Seventh Episode of Crafting Bharat Podcast: Sravanth Aluru, Avataar Co-Founder & CEO, on AI's Future & Spatial Storytelling in India

‘Startup’ has become the buzzword for the current generation. It has become a career path where students and professionals are changing their career to pursue their dreams and passion. For decades this wave has hit India, making it the 3^rd largest ecosystem globally.

The "Crafting Bharat - A Startup Podcast Series" powered by AWS, and an initiative by NewsReach, in association with VCCircle, unlocks the secrets behind these successful entrepreneurs’ journeys aiming to equip aspiring entrepreneurs and business enthusiasts with invaluable insights. The podcast series is hosted by Gautam Srinivasan, famed for hosting a diverse range of TV and digital programs, currently consulting editor at CNBC (India), CNN-News18, Forbes India, and The Economic Times.

The Indian Startup ecosystem has witnessed an exceptional leap with AI/ML technologies. Sravanth Aluru, Co-Founder and CEO of Avataar, is the light bearer in revolutionizing the industry with the power of spatial storytelling. In the Crafting Bharat Podcast Series, Aluru talks about his entrepreneurial journey, spatial storytelling, and trends in the AI industry.

Explore the tales of Indian startup founders' transformation from dreams to reality, navigating challenges to seize opportunities through the Crafting Bharat Podcast Series. 

Segment 1: The Incubator

How did your previous stints help you zero in on this new way of enabling consumer interactions for brands?

I found the passion of spatial storytelling and the power of spatial depth towards visual discovery at Microsoft, where I kind of started my career, I was a computer vision fanatic back then. Kinect is a depth sensor that would sit on top of Xbox and do the skeleton tracking and some of those early AI and computer vision use cases. That’s where I saw the power of spatial depth and just to allude to that we all live in a physical world which has a third dimension, our digital experiences are flat today on the flat screens that we carry be it a mobile, laptop or tablet and I could see there’s a huge gap or a digital physical divide, in terms of how consumers are today consuming content and visual experiences on digital versus how physical happens.

Anything that we should look forward to from your moonshot factory called Avataar Reality Labs?

I think the physical and the digital reality will not be distinguishable anymore if you were to fast forward to maybe 5 years from now, we are seeing that already in the pilot R&D POCs that we’re doing internally in the Avataar Reality Labs. But the kind of photo realism and the way we can blend the physical and digital reality today with devices like Quest 2 by Meta or Vision Pro by Apple. I think it is going to give superhuman capabilities across everything digital starting from communications to even just information consumption to productivity in various different contexts.

Could you expand on your partnership with AWS and how it helps you scale up and innovate?

We are focused on a very clear AI computer vision convergence era and having said that AWS gives us a lot more capabilities to connect various dots that either remove friction or create delight for our clients or the end consumers and that’s where I see the partnership to be very complimentary of a strong win-win for both entities.

Segment 2: The Accelerator

What’s your idea of the perfect product? 

Honestly, the perfect product is like infinity to me, where you can tend to it and limit it but there’s nothing called reaching infinity. Similarly, I don’t think there’s a perfect product that exists in the world. But if I must express my point of view, a perfect product would be something that is continuously improving with a very clear utilitarian purpose of either removing existing friction today or driving value in terms of delight where you are able to do things that you couldn’t do yesterday.

How challenging was it to attract the right talent?

I do think that people want a purpose, they want to be part of a journey that’s value creation from nothing and if you can spin on the ability for people because it’s a collective journey as just one founder cannot achieve anything by himself but it’s a collective team that achieves it.

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Everyone wants to scale quickly but how about staying small till you really understand the business inside out and scale smartly and sustainably? Your thoughts? 

I think there’s a little bit of instant gratification that’s creeped into the startup philosophies. I am not sure if that’s the right approach, I’m not saying that you should spend 10 years. What I mean is you really need to find a true value proposition that’s sustainable.

The Indian Startup Ecosystem is having a quantum shift with motivated startup founders bringing forth exceptional innovation. Startup founders' vision and dedication drive India's startup surge.

Stay tuned to the Crafting Bharat Podcast Series as they bring you these inspirational entrepreneurs for insightful and candid discussions with Gautam Srinivasan.