Saurabh Lulekar

I remember when this all started. Faris - invited me to catch up at our favorite spot around Blok M. I had no idea he’d just wrapped up a procedure at Pondok Indah Hospital! (He really knows how to add drama to our catch-ups.) We’d been on separate paths and projects since "the winding down project", but there he was, reminding me of our dream to ride this AI wave together again. It was a plan we’d hatched with Sahal Zain & Gurnoor Dhillon when the world of AI was still mostly theoretical and jargon-heavy. Somehow, the conversation continued with Gurnoor Dhillon while he was waiting for his meeting with someone who would eventually become one of CalvinBall’s key early adopters. It felt like everything was coming together, like a series of seemingly random dots connecting to form a bigger picture. Seeing how far we’ve come as a team at CalvinBall Technologies is truly exciting. What started as theoretical discussions has now evolved into practical Gen AI solutions that are solving everyday problems and hold endless possibilities to shape the industry. 👨‍🚀 👩‍🚀 Here’s to pushing boundaries and achieving new milestones together! Gurnoor Dhillon, Sandeep Ramesh, Faris -, Sahal Zain, Eva Zuliya, Ratu Nadiah Khairunnisa 🚀 #GenAI #AIInnovation #TechJourney #ArtificialIntelligence #TechTransformation #CalvinballTech #Calvinballers

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The AI & LLM Revolution Boon or Bane for Society? 🤖 🌍   As we witness the rapid evolution of AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) in recent times, with Meta recently making Llama 3 open source and Vinod Khosla's insane predictions about AI, it's time to pause and reflect on the implications of these advancements on various aspects of our lives.. 🌐   1. Personal Finance 💰: AI and LLMs have the potential to revolutionize personal finance management, making it more accessible and efficient. However, they could also lead to job losses in the financial sector, affecting the livelihoods of many - economic instability?   2. Education 🎓: LLMs can revolutionize education by providing personalized learning experiences, but could they also widen the digital divide?   3. Jobs 🏭: As AI and LLMs infiltrate various industries, how will non-IT and non-engineering professionals adapt to these changes? How can we ensure a smooth transition for affected workforce?   4. Social Life 🤝: Will AI & LLM enhance our social interactions or lead to increased isolation and dependence on technology? AI-powered social media platforms could enhance our online interactions, but they might also contribute to the erosion of privacy and the spread of misinformation.   5. Agriculture 🌾: AI-driven precision farming could boost productivity, but will it also lead to ecological and environmental concerns?   6. Basic Needs 🍲: Can AI help address food security and access to clean water, or will it exacerbate existing inequalities?   7. Work-Life Balance ⚖️: AI can automate mundane tasks, but will it also blur the lines between work and personal life?   8. Health 🏥: AI can revolutionize healthcare, but will it also lead to over-reliance on technology and loss of human touch in patient care? AI-driven healthcare solutions could revolutionize diagnostics and treatment, but they might also raise ethical concerns and exacerbate existing healthcare disparities.   9. Environment, and Ecology 🌳 - AI-driven innovations can help us address pressing global challenges such as climate change and disease outbreaks. However, will they consume vast amounts of energy and resources?   10. Security & Safety 🛡️: AI can improve security measures, but will it also lead to increased surveillance and potential misuse of personal data?   11. Politics & Power 🏛️: AI can help streamline governance, leading to more informed decision-making, will they be exploited for political gains?   Are we on the cusp of a transformative era? As we ponder these questions, it's crucial to remember that responsible AI governance could be the ultimate solution to ensure these technologies benefit society. 🤖   What are your thoughts on this? 🤔 #AI #LLM #ArtificialIntelligence #LargeLanguageModels #Society #Impact #FutureOfWork #Education #PersonalFinance #Environment #Healthcare #Security #Politics #BoonOrBane #BubbleOrRevolution #ResponsibleAI #Governance

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Excited to see Zippee recognized by Redseer in its "State of D2C in India" report 🚀 When one of India's top strategy firms lists us as the only key player in Same-Day Delivery logistics, it takes me back to the core insight we started building on in 2021: • Post-COVID, Indian consumers don't want to wait 3-7 days for their ecommerce shipments, especially when marketplaces & quick commerce giants have spoilt them with 10-min/same-day/next-day delivery offerings. However, the intricate logistics & tech infra for such operations are complicated, & D2C brands are struggling to keep up. Shoutout to our incredible team and partners across 10 cities. We've got miles to go & remain laser-focused on solving pressing pain points for India's 100,000+ Ecommerce brands. #SameDayDelivery #D2C

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Previously, I posted about the value of deploying simple models over complex ones: https://lnkd.in/g5b3eWte I joked.. "with every model deployed to production, someone learns to value simplicity more." And today, Meta posted on what they need to do to keep their advertising models sturdy. https://lnkd.in/gZzr6TM5 In it, there's a list (copied below) of all the nasty ways ML models can misbehave. These are good things to think about the next time you're working on an ML pipeline.

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Consumer purchase bands If you draw a parallel between electron model(energy bands) with purchase classes in India(lower income, lower middle, middle, upper middle, rich and ultra-rich), there could be an interesting explanation of how and where commerce is shaping up in India. There are three macro trends in focus right now:- 1.    Quick commerce is on the surge, eating away volumes from both modern trade and e-commerce 2.    Rural commerce or Bharat commerce growing faster than urban commerce 3.    Premiumization is contributing for brands in Tier-I markets Similar to how electrons jump to higher energy bands in an atom, consumers in India move to higher purchase bands as their income increases. This creates a natural "spill over effect" where purchases influence movement towards higher bands. However, unlike strictly defined energy levels, purchase bands in India have significant overlap due to aspirational buying behaviour. Back to macro trends: Urban India: Middle class is growing fast(6.5% CAGR, from 31% to 61% of total population by 2047) and the major growth has been in the upper middle segment. If you look at people buying from modern trade, ecommerce and quick commerce(middle-middle to rich), there is a strong overlap. For a customer that has graduated from general trade to modern trade, they will move towards ecommerce to quick commerce with a slight premium in cost increasing the convenience factor. Beyond Urban India: Similarly, if you look beyond urban India, any expansion in middle class(lower to lower middle/middle- middle), the transition will go from unorganized to organized( GT and modern trade) from lower-to-lower middle class and ecommerce for lower middle to middle-middle class and hence the upsurge. Interestingly if you read, ecommerce trends(40% of total market share and increasing), growth contribution is coming from tier-II,III towns and cities. Premiumization: In the up markets, upper middle class is expanding. And, hence there is a new market where people are paying a premium for differentiation. The brands targeting them are either targeting as “mass-premium range” or “affordable luxury”. And, this has been the go to strategy for good number of brands in India. #wherehouse

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🤔 Interesting perspective from Infosys Chairman Nandan Nilekani: "Let Silicon Valley build LLMs; India should lead in AI use cases." At Meta's Build with AI summit, Nilekani suggested that India should focus on practical AI applications rather than competing in the LLM space. But is this the right approach? Key points to consider: • Silicon Valley giants are heavily invested in LLM development • India could focus on: - Synthetic data generation - Small language models - Real-world applications - Building robust data infrastructure The vision is for India to become the global "use case capital" for AI, emphasizing frugal innovation and practical solutions. What do you think? 💭 Should India stick to developing practical AI applications? 💭 Or should we also invest in fundamental AI research and LLM development? 💭 Could focusing solely on use cases limit our AI capabilities in the long run? Let's discuss! Share your thoughts in the comments below. 👇 #AI #DigitalIndia #LLM

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A few days ago, Union minister Piyush Goyal shared his concerns about eCommerce on traditional stores (https://lnkd.in/gJTvVjVG) In my previous avatar, 8 years ago, I had shared and raised enough concerns including writing to the Confederation of Indian Industry, about the need to empower local mom and pop stores and digitisation at the store level, rather than a top-down approach or use aggregators. Please see my article https://lnkd.in/g53cpHWs. The problem still remains the same. In my opinion, we can still take a lot of corrective measures and not just allow regulations to hamper disruptions. 1. The local supermarkets and mom and pop stores can benefit immensely by enabling hyperlocal delivery. 2. The delivery businesses should be integrated with the stores. 3. The consumers should buy products from a producer and not a delivery company. This will avoid the delivery agent influencing or dictating what the consumers consume. While there are many businesses in place which address 1 & 2, it is the 3rd one that is very important. Let us hope that the businesses, authorities and consumers all wake up together at the same time. Too much to ask?? #onlinegrocery #hyperlocalgrocery #hyperlocaldelivery Dr. Sujatha R Upadhyaya

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Here’s the #1 mistake EB-1A aspirants in tech make. ⚠️ They go outside-in versus inside-out. What does that even mean? It means they look externally for how other people built EB-1A profiles as a guide to how they should build their profile. I get it - if you don’t know where to start, makes sense to do what other successful applicants do, right? Wrong. This approach is breeding a generation of EB-1A’s that all look the same. 🐑 The whole point of the EB-1A process is to show why YOU are UNIQUELY recognized as among the best in your field. 💯 So how does it help to get all the same judging, awards, and media that everyone else is getting? ✅ You are supposed to stand out from the crowd, and show the impact of the work YOU are doing within the EB-1A framework. Plus, in tech, everyone has a different story to tell. How does it help to use someone else’s approach to tell your story? These EB-1A’s come across as fake - and you know who hates fakers more than anyone else? 👮‍♂️ USCIS. And when they see these applications they will profile you as a faker and completely disregard the parts that are deserving. We know because we (and many of our lawyer colleagues) are now being asked to help scores of tech workers who got their EB-1A’s denied after filling up their profiles with unimpressive awards and marketing exposes masquerading as media articles in 3rd rate publications. Question: since when do awesome tech employees ever get recognition of their expertise in the press? They don’t. Their employers do. So it looks weird that a generation of employees are now suddenly getting press coverage. ✅ Instead of an outside-in approach, go inside-out. First identify your unique impact proposition. What is your narrative? How are you uniquely amazing? Because if you are a senior employee at an innovative company, chances are you doing some incredible, impactful EB-1A-worthy work! Then, build your case from there in a way that honors that narrative. This is the formula we use in our course, and then in our law firm, that leads to a ~99% approval rate. Don’t be tempted to fake it! #immigration #eb1a #globalmobility -------- Do you work in high-tech, are stuck in long green card backlogs, and are looking to level up to an EB-1A? Our next attorney-led live EB-1A profile-building cohort begins on June 8. Apply now to secure your spot! The link is in the comments below.

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55% net margin and 75% gross margin... Would like to know is there any other business making such a margin or can demand such a pricing power selling material? Intel during its golden days having its own foundry and manufacturing used to report ~50% gross margin. But who has dreamt about 75% gross margin that too driven by 1 business vertical? Is there anyone making even 1/5th of sustained margin in this ecosystem? Software companies like meta,google and Microsoft who materialistic investment is less compared to hardware company are seeing a gross margin in 60-75% and net margin 30-40%. Something to think about the sustainability?

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Great news for Indians in America: EB-1 priority dates just moved forward by 11 months to 1st February 2022. Context: The State Department published the July visa bulletin and there's good news. There's been a forward movement across all 3 categories for India. Besides the EB-1, the EB-2 date advanced by 2 months to 15th June 2012 and EB-3 advanced by 1 month to 22nd September 2012. For China, EB-1 moves up forward by 2 months (1st November 2022), EB-2 by 1 month (1st March 2020), and EB-3 remains stagnant (1st September 2020 and 1st January 2017). After a long time, this is some respite for Indians who've been stuck with a never-ending backlog and filed an EB-1 extraordinary green card. (If you're curious about what the EB-1A is all about, check go.readunshackled.com/tvc which is a free course I launched :) … Please re-share this post so it helps more people! 🙏 Finally, if you’re an immigrant in America, join 16,000+ who get my weekly newsletter packed with breaking news & free resources like this: https://lnkd.in/gKtUGU-r :) #unshackled #immigration #USA #o1 #h1b #eb1 #visa #india

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In an era where techno-functional skills are pivotal, it's crucial not only to just keep learning but also choose your learnings wisely rather than settling for outdated knowledge. #technofunctional #ceo #engineers #business #ageofai #realworld #productivity

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🚀 New Win for the Open Source Community: LLaMA 3.2 with Multimodal Capabilities! AI at Meta has launched LLaMA 3.2, advancing AI with powerful multimodal capabilities. Key Highlights: 1. Multimodal Capabilities: LLaMA 3.2 brings vision reasoning, image recognition, and generation, enabling a wide spectrum of applications in e-commerce and other industries. The Vision LLaMA integrates cross-modality understanding organically, as it was trained on image-to-text alignment for a unified vision-language representation. 2. Multiple Model Sizes: Available in sizes from 1B to 90B parameters, LLaMA 3.2 offers flexibility from lightweight mobile deployments to high-performance server tasks. 3. Edge-Optimized: With models as small as 1B and 3B, LLaMA 3.2 runs directly on Android and iOS devices with BFloat16 precision using the XNNPack backend, ensuring low-latency inference at the edge. 🌟 What’s Next: Expect to see Visual Prompting integrated into multimodal inputs to support complex industrial applications as well as medical imaging analysis and automated diagnosis—a true game-changer for AI in healthcare and beyond! PS: Image was generated by LLaMA 3.2. #LLM #PyTorch #OpenSource #LLaMA #GPU #AI #Meta

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Amazon is hiring a Product Manager for Transit Payments. This could be your chance to shape the future of payments in India with one of the most innovative companies in the world. ✨ Here’s what you’ll get to do: → Ensure a wide selection of transit payment categories on Amazon Pay to cater to everyday needs. → Drive growth for new launches like the Amazon Pay ICICI Bank FASTag. → Manage and scale existing transit payment categories with a long-term strategy. → Work closely with cross-functional teams—Tech, UX, Business, and more—to build customer-facing experiences at scale. → Dive deep into key business metrics daily and drive continuous product improvements. → Develop and execute robust go-to-market plans, while constantly innovating based on customer feedback. If you're passionate about creating seamless customer experiences and enjoy working at the intersection of technology, product, and strategy, this could be the perfect role for you! Apply here ↓ https://lnkd.in/dxBWAsQ9 Feeling like you don’t have the perfect portfolio website to showcase your product management skills? What if I told you it’s possible to launch your own stunning portfolio in under 5 minutes? That’s exactly why we built Designfolio! Check it out at www(.)designfolio(.)me (link in the first comment) and get your website up and running today! And hey, don’t forget to tag or share this with your PM friends who could use a little boost! ♻️

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🚀 Amazon ML Challenge 2024: A Triumph of Innovation, Adaptability, and Teamwork! 🚀 I’m thrilled to announce that our team—Suprabho Saha, Rahul _ and Anand Prakash, and Myself—achieved Rank 207 out of 75,000+ participants in the Amazon ML Challenge 2024! 🎉 Though we didn’t qualify for the final rounds, the experience was incredibly enriching and taught us so much. Working with 250,000+ training samples and 130,000+ testing samples (38GB+ in total) on personal machines with limited CPUs posed significant challenges. However, our team, tackled these challenges with innovative solutions and adaptability. We utilized parallel GPU processing on Kaggle to efficiently apply PaddleOCR and prepare our dataset. This approach allowed us to implement our regex-based analysis, achieving a commendable F1 score of 44.7%. While we had plans for advanced techniques like CNN + NER, and LLMs the constraints led us to focus on delivering robust results with the resources available. Our success in this competition reflects our ability to innovate under pressure, adapt to constraints, and work as a cohesive team. A huge shoutout to my incredible teammates Suprabho Saha, Rahul _ and Anand Prakash —our collective expertise and problem-solving skills made this achievement possible. Looking forward to applying these insights to future challenges and continuing to push the boundaries of machine learning! 💡 Check out the details of the challenge here: Amazon ML Challenge 2024 #MachineLearning #DataScience #Innovation #Teamwork #Adaptability #HackathonSuccess #AmazonMLChallenge #AI #ML

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Apollo Global Management, Inc. Eyes $5 Billion Investment in Intel Corporation 🎯 🔍 U.S.-based asset management firm Apollo Global Management, Inc. has offered to invest up to $5 billion in Intel Corporation, according to Bloomberg News. 🤝 The potential deal comes at a time when Intel's shares have lost nearly 60% of their value since the start of the year, indicating a moment of weakness for the once-dominant chipmaker. 💰 While the size of the investment could change and discussions may fall through, Apollo has signaled its willingness to make a significant equity-like investment in the struggling tech giant. 🔧 Earlier this year, Apollo agreed to acquire a 49% stake in a joint venture related to Intel's new manufacturing facility in Ireland for $11 billion. 🌐 This development follows reports of Qualcomm exploring a potential acquisition of Intel, with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano R. Amon personally involved in the early-stage negotiations. As the semiconductor industry continues to evolve, major players like Apollo and Qualcomm are positioning themselves to capitalize on opportunities and shape the sector's future. #Intel #Apollo #Qualcomm #Semiconductors #TechInvestments #ChipIndustry

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Thoughts on Zomato's recent acquisition of Paytm's Movie and Event Biz. 1. Right now Zomato is getting multiple of ~200 on it's EBIDTA, they paid multiple of ~80 (profit of 27 crore). For next couple of years they may continue to trade at ~100 multiple so from that POV it should boost their M cap or help maintain very stretched valuations if not boost them further. 2. It's already a ~9% EBDITA margin business for Paytm (300 cr revenue). Book my show made a PAT of ~85 crore on revenue of ~1000 crore last year (~8.5% PAT). This margin is better than grocery ever will be so margin accretive. 3. Zomato also wants going out biz to be worth 10,000 crore turnover (this is already at ~3500 crore GOV business, yet to make profit in zomato's case). This acquisition is good addition to this biz and fits in well with their ambition of making this the 3rd large business from house of Zomato. 4. Going out / Movie Ticketing is a duopoly market with Bookymyshow as only other large player. Zomato with it's execution rigour may be gunning for No.1 spot. If they make it happen, they will be No.1 player in 3 business. A very difficult feat. Paytm has 30-40% market share in ticketing and movie space. 5. Zomato also sitting on 12000 crores of cash. This is not generating more than FD returns I presume. So this is a good avenue for cash deployment as such opportunities are hard to come by. 6. They may look at entering food biz for movies. This is Large and immensely profitable segment. PVR made 2000 crore of revenue from selling F&B. Although I doubt PVR will be okay with that given 30-40% of their revenue and likely a higher share of profit comes from food. But I feel that some sort of integration is likely on cards. Overall a good buy! Likely to be good for consumers as well. ✅ Ref - News Article, Zomato Quarterly Updates

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Fantastic news today on the general availability of Amazon Q. Amazon Q is the most capable generative AI-powered assistant for accelerating software development and leveraging companies’ internal data. It eliminates tedious work for developers and employees across organizations. #AmazonQ #GenerativeAI

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Interestingly, in the light of recent antitrust rulings, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has expressed the company’s commitment to vigorously defend its business practices. He emphasized that Google’s success is rooted in continuous innovation and delivering superior products that consumers and partners choose willingly. In August 2024, a federal judge ruled that Google violated antitrust laws by maintaining a monopoly in the online search market. The U.S. Department of Justice is considering structural remedies, including the potential breakup of Google’s business units such as Chrome, Play, and Android, to address anticompetitive practices. Despite legal challenges, Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, reported a 34% increase in profit, earning $26.3 billion in the July-September quarter of 2024. 1) Can Google balance regulatory compliance with its commitment to innovation and user experience? 2) What impact would a potential breakup have on the broader tech industry and consumer choice? 3) How should companies in dominant market positions prepare for increasing regulatory scrutiny in the evolving digital landscape? These developments prompt a broader discussion on the future of big tech and the balance between market dominance and fair competition. Your thoughts please… #google #antitrustlaw #innovation #firsttimeceos #ceosgurukul https://lnkd.in/dGFD-qAP

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