Umakant Soni is the co-founder of AI foundry, focused on “building leapfrog AI ventures for next 6bn users”. Before this, Umakant co-founded pi Ventures (India’s only Artificial Intelligence focused $32 m early-stage venture fund) which has backed some of the leading AI companies (Sigtuple, Applying AI to pathology (www.sigtuple.com), Niramai, Applying AI to early breast cancer detection (www.niramai.com), Locus.sh, Ten3T Health (Intelligent heart patch) and others. He is now Advisor & Founding partner at pi Ventures.

Currently, he is helping in setting up India’s first AI Research Translation (ART Park) in Bangalore to grow a societal scale AI research translation ecosystem for unique problems in India along with IISc (Indian Institute of Science). 

With an exposure of AI area of almost a decade, he is much sought after technology and business strategist & advisor in the area of AI for Government of India initiatives for NITI Aayog, DST (Department of Science & Technology) & MEITY. He also advises Fortune 500 companies in the area of AI strategy, investing and disruption as well. He is a noted keynote speaker on developing impact via AI innovations in emerging markets. Previously he has served as Director, Science-inc India, one of the leading Global Startup Studio. He also served as Digital Strategy Advisor to Lunar Designs, helping them with the Internet of Things strategy and M&A advice.

Prior to this, he started one of the earliest Artificial Intelligence company out of India, Vimagino, focused on providing emotionally intelligent chatbots to help solve sales and support issues on web and mobile for companies in 2009-10. He also has been advisor and investor in startups in food, education, and logistics.

He spent the early part of his career growing 3 Intra company ventures as part of Wipro’s Innovation arm (India’s leading IT services company) and creating strategies for investment and growth in advanced technologies(focusing on web services and SOA). He has 2 patents published in the area of autonomic process systems. He is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur and enjoys painting abstracts in his spare time.