Vikram Mekala

I thought I was using AI in an incredibly positive and healthy way, as a bicycle for my mind and a way to vastly increase my thinking capacity. But LLMs are insidious–using them to explore ideas feels like work, but it’s not real work. Developing a prompt is like scrolling Netflix, and reading the output is like watching a TV show. Intellectual rig... See more

The FMCG consultant mentioned earlier notes that once these newer brands identify what works among customers—ingredients, packaging, etc.—they try to double down on that strength. “These brands have a clear value that's getting delivered with very clear articulation of the benefits. Therefore, to that extent, the brand can be extended into many dif... See more

Contrast this with HUL, which says it reaches 75% of its customers through the old-fashioned general trade or kirana store route. HUL’s efforts are focused on its B2B app Shikhar in rural markets. Retailers can place orders 24x7 on the Shikhar app without waiting for a HUL salesperson to visit, ensuring faster replenishment and better inventory man... See more

This explains the rural market push of most FMCG players. Dabur claims to have reached 107,000 villages directly (in January 2025) up from 100,000 villages in March 2023. Marico has implemented Project SETU to increase its rural presence. “Under SETU, we will focus on rural outlet expansion at a pan-India level, while deploying strong control frame... See more

‘In design meetings with developers and architects, you have to assure everybody that there will be space for a wall-mounted flatscreen television in every room’, he said. ‘It used to be “Let’s make sure our rooms have great light.” But now, when the question is “How do we give the most comfort to the most people?”, the answer is to feed their scre... See more

Visa said it has invested $3.3 billion in AI and data infrastructure over the last 10 years.

Visa’s deployments include a tool that finds security bugs in code, chatbots designed to act as subject matter experts on various areas of the business and a tool that helps subscribers customize timings of their billing cycles.

The problem is, roughly 70% of business customers’ generative AI projects are still stuck in pilot or testing phase, Philip Rathle, CTO of graph database software company Neo4j, said at the event. Generative AI models are good at summarizing text, for instance, but less capable of more sophisticated tasks, he added.