We live in a world where data moves faster than borders, but the real question is no longer just who owns the data; it’s who controls the future built on it. In this episode of Mint Techcetra, host Nelson John is joined by Gaurav Agarwal, Vice President, Technology at IBM India & South Asia, to unpack why digital sovereignty has evolved from a regulatory checkbox into a strategic business advantage. From the rise of AI and agentic systems to the growing importance of hybrid cloud, this conversation explores how enterprises can maintain control over their data, infrastructure, and decision-making while continuing to innovate at scale. The episode breaks down the difference between data residency and true sovereignty, the role of AI governance in building trust, and how leaders can rethink their approach to stay competitive in a rapidly transforming digital economy. The key takeaway: digital sovereignty isn’t about building walls, it’s about building confidence to innovate, scale, and lead in a data-driven world.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mint Techcetra

The New Digital Sovereignty Playbook for Scaling AI

India is stepping into its biggest tech transformation yet. From powerful conversations at the Indian Impact Summit to insights from leading voices in AI, this episode explores how India is positioning itself in the global Artificial Intelligence race. We break down the surge in AI investments, the growing role of big players like Reliance and Adani, and what global giants like Qualcomm Ventures see in India’s tech future. But the big question remains  are Indian IT firms like TCS, Infosys, and Wipro ready for the AI era? Is India moving beyond its traditional outsourcing model toward true AI innovation and deep-tech leadership? This episode dives into the future of Indian IT, AI startups, enterprise tech, policy shifts, and the billion-dollar race shaping India’s digital economy. If you're curious about Artificial Intelligence in India, the future of Indian IT companies, AI investments, and India’s place in the global AI revolution  this conversation gives you clarity, context, and the bigger picture. To hear the full breakdown of our top picks. Tune in to the episode now.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Are Indian IT Firms Ready for the AI Era?

India’s energy sector is undergoing one of its most defining transitions — and AI is now at the heart of it. In this Mint Techcetra episode, host Nelson John speaks with Manish Malik, Executive Director (Information Systems) at Indian Oil Corporation Limited, and Rishi Aurora, Managing Partner, IBM Consulting India & South Asia, to decode what digital sovereignty really means for the sector that fuels the nation at scale. They explore how sovereign AI, hybrid cloud, and secure digital infrastructure are reshaping operations across refineries, pipelines, and critical energy systems, while giving enterprises greater control over data, technology, and mission‑critical workflows. The conversation also highlights the growing significance of strong industry partnerships in enabling secure, compliant, and future‑ready transformation across the energy value chain. From real examples inside IOCL to a clear, actionable blueprint for energy leaders, this episode dives into how India can build an energy ecosystem that is smarter, safer, and truly self‑reliant — and why this shift matters now more than ever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Sovereign AI Playbook for India’s Energy Sector

In this episode of the Mint Techcetra podcast, our host Shouvik Das and Leslie D'Monte talk about the two most significant developments shaping the future of technology and regulation in India.The conversation begins with a critical look at the IT Rules 2026, where new amendments have introduced the world's strictest content removal timelines. We discuss the practical challenges platforms face with the two hour takedown mandate for deepfakes and non-consensual imagery, and whether a seven day grievance redressal period is enough to ensure true accountability.We then shift focus to the upcoming India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. With global tech leaders like Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, and Satya Nadella in attendance, we explore India's strategic pivot toward Small Language Models (SLMs). Instead of chasing trillion-parameter foundational models, India is betting on indic languages, frugal innovation, and expanding its Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) to become a global hub for AI applications.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Two hours to delete unpalatable AI content. But how enforceable are short takedown deadlines?

“Instead of arguing about Tier-1 or Tier-2, the real question is whether AI will actually benefit 1.44 crore people.” In this episode of Mint Techcetra, we begin with IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw pushing back against the IMF’s ‘second-tier AI’ label for India, and ask whether this whole idea of ranking countries into AI tiers is even useful anymore. From Stanford’s AI rankings to India’s growing ecosystem of foundational models, local language datasets, voice AI, chips, and data centre infrastructure, we discuss why India is often called an applications hub and whether that makes it any less of an AI innovator. Is the world judging India by the right parameters, or is the tier debate just a distraction from what’s actually being built? The conversation then moves from national ambition to workplace reality, as we unpack findings from the Randstad Workmonitor 2026. Why do employees believe AI is boosting productivity and shareholder value but not necessarily their own outcomes? Why are many workers turning to AI for advice instead of their managers, even while claiming they have strong manager relationships? From the growing “AI reality gap” to questions around trust, reskilling, and execution, this episode connects India’s AI with what it means on the ground and whether this transition is really inclusive, or just efficient. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Why IMF perception about India being a ‘Second-Tier’ AI Player, needs a revisit

In this episode of Mint Techcetra, host Nelson John sits down with Madhu Kurup, Vice President of Engineering at Indeed, to explore how artificial intelligence is transforming India’s hiring ecosystem. Madhu unpacks the growing role of AI in improving job matching, supporting recruiters, and empowering job seekers through greater efficiency and productivity. While AI continues to reshape recruitment at scale, he emphasizes that human judgment and connection remain irreplaceable in the hiring process.The conversation delves into Indeed’s tools, such as Career Scout and Talent Scout, examining how they enhance discovery, career pathing, and candidate–employer alignment. Madhu also shares practical advice for job seekers on optimising their Indeed profiles to stand out in an AI-driven job market.Looking ahead, he offers insights into the future of AI-led hiring in India and concludes with a personal hiring anecdote that reinforces why technology works best when complemented by human insight. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Is Your Resume Invisible to AI? What Job Seekers Need to Know

  “This is not really a question of morality; it’s about respecting the laws of the land.”In this episode, hosts Leslie D'Monte and Shouvik Das break down why Elon Musk’s Grok found itself in trouble across nations like India, Malaysia, and the European Union. We examine the controversy surrounding its "Spicy Mode" within India’s legal framework, debating whether platforms or users should be held responsible when AI-generated content crosses the line into obscenity.The episode also moves to the Las Vegas strip for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026. While CES is traditionally known for showcasing life-changing robots that can handle your laundry, cooking, or cleaning, but two particular innovations caught our eye this year. First is Lenovo’s AI glass concept, a pair of smart glasses weighing just 40 grams, making them as light as, or even lighter than, many standard spectacles. They promise a full-fledged augmented reality experience, capable of rolling text in front of your eyes and providing real-time language translation, all while lasting up to eight hours on a single charge. We also highlight the Napster holographic display and the Lumen glasses designed to assist the visually impaired.To hear the full breakdown of our top picks. Tune in to the episode now.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Clash Between Grok’s Spicy Mode and India’s Local Laws, Plus Our Favourite Tech Gadgets from CES 2026

In this episode of Mint Techcetra, host Nelson John explores the evolving role of Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India with Santhosh Rao, Partner and Executive Director at IBM Consulting, India & South Asia. The conversation delves into how AI and digital transformation are reshaping enterprise operations, accelerating value creation, and enabling GCCs to become Global Value Centres (GVCs). From IBM’s journey with AI to the rise of AI-first and agentic models, the episode also looks ahead to 2026, examining the opportunities, challenges, and critical skills professionals will need in this rapidly evolving tech landscape. Santhosh also shares some great examples of the work IBM is doing with its clients across key industries.  Tune in for an insightful discussion at the intersection of technology, business strategy, and global innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

India's Global Capability Leap: Unlocking AI-Driven Growth in 2026

A year ago, AI was still moving faster than everyone else, outpacing companies, governments, and just about anyone trying to keep up. By the end of 2025, that finally started to change. In this episode, our host Leslie D'Monte and Shouvik Das recap 2025 - the year AI stopped being just a breakthrough story and became a governance story. As generative models gave way to agentic systems, and as frameworks like India’s DPDP Act came into sharper focus, AI entered a new phase, one where rules, guardrails, and accountability mattered as much as capability. The conversation looks at how 2025 forced a reset. Enterprises rushed to deploy GenAI and agents, only to encounter hallucinations, broken integrations, and the limitations of legacy systems. At the same time, the question shifted from what AI can do to where it should actually be used. A big part of the episode zooms out to India’s approach. Instead of heavy regulation, the focus has been on setting boundaries about content labeling, competition oversight, and applying existing laws while still pushing investments in GPUs, data centres, and Indic language models. The goal isn’t dominance; it’s relevance. And then there’s the bigger test: can AI work outside the bubble? In a country where most people don’t live in metros or use cutting-edge devices, success looks less like chatbots and more like IVRs, public services, healthcare tools, and systems that disappear into daily life. By the end, the takeaway is simple: 2025 wasn’t about AI replacing humans or reaching artificial general intelligence. It was about learning where AI fits, where it fails, and how human judgment, guardrails, and local context still matter more than raw capability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

AI in 2025: Power, Policy, and Guardrails and other 2026 predictions

In this episode of Mint Techcetra, host Nelson John discusses India's newly released National Quantum Roadmap with Dr. Amith Singhee, Director, IBM Research Indiaand CTO, IBM India, and South Asia.They explore India's ambition to become a global leader in quantum computing by 2035, the roadmap's key priorities including talent development, industry investment, and translating fundamental science breakthroughs into real-world applications. Dr. Singhee explains the potential implications of quantum computing in various sectors, and IBM's role in expanding access to quantum systems across academia, startups, and industry in India. Tune in to understand how India plans to navigate the future of quantum technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Charting India’s Quantum Future

DHRUV64 is India’s first homegrown 64-bit dual-core microprocessor, and it quietly says a lot about where the country’s chip ambitions are headed. In this episode, our host Lesli D'Monte and Shouvik Das talk about what DHRUV64 means for India and why it matters for infrastructure and industry and how it fits into the push to reduce dependence on imported chips.From there, the conversation moves to consumer tech experiments, starting with Samsung’s tri-fold phone, a device that clearly wants to be a tablet when opened up. We talk about what Samsung is really testing with this form factor, whether folding phones are solving a real problem, and where they sit in a world where people already juggle phones, tablets, and laptops. That leads into AI tools making their way into everyday use, including ChatGPT’s Image 1.5 generator, how it stacks up against Google’s recent image models, and why image generation has suddenly become such a crowded and competitive space.We wrap with the Foundation Model Transparency Index, which puts data behind a growing concern in AI. As models become more powerful and more widely used, the index shows how little most companies still disclose about training data, risks, and design choices, raising uncomfortable questions about trust, regulation, and accountability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What India’s DHRUV64, Samsung’s tri-fold phone, and the foundation model transparency index say about tech in 2025

If AI is the brain, memory and storage are the nervous system.” In this Mint Techcetra episode, host Nelson John sits down with Anand Ramamoorthy, Managing Director, Micron India, to flip the spotlight from models to the memory and storage backbone powering AI. They discuss why memory & storage — not just processors — decide how fast, efficiently and intelligently AI can think, learn and scale, and how Micron is building that capability in India.Anand shares Micron India’s rapid journey - a 4,000+ workforce across Bangalore and Hyderabad, 600+ patents and disclosures, and homegrown DRAM engineering that produced multiple first-silicon passes with no respins. Tune in for candid takes on edge-to-cloud product strategy, skilling, R&D vs. manufacturing, and what the next five years mean for India’s semiconductor ambition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

How Micron is Fueling India’s Chip Story while powering AI

In today's episode of Mint Techcetra, our host Leslie D'Monte and Shouvik Das talked about ISRO's trusted workhorse, the PSLV, which is now set to become a private "rocket taxi" for India, marking a major milestone in the commercialization of the country's space sector. The PSLV, known for its exceptional reliability over 32 years with more than 62 launches, including the Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan missions, is being manufactured privately by a consortium of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). This shift allows ISRO to focus on core research and high-profile missions while private players handle commercial launches. The private PSLV is designed to cater to small satellite launches up to 500 kilograms in low Earth orbit, providing an on-demand space taxi service that eliminates the long waiting times associated with larger rideshare rockets like SpaceX's Falcon 9. This opens up new revenue streams and opportunities in India's growing $8 billion space economy, expected to reach $44 billion by 2033.Alongside this, the episode also touched upon the advances in AI with Google's Nano Banana, praised for its speed and improved accuracy in image generation, but raising concerns about misuse, such as fake ID creation. In the en,d we talked about a Chinese robot that walked 100 kilometres only to ask for new shoes a reminder that robots are still far from human-level dexterity, with significant progress yet to be made before true artificial general intelligence is reached. To catch the full insights on these tech turns from space taxis to AI antics and robotics, listen to the entire episode. If you have any questions, we’d love to answer them on the podcast. We’re also open to any suggestions on how we can make it even better because we want to have a fun time with all of you. Reach out to us on our social handles. We can’t wait to hear from you! Leslie D'Monte - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-d-monte-4985993/ Shouvik Das - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shouvik-das-77a4bbba/?originalSubdomain=in HT Smartcast  -  https://www.linkedin.com/company/ht-smartcast/posts/?feedView=all Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

From India's PSLV rocket launch to Google's Gemini AI push

With the first episode of the new season of Mint Techcetra, your host Leslie D’Monte brings over his old tech friend Shouvik Das to talk about the Cloudflare outage that quietly took big chunks of the internet offline and stalled everything from trading desks to the everyday apps we barely think about. They also dig into the recent data leak that exposed the details of nearly seventy-five million people in India and what it says about how casually platforms collect our information and how easily it slips out into the world. The conversation moves into the DPDP Act, now officially in force,  and what it actually changes for anyone using a phone or app in India. Clear consent, under-18 safeguards, what platforms can and can’t do with your information, and why companies will have to stop burying rules in walls of legal text and because privacy and AI are now inseparable, the episode also touches on India’s early AI governance approach and how it tries to guide innovation without strangling it. It’s a breakdown of outages, leaks, and new rules landing all at once and what that mix means for anyone living their life online.   If you have any questions, we’d love to answer them on the podcast. We’re also open to any suggestions on how we can make it even better because we want to have a fun time with all of you. Reach out to us on our social handles. We can’t wait to hear from you! Leslie D'Monte - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-d-monte-4985993/ Shouvik Das - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shouvik-das-77a4bbba/?originalSubdomain=in HT Smartcast  -  https://www.linkedin.com/company/ht-smartcast/posts/?feedView=all Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Internet outages, massive WhatsApp data leaks, and what India's data protection laws mean for us

Join host Nelson John in a riveting episode of Mint Techcetra as he explores the future of AI infrastructure with IBM's business leader for IBMZ and LinuxONE, Suresh Jayanthi. They discuss the critical aspects of building a robust, secure, and sustainable IT infrastructure crucial for AI adoption. Learn about the types of enterprise systems, the latest innovations like on-chip AI accelerators, and quantum-safe technologies. Discover how IBM's solutions are helping enterprises, especially in India’s BFSI sector, to scale their operations while maintaining high security and reliability. Get insights into how to make AI systems more efficient and sustainable, and understand why now is the perfect time to invest in AI-ready infrastructure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Securing the Future of Bharat with AI Infrastructure: IBM preps Indian enterprises to be AI-ready

Techcetra is a quirky little podcast packed with all-encompassing information from the ever-changing world of Tech. Here our resident tech-expert Prasid Banerjee @undertecher from Mint, not only talks about all that's new in this world but also busts myths around tech-related policies. This is a livemint production brought to you by HT Smartcast

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Mint Techcetra

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