Pratyus Patnaik

Advice for entrepreneurs

Natoma, now a part of Snowflake, enables enterprises to adopt AI agents securely. The platform empowers organizations to unlock the full power of AI by connecting agents to their tools and data without compromising security. Leveraging a hosted MCP platform, Natoma provides enterprise-grade authentication, fine-grained authorization, and governance for AI agents with flexible deployment models and out-of-the-box support for 100+ pre-built MCP servers. Founded by a team of experts from Okta, Microsoft, Google, & Salesforce, and backed by Greylock, Index, and prominent industry leaders.

atSpoke is a modern workplace service desk that helps every team deliver better employee support faster. atSpoke was acquired by Okta in August, 2021. Employees get immediate, convenient, and personalized access to internal knowledge and support from wherever they work, be it chat, SMS, email or web. IT, HR, and Support teams deliver high quality service and maintain accountability while easily scaling to meet demands. Creating and responding to tickets is painless and internal knowledge sharing is instant with conversational interfaces, machine learning, and integrations. Unlike traditional IT ticketing systems, atSpoke lets every employee get what they need, when they need it, and gives internal support teams more time for impactful work.

Advice for entrepreneurs

Appurify is pioneering on-device debugging, CI testing and performance optimization for mobile applications on real devices. Mobile development teams at some of the worlds most prominent companies turn to Appurifys platform to improve the quality and optimize the performance of their applications. The results are better apps, faster launch cycles and improved app store reviews. Appurify is based in San Francisco with backing from Google Ventures and other leading investors. For more information, visit http://www.appurify.com.

The Indian Institute of Science (IISc) was founded in 1909 as a result of the joint efforts of Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata, the Government of India, and the Maharaja of Mysore. In 1886, Jamsetji Tata conceived of a university of science that would work for the benefit of India, and in 1898 created an endowment for establishing such an institution. The Government of India then took up the effort, and, in consultation with scientists in England and in India, decided to locate the Institute in Bengaluru, where the Maharaja of Mysore, Shri Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, donated 372 acres of land. The Institute was formally vested in 1909, the foundation stone was laid in 1911, and the first batch of students started their studies in the same year. Over the last century, IISc has become the premier institute for advanced scientific and technological research and education in India. Beginning with 2 departments and 21 students in 1911, today IISc has 39 departments, units, or centres, 3500 students, and about 500 academic and scientific staff, supported by 600 administrative personnel. About 2200 students are in various PhD programs, almost 900 are enrolled for various Masters degrees, whereas about 400 are registered in the newly established, research oriented, four-year Bachelor of Science (Research) programme. In recent years, the Institute has vigorously promoted interdisciplinary research. New centres such as the CiSTUP, the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber Physical Systems and a new Centre for Brain Research (funded by a large private endowment) are expected to conduct translational research in their respective areas, in order to better connect with industry and society. With the recent construction of modern buildings, acquisition of new research facilities, and induction of a large number of new faculty members, the Institute can look forward to an era of high productivity, increasing impact, and rising prominence in the world.