Hi everyone and welcome to another episode of Living on Blockchain. Today we are speaking to Saurabh. Saurabh is the founder of VerySmartAI.
He is a three-time entrepreneur with over a decade of experience. Saurabh has successfully founded and exited two prior ventures in auto tech and e-commerce. His ventures were acquired by Times Internet and a UK-based private equity firm.
So right now he is building VerySmartAI and VerySmartAI basically has a bunch of products and services. They have a digital travel ID system, a digital pass. They are more towards enterprise and government, that is who they are servicing with their products.
And VerySmart has had many notable accomplishments and recognitions over the last few years. So he’s doing wonderfully well for himself. I think this is a very good lesson for people who are building for enterprise, who are in B2B, building for the government as well.
I can’t wait for you guys to hear this. Let’s deep dive right in. Hi Saurabh.
Thank you so much for making the time to speak to me today. How are you doing? It’s good. It’s a good day.
Thanks for inviting for this podcast. Awesome. Can you tell us a little about your journey so far, Saurabh? What have you done so far? How did you get in this space and what you’re doing currently? So, I’ll tell you a story of a boy who has been always hungry and so who want to go beyond borders to try new things and to test it out and have a mindset of being an innovator or something like this.
So this mindset actually landed up, made me landed up to this autonomous vehicle challenge, which was organized by DARPA Lab, which is the US research agency back in 2008. And that led my journey towards becoming an entrepreneur. So we participated in that race and we got into the top 25 teams and that entire race becomes the mecca for the entire autonomous vehicle industry and also exposed us to the AI world.
Then after I started, I worked with a corporate job for a short stint for one year and a half. And then after I started my venture, my first venture into auto tech itself, which later got acquired by a private equity fund based out of UK. And then again, my hunger for building something more pushed me to create a second venture just after that, without taking any sort of a break or something.
And I created a no code SaaS platform as an e-commerce enabler, which ran almost like 42,000 e-commerce shops on top of it. And which later got acquired by Times Internet in the year 2016 itself. So that was the thing.
And then I started my third venture after taking a year break and finding out, using the same set of skills and identifying the right set of problem. I started verysmart.ai, which is currently building world’s largest, or is rather I would say on a mission to build the world’s largest decentralized data infrastructure there itself for the privacy compliant interoperability. And we have achieved multiple goals and have accomplished multiple milestones.
And we have just started. Awesome. This has been quite a journey.
I think it’s a journey that spans nearly 14, one and a half decades perhaps. So you’ve had several exits as an entrepreneur. You’ve been recognized by several great media outlets as somebody who is one of the leading representatives for AI and blockchain.
What are the kinds of personal principles or approaches that you have that you will believe have contributed most to your success in this space? I think success is a by-product. As an entrepreneur or as an innovator, my first fundamental while getting into a venture or putting my brains through is to be able to closely relate with the problem sheet. And that is something that has fueled my journey with a lot of passion of solving a problem itself.
And also this is something where identifying a problem for every entrepreneur has to be the, I think the first foremost criterion. And then it has to have a certain persona of an entrepreneur because there isn’t, you know, I think we have been talking about ethics for AI. We should also talk about ethics for entrepreneurs and that persona kind of reflects into their venture.
And that helped me closely work with my target audience and customer to really give them a value proposition for which they could pay us and it ended up creating a venture or building a venture itself. And why we got acquired or why we end up getting acquired is because of the fact that we believe that till a certain level, we were able to pull that thing or address that thing to a significant base. Now, when we get acquired by a larger institution, we always look up that how we can reach out to the mass audiences and how we can multiply that part of the growth and everything else.
So that’s why we exited that particular thing itself after giving what we got for that particular venture or solving that problem itself. So that has been the case itself. So I think the first and important fundamental is obviously associating with the problem.
Second is around how, you know, knowing whether the problem is sizable enough to be addressed. And this is always happens when you create an MVP of any product and goes out in the market, interact with your customers, see how it is generating value for them, and then keep adding layers to it and going deep into the problem statement itself. And so that is a core fundamental which I have associated with in my entrepreneurial journey.
I think these are very important points that you have kind of picked up that the problem should be something that you kind of relate to and you understand on a very visceral level yourself, only then can it be something that you know, you would be, I would think that that that would be one of the sole reasons why it would excite you enough to work on it every day as well. So those are good insights. And I guess, you know, your experiences and that that have come together this decade and learning, I think, has really led you to being a successful entrepreneur with very smart as well.
But now for our listeners, can you give us a context about very smart? And, you know, if you had to explain what it does, perhaps in a simple manner, how would you go about doing? So, you know, again, since we have been talking about the problem, so let me, you know, just identify, you know, rather address what problem we are solving with very smart.ai. And so, see, in this current digital era, everyone is talking about AI, blockchain and other set of things, you know, technology tools all together. The foremost problem for all of this to happen is that there are different set of data silos and this data silos does not interact with each other. The enterprise itself is only limited to what data they have about their consumer itself.
And these are all different data silos where you cannot build a collaborative infrastructure or something like this because of the data privacy norms, which I totally agree has to be in place to protect user in all sense itself. But how, you know, when we talk about creating alliance in AI, when we talk about creating a blockchain infrastructure and everything, this is all what we have analyzed and, you know, reached to a certain degree of understanding is that unless and until all these data silos does not work together, all these problems cannot be addressed, all of these problems cannot be solved itself. So, how multiple organizations can interact with each other on their data without exchanging or sharing this data, that is what we have solved.
And then we identified that the decentralized infrastructure is the solution and went on working on the blockchain and other set of technology to really solve for it. So, this is something which we are solving. We are creating that how as in any organization, you can query all this different intelligence in a democratized manner across any single touchpoint.
And this query can actually help you identify a better audience perspective or understand your audience in a much, much detailed manner. In simplest words, we are creating an audience discovery framework. This audience discovery framework is helping you to think beyond just the taxonomy of likes and interests and look up on the larger attributes around digital, financial, and other set of key aspects itself.
So, that is what we have been creating. In this journey, we have reached while working with 61 plus large organizations itself, we have 528 million users whose data is being democratized in a privacy compliant manner. And that’s what we are enabling for them and how they can actually have a better consent management on this particular data where any set of data lying at any of the look and corner of the world can be controlled by the user himself.
And that’s what we are doing. Okay. So, you are creating a privacy compliant data interoperability.
That would be a good way to put it? Yes. If you have to put it in a single line, it’s a privacy compliant data infrastructure which is helping on one side and enterprise to understand their consumer behavior in a much better manner without having the access of the data. And on the second side, the consumer can control the data access across all the touch points they have.
So, I’ll give you a very simple example. We have created one application which is a dApps on top of this infrastructure itself. And we call it as Data Kavach.
And this Data Kavach app is all about that if you have been on internet for last 15 years and wanted to know which all organizations have your data, what kind of data they hold about you, are these are the apps which you are still currently using it or not, and what happens with that particular data. All is being made possible from a user perspective that they can control the access of their data across all the touch points. And their DPPP act in India kind of support this particular thing in order to actually go and opt out from the applications which you are no longer using or the data which is not relevant to a specific application which you have just by default have signed up to as a terms and condition.
You just put it as a checklist as yes, but you really do not mean to share with them. So, all of these is being made accessible through one single application and one single touchpoint. This is very, very interesting.
And it’s a very important problem to be solving. But can you tell me a little about how did you realize that this is a problem that needs solving and you have to be the person solving it? So, see, person solving it, not sure. It’s just that when I was, so we started solving an identity problem for our customers.
Identity problem where how identity in this country is being managed is very poor because even after having a digital identity in place, people tend to misuse data. People faces a lot of identity thefts and everything else. So, we were actually building a lot of identity stats or a regulated institution itself which includes banks, telecoms, insurance companies and all.
So, we realized that all of this data is where user has to keep passing on this PII data across all the touchpoint itself and they do not have any sort of visibility of how this data is being managed once they have given it to that particular organization. And they do not have any sort of transparency of where their data is being used, whether it may be transferred to any third party itself or being brought to any other purpose for which they have not been actually consented. So, that helps us understand that this is a bigger and deeper problem.
And this requires an infrastructure layer to actually solve for it. And since we come from a background of running a reg tech company, a regulatory tech company which is all about how regulations or law talks about data to be managed by any organization itself, that gives us a very good insight of kind of ending up creating a technology platform for it and serving it for our cons. Wonderful.
This is a very interesting use case. I think a lot of people talk about it as a use case in various sectors like where blockchain can be perhaps useful. Can you tell us a little about how you are utilizing the advantages of Web3 as well as AI in this process and how does this process look perhaps? So, when we talk about blockchain and why we end up using blockchain as one of the technology tools for enabling this decentralized ecosystem is because of the fact that with blockchain, certain things come by default in terms of immutability, security, in terms of interoperability and a transparency layer.
It also adds that blockchain as a technology is able to create or generate trust in a trustless ecosystem. When I say trustless ecosystem, it’s very clear that no two organizations would trust each other when it comes to their respective data. So, how we can actually generate a trust in a trustless ecosystem, that is where we thought that the blockchain is the right set of technology tools for it.
And then while going deep into this particular thing back in 2018 itself, we realized that there has been W3C standards to it. It is built on self-sovereign identity itself as a decentralized identifier. So, that is something which we started working on, solving initially only for the KYC interoperability and which is where users only need to, the entire data of user need to be in their wallet, which is stored, which is there in their handset or the mobile itself.
And it is in wallet, they are able to store all their PII set of information itself as a holder account and able to provide its access based on to explicit consent to all the organization without really passing that data to them in a form of verified credentials. So, that is something helped us create the first travel ID ecosystem. We find out it as a use case in the travel ecosystem, although the same set of ecosystem can be built in health, it can be built in supply chain, it can be built in multiple other use cases itself.
So, we identified that travel ecosystem can actually made or enabled with this decentralized identity itself. And later, we went into going not just only the KYC data, but all sort of alternative data. So, just for the people to understand what’s an alternative data.
Alternative data are the kind of a digital footprint which any digital led organization generate while a user interact with them or consume their application itself. So, these are all alternative data, which is very sensitive in form of that it can be de-anonymized and can be backtraced to the user itself, leading to identity theft altogether. So, alternative data plus the entire TII data, how they marry with each other, how a user is able to control that data across all the platform that blockchain helped us to attain that particular thing itself.
It’s all that once you start working on a problem and you solve for one layer of it and you start digging in that, okay, there’s another layer associated with it, which can be solved as a connected problem. That’s what we are able to build while we are increasing our stack. Okay.
Very interesting. So, as of now, I would think that whatever you’ve told me, the two things that come into my mind are privacy and compliance. They are very, critical issues.
And obviously, you are putting on the side of caution, but for our listeners, can you tell us a little about how you are covering your bases there? So, Tadusha, can you repeat this question? Sure. So, I was asking that from whatever you’ve said, gathered what you guys are building, but the two things do stand out, privacy and compliance, they become like recurring issues in people’s heads, right? Whenever there is data that is spoken of. So, how is VerySmart trying to ensure that you’re covering your bases in those two aspects? So, see, privacy and compliance has been always the wall garden for any user so that they do not fall prey of any spam, scams, or even any sort of data or identity theft itself.
We have been contributing to the current DPP act from last five years itself, as in part of industry consultation altogether. And while we were doing this, we got into depth of what compliance is expecting from it, what a regulatory landscape is, and how it is looking at it and how they want a technology to be leveraged around this. And at the same time, user perspective, that how we can bring a better consumer experience of them managing their data across all the touch points.
This all something fueled us to create our fundamental around where we are enabling a stack of helping all these users to be able to control their data and on the organization side, to be compliant on all of these norms itself. So, that is something, it’s a duo facie kind of a product stack, which is solving both at the enterprise level as well as at the consumer level altogether. So, when we started building, obviously, we do not have very detailed idea around this thing.
We just know very basic things. But then we brought in some great data privacy officers who have been working in Europe, people who have been talking about data privacy from last more than a decade itself. And they helped us create that technology stack, which is really solving for the people.
So, that’s how we have started and grown on this particular technology. Sure, I understand that. And can you tell me a So, as I mentioned, it’s a dual facie product.
It is there for enterprises. When I say enterprises, or it can be any startup, it can be any large organization or an MC as well who want to be privacy compliant, when they are looking to monetize their data, or when they are working on any set of analytics or other set of things on their data itself. So, that is something we are creating.
On the other side, consumer, when it comes to a consumer facie, it gives them or enables them that first they get to know where all their data resides, what is happening with their data in the larger landscape, who is taking actions on their data, and they can control that access by this particular application, which we call as a data coverage application. On the enterprise side also, just I forgot to add that we also enable all these large enterprises itself, that they can build multiple models on this data infrastructure, without knowing the user, without having access of the real data of the user itself. For that, we have built multiple protocols on the blockchain infrastructure.
And these protocols operate in such a way that no data need to be traded between the organizations itself for them to really work together. So, no data leaves the platform, no data is being exchanged between the companies itself, but collaboratively, multiple decentralized apps or dApps can be built on top of it, which could be in the form of annual ends, which could be in the form of multiple use cases, which can be addressed with this particular infrastructure layer. So, we are creating the fundamental on that particular thing.
And we have been acknowledged by World Economic Forum and Center for Financial Inclusion as a top three infrastructure as a solution company across the globe. So, that is something which we are bringing on table for our enterprise as well as the consumers. All right, wonderful.
Can you tell me a little about the team behind Verismart? So, I’ve already shared about me. I have a co-founder who is again a serial entrepreneur. He sold his last company to Agitech giant itself and then he started working with us in year 2017 and we have some great team coming from you know varied background which includes some majors of IITs and IIMs and two of the people from Stanford as well and then people who have been researching and have done their masters in terms of data anonymization and other set of techniques itself. So largely we are a team of 78 people where approximately more than you know 80% of it are a tech team itself who are building this particular stack it’s all together. Since I mentioned it does involve the blockchain infrastructure and a certain AI layer all together that is something which we have been there.
We also acquired a company which is into conversational and generative AI back three years back in 2022. So that is something their team also handles that part of the stack all together. So all in all this is how the team looks like at the moment.
Awesome and are you based like remotely or are you all working out of one office? So far we do have a hybrid work culture but I think we are still working out of same office four days a week itself. So just to have certain comfort with a team one day in a week is a work for all. Awesome.
Can you tell me about your personal opinion perhaps on the sector like the you know where there is a conduction of web 3 and AI. What are your thoughts? How do you think this will impact companies like yours in the future or just the data space in general? So if we talk about web 3 or even in the data space itself what future holds is that see this is only can be solved as an collaborative tech. So if you would see when we talk about data, when we talk about web 3, web 3 is all about connected infrastructure or connected problems.
In a connected problem landscape unless and until multiple organizations are coming together solving for the same set of problem itself it really does not fly. Whether you take a use case of supply chain management, whether you take it as a use case of you know health sector or whether it may be e-commerce or it may be travel and other set of things itself. So this is all about collaborative tech.
The present world need more collaborative tech led entrepreneurs which work together and so rather than solving the problem into different silos they work together and really create an infrastructure led approach because we have seen in past with platforms like DPI, digital public infrastructure which is again built on the collaborative tech where when we talk about UPI, when we talk about Aarogya Setu and when we talk about other set of things this is all is being made possible because of multiple sectors working together and solving for it. So this is when we talk about also the web 3 I think in last three years what has changed in web 3 is that there has been a lot of pilots going before that. There has been a lot of experimentation has been going around web 3 but in the present day many of the entrepreneurs have identified the real problem statement while working with the end customers over the past half a decade itself and with that experience now they have started working and going deep into building the most prominent tech which will actually solve the problem.
Earlier web 3 was a buzzword now web 3 is actually solving a lot of problem statements whether it may be in land records that it may be for edutech sector and similarly more. So what I believe there’s a very upside of web 3 being there and when we talk about the collaboration of a blockchain or a web 3 plus AI I foresee a lot of possibilities in a direction where users and the control access management are being automated but multiple AI led applications can be built without data getting disrupted or without compromising any data or data privacy for the user. So that is something which has started happening and that’s a next I think by the year 2025 I think that will be the golden time for where you can see more use cases between you know as an handshake between the two technology set of blockchain and AI itself.
Okay and what about very smart like what is the next big thing on your data? So right now we are in expansion mode. We have been doing some great work in India where I have already mentioned that we have 528 million consumers across 61 large enterprises have been enabled to have a better data access management for themselves. Also at the same time we are taking this infrastructure across borders which includes Vietnam, Indonesia, UAE and in US.
We have already going to be live in Indonesia by the end of this year and same with UAE we would be live by coming you know by the first quarter of 2025. So we as we grow we want as I mentioned our mission is very simple we want to create the world’s biggest decentralized data infrastructure layer and we believe that we have already got the proof of the pudding and many many stakeholders have been working with us in helping us expand cross-border and taking this entire vision across the job. Wonderful, wonderful.
So now you know we’ve talked a lot about very smart and what you guys are doing. I would love to understand a little bit more about you know your own perspective perhaps in terms of the kind of challenges that you personally face when you know while you’re building in the space, while you’re building in India for India. What are the kind of challenges you face? How did you overcome? So see India for an entrepreneur there are always a lot of challenges if you are building something out of the box.
So India as in if I would have to say you know me when I started my first venture actually there at that point of time there wasn’t any such startup ecosystem itself because I’m talking about back in 2010 itself. In 2010 you really do not have the ecosystem. There were hardly more than you know 300 to 400 tech startups companies itself.
So that is the case. So while building there were lack of funds, there were lack of acceptance, there were a lack of you know patience for any organization to work with any new tech startup itself and especially those who have been trying to disrupt the market or trying to bring a change. So that is something as you know like most of the tech entrepreneurs would have faced that was the you know initial challenges which I also encountered.
But while building certain things you know as based on the stages as you grow certain things happens is that when you are disrupting a market you have to also ensure that how you are able to move fast, fail fast and you know pivot. So that is something initially most of the entrepreneurs make the mistake that they start loving their product, they start admiring their product too much that they are not able to handle the critics very well. So that is something a common mindset which many of the entrepreneurs or the first time entrepreneurs face.
So over the period of time so I was also stuck in that loop. I got out of that loop that I have to be building for the customer first. Product is only gonna be the tool solving the problem but if my customer is not getting the right set of value from it then there’s no point building it and second it will never scale.
So those are kind of you know learnings which happened as you as you grow as an entrepreneur itself. Also while I was building I have realized in couple of stages that for an entrepreneur to find a lot of things working in the same direction is very difficult. At some time you may be early to the market, at some time you will build a product which may not be able to find a product market fit, at some time you have built something which is already having a lot of competition out there and then the price point to every other thing is very skewed.
So there’s a journey which is filled with problem and only thing which would keep fueling you as an entrepreneur is being passionate about the problem you are solving. If you are not passionate about that problem and how it needs to be solved then trust me living an entrepreneur’s life is not the easiest one. So that has been the kind of a journey.
It’s always filled with adventures, it’s always filled with a lot of ups and downs on a day-to-day basis itself. But once you start a journey make sure you make it reach to a certain milestone and do not leave in between. For that you have to be a very resilient one.
Yeah, I think those are good suggestions. Be passionate about the problem you are solving, be resilient. This is a challenging journey but you have to keep at it.
I think that’s the only way that you know you get where what you’re trying to build and where you’re trying to build that is how you reach there. Now sort of I want to because you know this has been lovely but the time is running out. I do want to ask you this might be my penultimate question before we wrap this up but I would love to know your personal goals and ambitions for the next say decade like what are you aiming for first? So all through my life when I was just 20 when I to the point and now I’m 35.
So all through my life I have imagined myself someone who is a people’s person and solving for the people and that is the reason I after making a good handsome amount of money itself in past exits itself it entrepreneurship keep pulling me back because for me entrepreneurship is a one way of solving people’s problems. So I’m enjoying that thing that’s a very personal thing for me because this is one thing which keeps me you know burning all the fuel to wake up and you know go to the work and work in late night to really be there. Second important I think is that on the personal side I believe that this ecosystem has given me a lot and I wanted to you know share some of it with my other you know fellow entrepreneurs itself which may be in the form of you know wisdom which may be in the form of capital which may be in form of associating with those problems which I do have an idea but I’m not solving for because I think an entrepreneur is a good entrepreneur if he solves one problem at a single time itself.
Do not you know kind of travel in two boats. So I always believe that if I invest in those companies who are solving the problems which is which is also close to my heart and they are doing it in a very profound manner how to get associated with them and as we associate obviously there is a grow the capital invested with them but first and foremost thing is that how they what problem they are addressing and how they are solving for it. In terms of me during this entrepreneur’s journey I have traveled the world so I won’t say that travel or you know a certain lifestyle or something of other set of thing is my personal is no longer a personal goals because I have been living that thing during my entrepreneurial journey and I think God has been kind for blessing me that I’m solving for the people and at the same time able to cherish some small term you know kind of checklist for myself on a personal side itself.
Talking about a decade after or in a decade I see myself you know building something even bigger of what I’m currently doing for the world. So that is something my personal I think that’s personal thing which I want to achieve building even something bigger for what I’m currently doing or even multiplying the stack of what I’m currently doing so that is the case. Awesome.
Thank you so much Saurav. This has been a lovely conversation understanding what VerySmart is doing. This is a very interesting new sort of a niche I think relatively new niche a lot of our listeners would have heard it for the first time this is to do with you know data interoperability as well as keeping the privacy intact.
It is a very specific space that you’re building in and all the best for your future endeavors but before we wrap this up I would like to ask you one more question which is something I ask everybody who comes on the show. You know you were somebody who has been in the space for a long time and you know you are a convert for AI web 3. What would be your suggestions for somebody perhaps who’s not that sure who’s looking at these sectors with a certain amount of skepticism? What would be your suggestions to them for them to start living on block? See the disruptive tech has always been denied in all aspects initially and I’ll give you a very simple story for all the listeners out there. So AT&T is a big telecom you know company itself across the globe.
They are the one who’s got in all those different set of network layers and everything. So they went to a one consulting company that can you envisage in the year 2000 that what would be the market size of the smartphones itself and the search company said that in next five years this market would be somewhere around you know 10 million handsets and this may not become the biggest utility itself. But when we see how the entire paradigm has shifted in those five years from 2000 to 2005 it shows that more than 300 million connections have been established and they missed out an opportunity of almost more than a trillion dollars in that particular person.
So the point is every part of the disruptive tech whether it may be a blockchain or AI same thing is gonna happen all of you know any of the person who is trying to build on blockchain and AI is to do is identify the right use case, identify the right set of problem they want to address using the technology and go and start building it. Because if you miss this bus you have to wait again at least a decade more to be riding on some other disruptive tech which may be coming after blockchain or AI. Wonderful words to wrap this episode up.
Thank you so much Saurabh of just sharing your wonderful insights. Thank you for making the time to speak to us. This has been a wonderful chat.
Is there anything else that you would like to add about VerySmart or how to get in touch with you before we wrap this up? So for VerySmart it’s very simple. If you are looking to make your organization privacy compliant and you know able to monetize the data in a very democratized manner just reach out to us. We are all there to help you understand in detail what is the best optimum path to achieve this and how you can even protect your consumers from any set of third-party data abuse or data theft etc.
So feel free to connect and we are there to help you out. Awesome, thank you so much Saurabh. This has been a wonderful conversation.