coding for many years, till 2018, when Kshitij and I started putting our brains together to build Blue Sky Analytics and I found an environment that wasn't patronizing.

Also, we didn't choose AI, we chose Climate Change as the problem with AI as a tool for us. You can fundamentally never have a "pure AI" startup, it's a tool to solve a separate problem.

What challenges do women face in building a tech career? How can the business community and society address this issue collectively and efficiently?

Any ecosystem will become more equitable when the participants of that ecosystem identify their own internal subconscious biases and unlearn the historically learnt behavior; and take active steps in their internal lives to give more decision making, enable more risk appetite for women and trusting women, in general, to do whatever they want to do; rather than god-ification or fake amplification of women.

Honestly, look at women as normal people, that would be a good start. Because historically we haven't looked at women as normal, equal, valid people.

What qualities do women inherently bring to the table that make them assets in a tech company?

Actually, there is no inherent quality women bring to table. It's a pure right. There is nothing about "asset in a tech company because they are women"; Women should build, run, grow tech companies, simply because they are 50% of human society, human civilization, human existence. There is nothing like "oh women are better at that or that or that, so we should include them". No, just women are bright and sharp and awesome just like a man, and in a normal scenario, they will be equally represented in tech. Its due to the biases and inhibitions and sexism and hindrances that they are not, and thus we should remove all those biases, inhibitions, sexism, hindrances; rather than making any case of some random special worth of a woman.

How do you think startups are moving the needle in terms of supporting more women to participate in tech building/development?

They aren't. Startups or VCs or Individuals or Academia ISN'T moving any needle in terms of supporting female participation. Whatever they are doing is so much lip-service and so much just band-aid or token feminism. The fact that female participation in Indian labour force has fallen in the last two decades, while more and more girls are getting more educated is telling of this tokenism.

What's the one thing that you see AI transforming completely?

Making many tasks more automatic and many larger and lager and more complex tasks more easier.

What is your biggest AI nightmare?

My biggest AI nightmare, which is my biggest tech nightmare is that human beings will fundamentally lose sight of what is core, what is more important, what is human. Solutions to many things are not Tech and not AI; they are just tools. Solutions are the fundamental human thoughts, ideas, teams, priorities, choices, decisions, which can be augmented by Tech and AI, but not replaced.

What's your advice for other women who want to pursue a journey similar to yours?

Don't listen to anyone. Don't seek mentors. Don't seek advice. Go do lots of mistakes, fail at things, fall, get hurt. Don't let others patronize and diminish you, just make your own thoughts, own decisions, whether they are right or wrong, own up to them, and keep doing that.