While listening to a Wall Street Investment Podcast last week and its advice on Portfolio

rebalancing, it stuck us that half the year has just passed by in a breeze and its time to do a
2019 mid-point check in. Are we still focused on our goal, have our priorities changed, do we
need to change our pace, is Artificial Intelligence really getting real and very critical, are we
still enjoying ? Thought it best to summarize all in a 5 point blog

1 – 100+ meetings with Entrepreneurs, 7 shortlisted for Investment and

3 investments
Pipeline of early stage Artificial Intelligence deals is getting robust in Indian ecosystem, as
indicated by 100+ Entrepreneur meetings we have had. We are extremely thankful to our
Investors, LetsVenture, Google LaunchPad, Microsoft Accelerator, Indian Angel Network,
Nasscom Deep Tech Club, Huddle, Startup Oasis, IAMAI AI Committee and many of our
friends & colleagues for recommending highly talented & passionate entrepreneurs to us. It
has been truly an enlightening and constant learning experience, unmatched in our
professional journey so far.

2 – Investments in AI startups with top-notch founders

Two core questions that we look for in any investment relate to (a) the problem being real &
requiring an Artificial Intelligence led solution and (b) the quality of the startup team. The
three investments in first half of 2019 reflect all these qualities and much more. A synopsis
and link to a press coverage article will give the reader more insights

✔ Tripeur is a venture in AI driven Corporate Travel, a space ripe and getting ready
for disruption. Global play, with co-investment with US & Indian VC firms. Founders
have a background of Motorola, Qualcomm, BITS Pilani https://tinyurl.com/y3vsaarc
✔ Vernacular.ai is a play in emerging multi-lingual, voice assistants allowing
companies to connect with 500 million+ non English speaking Indians across 20+
languages. Co-investment with a leading VC. Passionate, energetic team from IIT
Roorkee https://tinyurl.com/y638sre3
✔ Jovian, a platform for data scientists to track and reproduce machine learning
experiments, collaborate with teammates, and automate repetitive tasks. Very strong

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SenseAI : Venture co-creation for AI Startups www.SenseAI.ai
 team of ex IIT Delhi, IIT Mumbai & Twitter pedigree. Global Dev Ops play, Co-
investment with US & Indian VCs. https://tinyurl.com/y5yqnahn

3 – Investors and Apprentices

You are only as good as the people around you. We were very fortunate to have a good
combination of Global Entrepreneurs (40%) and C-level professionals (60%) as our investors.
70% of our investors have advanced degrees and 40% are IIT alumni. Our investors have
been helping us with technical and business due diligence and we look forward to their
increased role in mentoring startup founders.

We were also able to attract two smart and passionate summer interns as apprentice. Not
only was their energy and enthusiasm contagious, they frequently brought in a line of
thinking without any bias or pre-conceived notions.

o Smiti Mittal is an incoming freshman at Stanford University where she will focus on
intersection of Mathematics & Biology. She was a great help in putting together our
Healthtech AI strategy, researching on relevant medical topics and coordinating with
the entrepreneurs. Her primary field research with patients at a medical facility and
subsequent recommendations were very well received by the entrepreneurs. She has
written about her apprenticeship experience at https://tinyurl.com/yyzurc9o
o Mihir Gupta is an incoming Sophomore at IIT Delhi with a strong passion of starting
something of his own post-graduation. He helped put together the early sketches of
our Fintech investment strategy and later helped in the evaluation of couple of
ventures in the Logistics space, including assisting CEO of one venture.

We wish both Smiti and Mihir all the best in their academic & professional future and look
forward to investing in their ventures down the road. We plan to continue the apprenticeship
program and would welcome recommendations.

4 – Evangelism and AI Ecosystem Development

VDAT framework for Technical Evaluation of AI startups
While we are comfortable with leveraging the
Product Market concept for business evaluation
of a start-up, we also felt a need for a framework
for the technical evaluation of AI ventures. Based
on our experience and learnings from numerous
conversations, we introduced our own VDAT
framework to develop hypotheses around the
team and product capabilities. VDAT framework
focuses on 4 core factors that we think are
required for developing technical advantage as an
AI-centric startup: Variety in data, Data acquisition, Architecture & Talent acquisition. More
in the blog post at https://tinyurl.com/y4nnabg2

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SenseAI : Venture co-creation for AI Startups www.SenseAI.ai
Artificial Intelligence conversation over Tea
While we have seen a good amount of AI discussion
among tech folks, we have always felt that a dialogue
between a diverse group is important for effective
knowledge sharing to happen, which indirectly leads to
better products and solutions and an evolved ecosystem.
It was heartening to see 20 intellectuals —
entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders, mentors,
academicians — gather over a cup of tea in Gurgaon to
have a friendly conversation around Artificial
Intelligence https://tinyurl.com/y6t8329w

The ability to stay ahead of the market is very important

In a free flowing conversation we shared our views on how the Indian startup ecosystem is
maturing, what we looks for in startups, and how AI can be truly transformative
https://tinyurl.com/y49hj34y

5 – Full Speed Ahead

Early stage ventures need the right tempo, whether they are AI-driven ones or AI investment
funds like ours. We feel very blessed to be in situation we are in with an attractive investment
portfolio, healthy pipeline of early stage investments and more importantly being trusted by
smart entrepreneurs and ecosystem partners. While we are branching out in India, we are
seeing increased interest globally as well. Our thesis around really 'helping' founders in AI
space and leveraging that for driving returns for our investors doesn’t change and we will
evaluate all potential opportunities with that lens. Full Speed Ahead is our mantra for 2nd
half of 2019 and we look forward to the continued support of our friends and well-wishers.

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SenseAI : Venture co-creation for AI Startups www.SenseAI.ai