“500 lines of code is small for me, but means so much for the other person" | K. Vignesh, Co-founder, Hyperverge

Episode Summary

From solving a problem with overhead line inspections for the Southern Railways to the creation of an identity verification app. 

This interview features the co-founder of Hyperverge, Vignesh Krishnakumar, discussing the company's evolution from a student club at IIT Madras to a successful AI company focusing on KYC solutions. The conversation covers their journey through product pivots, facing competition from Google Photos, turning down acquisition offers, and developing a unique dual-engine business model that balances economic success with social contribution. 

Join Amrut and Vignesh as they talk about Vignesh’s commitment to solving fundamental problems rather than "perception problems," his approach to AI development, and the Hyperverge Academy that trains underprivileged individuals for tech careers.

Amrut’s Comment

Here’s the journey of Vignesh Krishnakumar, who went from a curious IIT Madras student to founding Hyperverge, a company that verifies identities for millions. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or believe in the power of innovation, this is a MUST-WATCH!

Key Highlights

[00:01:38] Hyperverge: What is it?

[00:02:14] Identity Verification: How does it work and the many applications of the software

[00:08:30] Big Billion: Not a Flipkart sale, but something much bigger

[00:16:05] Building their AI in-house: Solving the unique problem of India

[00:23:30] Accolades galore: The Nvidia example and Hyperverge’s ranking in Benchmark studies for facial recognition

[00:29:22] Genesis of the journey into AI: How did he begin?

[00:32:51] The first problem statement: Overhead Line inspection for Southern Railways

[00:40:55] I am starting my company: the point of impact that sparked the thought

[00:45:25] Life at IIT: degree, hostel, student life

[00:50:38] Funding: Looking for funding and understanding in Silicon Valley

[00:58:05] A competitor: Google wiped out Silver

[01:00:13] What next after silver: Fundamental problems vs perception problems

[01:05:40] Zoho advice: Business and life lessons from Sridhar Vembu

[01:14:10] AI as the Future: Deep learning to the AI mass hysteria today

[01:19:57] Personal journey from student to CTO: Loving your work and meditation everyday

[01:24:38] A Conscious Business: what it means to build one

[01:31:00] What does the future look like: Hyperverge and Hyperverge Academy?

Institutions mentioned

[00:01:25] IIT Madras

[00:30:43] MIT and Stanford were some of the institutions that KV and his group competed against in Robotics competitions

[01:08:12] Zoho has set up the Zoho University to educate people from rural areas and train them in essential tech skills

[01:25:09] Hyperverge Academy where people from underprivileged backgrounds are put through a six month boot camp to upskill them in tech skills and get a job in the Tech industry

People mentioned

[00:22:16] Aravind Srinivas, Co-Founder and CEO of Perplexity 

[00:27:54] Nithin Kamath

[00:27:58] Narayan Murthy

[00:28:02] Donald Trump, President of the United States of America

[00:28:10] [01:05:09] Elon Musk, Founder of Tesla

[00:32:03] Kedar Kulkarni, Co-Founder and CEO of Hyperverge

[00:34:15] Prof. Krishnan Balasubramaniam, Co-Founder of XYMA Technologies

[00:46:57] Professor Anurag Mittal was instrumental in many of the discussions on computer vision and machine learning

[00:47:12] KV did multiple machine learning courses with Professor Balaraman Ravindran

[00:52:44] Andrew Ng was one of the initial people who drew attention to Deep Learning and its applications

[00:56:37] Seshan Rammohan is described as the "granddad of Hyperverge," IIT Madras alumnus who supported the founders when they went to the US to raise funding

[01:05:52] Sridhar Vembu, the founder of Zoho, gave some valuable advice to the Hyperverge Founders

Companies mentioned

[00:01:37] Hyperverge, is the company founded by Vignesh which makes KYC and identity verification remotely simple for everyone.

[00:10:31] Reliance Jio was onboarding at least one crore customers every year in 2019

[00:14:07] SBI (State Bank of India) also uses Hyperverge for their KYC verification

[00:14:25] Swiggy uses the authentication service for their delivery partners

[00:18:49] DigiYatra is an initiative led by the Ministry of Civil Aviation to verify passenger identities at various checkpoints, such as check-in, security, and boarding gates, without the need for physical documents.

[00:23:36] NVIDIA was also built to solve a niche set of problems

[00:23:48] Intel has also been producing computing devices since the 1960s.

[00:32:53] Southern Railways was the first company to come with their problem statement to the Computer Vision club

[00:42:48] KV had an internship at Microsoft when he was in IIT

[00:52:53] KV talks about Andrew Ng shifting to Google to direct YouTube videos

[01:05:57] Sridhar Vembu is the founder of Zoho.

[01:31:52] KV uses Amazon to give an analogy of how they approach the future from a product perspective

Books & Other Media

Concepts & Models

[00:01:23] CFI Centre for Innovation at IIT Madras

[00:08:25] Face Unlock - technology used by iPhone to unlock your phone 

[00:29:39] Computer Vision Group - a student club working on computers in IIT Madras

[00:34:13] ICSR - Centre for Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research at IIT Madras

[00:56:02] Hyperverge was one of the earliest companies incubated at the IIT Madras Incubation Cell (IIT MIC)

[00:58:01] Silver was the name of the app that KV and Kedar had built to raise funding for Hyperverge

[01:29:07] Hyperverge built a tool called Sensei which leverages LLM.to act like a mentor to the student.

Additional Links

Episode 5    |    94 Mins
Guest Bio

Here’s the journey of Vignesh Krishnakumar, who went from a curious IIT Madras student to founding Hyperverge, a company that verifies identities for millions. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or believe in the power of innovation, this is a MUST-WATCH!

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“500 lines of code is small for me, but means so much for the other person" | K. Vignesh, Co-founder, Hyperverge

Here’s the journey of Vignesh Krishnakumar, who went from a curious IIT Madras student to founding Hyperverge, a company that verifies identities for millions. Whether you're an aspiring entrepreneur or believe in the power of innovation, this is a MUST-WATCH!

Episode 5    |    94 Mins

The first thing you notice about Vignesh (aka KV) (CTO at HyperVerge) is that he speaks deliberately and intentfully. If you were to assign a metric, then you could say that the insights per minute are very high. We spoke about a wide array of things—his days at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, how HyperVerge began, what sets their products apart, what “contribution” means, and more. Oh, and we also discussed wrapped vs non-wrapped.

Episode 5    |    94 Mins

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