By Kaveri Chandrashekar

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In a world where news about Artificial Intelligence is developing by the minute, it’s hard to keep up with the innovators, the changemakers and disruptors. Just in this week alone, AI has had a significant impact on everything from animated feature films, cooking devices, stethoscopes, and the iPhone 17 launch. To make it more exciting – AI100 is back with its fifth cohort.

From seasoned industry pros to bold founders and fearless tech mavericks, every cohort brings together a diverse set of minds with one thing in common: they’re shaping the future of AI.

The fifth AI100 cohort is packed with game-changers reimagining how India shops, banks, and gets things done. Think of a data wizard at a beauty-tech giant who helps you stumble upon products you didn’t even know you wanted. Or a fintech maverick who’s built an army of AI “knowledge workers” to handle everything from claims to compliance and loan underwriting. Add to that an identity innovator onboarding a billion customers with the swipe of a face, and a fintech trailblazer who treats AI like electricity—powering everything from banking APIs to water-from-air machines. And of course, a quick-commerce maestro making sure customer’s groceries, biryanis, and late-night chocolate cravings arrive in minutes, thanks to AI magic behind the scenes. Here’s a peek behind the curtain of AI100’s latest lineup of innovators, each of which is showing the world how the future is being coded today.
Keshav Kumar
Keshav Kumar’s first glimpse of AI began in a classroom at Visvesvaraya Technological University, where neural networks first sparked his curiosity. From experimenting with statistical models at NetApp to driving global-scale personalization at Prime Video, Kumar bore witness to how AI could bridge cultures and keep content flowing—despite lockdowns during the pandemic.

Today, as Head of Engineering at BigBasket, he leads a 320-member team at the forefront of India’s quick commerce revolution. For Kumar, engineering leadership boils down to three missions: ensuring seamless operations, driving innovation, and preparing for future scale. Under his watch, AI powers everything—from conversational product search and personalized shopping experiences to demand forecasting, dynamic delivery routes, anomaly detection, and even developer productivity. Machine Learning has also redefined customer support, with GenAI automating 80% of anxiety-driven customer queries.

Beyond work, he finds focus through wildlife photography, food explorations, and the thrill of a perfectly cooked biryani. His vision is clear: in the chaos of the quick commerce landscape, AI isn’t an add-on—it’s the invisible engine powering change.

Prabhu Rangarajan
Prabhu Rangarajan’s interest in intelligent systems began during his Master’s at Madras University, where neural networks inspired his vision of machines that could act and adapt. Nearly a decade later, that fascination laid the foundation for M2P Fintech. launched in 2014, the organization was reimagining financial infrastructure in a rapidly digitizing India.

From early experiments in unifying banking data, to building Recon360, M2P’s AI-native reconciliation platform, Prabhu and his team have consistently turned complexity into clarity. Despite exponential growth, M2P’s operations team remains lean, showcasing efficiency as its competitive edge.

For Prabhu, AI is as fundamental a force as electricity, capable of reshaping industries, extracting water from air and even building an International Space Station. When he isn’t powering the API infrastructure behind hundreds of banks and fintechs through M2P Fintech, he finds balance in temple visits, table tennis, and conversations with young founders. His vision for the next decade: making AI affordable, accessible, and transformative for all.

Vijayender Karnaty
For Vijayender Karnaty, Director of Data Science at Nykaa, the magic of AI lies in turning massive datasets into meaningful customer experiences. His journey began at IIT Kanpur, where curiosity for information theory and distributed systems sparked a lifelong fascination with data. A pivotal read—Mining of Massive Datasets—cemented his path into AI.

Today, Vijayender leads Nykaa’s efforts to make product discovery seamless through smarter search, recommendations, and ads. From semantic search to personalized widgets, his team ensures customers not only find what they want but also explore what they didn’t know they needed. Passionate about ethical AI, he stresses fairness, transparency, and inclusive data as non-negotiables for building trust. Looking ahead, he’s excited about AI’s leap into robotics—where technology could spark creativity just as personal computers once did.

Vaibhav Dobriyal Dobi
Vaibhav Dobriyal Dobi’s journey with AI began with curiosity about neural networks in his student days, but the real spark came later—first with big data, and then with a project optimising theatre schedules in the Netherlands. The lesson he carried forward: smart use of technology can unlock value even within constraints.

In 2013, Vaibhav co-founded LUMIQ to bring this mindset to financial services. A decade on, LUMIQ has become a trusted AI partner for banks and insurers, with solutions like emPOWER and Drishti, and its latest leap—LiteCone. This suite of AI Virtual Employees, from LEO the underwriter to ARIS the claim adjudicator, blends specialised language models with agentic AI to deliver accuracy, scalability, and efficiency. By naming these AI workers, Vaibhav emphasizes treating them as collaborators, not just code.

Outside work, Vaibhav finds inspiration in books, poetry, and music, and retreats to the Garhwal mountains for silence and clarity. His philosophy is simple: technology is a means to an end, and the future of AI belongs to innovators who pursue specialised, real-world problem-solving with fire and persistence.

Kedar Kulkarni
Kedar Kulkarni’s journey into AI began almost by accident. At IIT Madras, he started out in Metallurgy but found his spark in robotics, where building vision algorithms for autonomous drones gave him the thrill of instant impact—code one night, working robots the next. That early taste of AI’s possibilities never left him.

In 2013, Kedar co-founded HyperVerge with friends, just as deep learning was gaining traction. What began as a photo-sorting app soon grew into an AI powerhouse, helping banks, insurers, and fintechs securely onboard over a billion customers. A turning point came when Zoho’s Sridhar Vembu inspired them to think bigger: not just as a startup, but as a conscious business that balances strong economic engines with meaningful social impact. That vision continues to guide HyperVerge today. As AI races ahead, Kedar is vocal about ethics and responsibility. He believes humans must stay in the loop for critical decisions.

Outside work, yoga and time with his young daughter keep him grounded and joyful. For Kedar, building a business with purpose starts with cultivating joy in everyday life.