My guest today is Stamatis Astra is the Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of Intelligent Relations. In this freewheeling conversation, he talks about:

• Introduction & Origin Story
• Stamatis shares his varied career journey, starting in theater before transitioning into technology and entrepreneurship.
• Reflects on early internet days, the rise of e-commerce, and parallels with today’s AI revolution.
• Entrepreneurial Mindset & Product Building
• The core skills of entrepreneurship remain the same, whether in film or software—raising funds, pitching ideas, and building belief.
• Confidence, resilience, and timing play crucial roles in success.
• Theater vs. Business—Script vs. Improv
• In acting, a defined script brings clarity, whereas business requires improvisation based on data and insights.
• Sales and investor pitches require a structured approach, but product development thrives on innovation and open-ended discussions.
• Remote Work & Leadership Challenges
• Discusses difficulties of leading distributed teams without face-to-face interaction.
• Emphasizes the need for engaged communication, structured meetings, and keeping discussions interactive.
• The Intersection of Media, AI & Entrepreneurship
• Shares insights from his role as a venture partner and a radio host—both involve asking deep, thought-provoking questions.
• Talks about Intelligent Relations, a PR SaaS company leveraging AI to democratize media access.
• AI's Role in Public Relations
• AI helps connect brands with journalists through automation and data-driven personalization.
• PR success hinges on storytelling—brands must embed themselves in the news cycle, not just promote their offerings.
• Career Opportunities in Public Relations
• Traditional PR relied on communication specialists; today, data engineers play a vital role.
• Engineers help structure outreach for journalists, influencers, and media platforms.
• Personal Philosophy & Staying Grounded
• The importance of family, health, and knowing the deeper motivation behind success.
• Business challenges come and go, but fundamental values remain the same.

Stamatis Astra, Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of Intelligent Relations

Stamatis Astra is the Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer of Intelligent Relations, where he drives the company’s mission to transform public relations through AI-powered technology and expert insights. With over 20+ years of experience in media and business strategy, Stamatis is fully committed to making earned media accessible to all businesses, helping them build meaningful connections with the media and tell impactful stories.

Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Deeksha Senguttuvan, Founder and CEO of BabyMD and executive trustee for a pediatric cancer foundation . Deeksha brings her authentic self to share powerful stories of personal transformation, entrepreneurial grit, and unwavering compassion for children’s health.

Some highlights from the conversation

• Deeksha describes herself as someone who never had a fixed plan but followed what made sense in the moment.
• After a chemical engineering degree from NIT Trichy and an MBA from IIM Kozhikode, she joined the Tata Administrative Services and worked in marketing and product management.
• Despite no tech background, she led cloud product management, learning tech concepts from scratch and bridging the gap between sales and engineering teams.
• A personal life event led her to seek more meaningful work, Inspired by her pediatrician father, she co-founded a trust supporting pediatric cancer treatment in Trichy, where specialty care was lacking.
• Deeksha led digital transformation at Kaveri Hospital during COVID, building a patient-focused digital strategy that included basics like WhatsApp-based communication — revolutionary at that time.
• Motivated to align business success with patient well-being, she pursued a second MBA at Wharton to understand global healthcare and startup ecosystems.
• During her MBA, she pivoted her focus back to India after realizing her strengths and market understanding were more aligned with the Indian healthcare context
• She founded BabyMD during her time at Wharton and graduated early to work full-time on it from January 2024.
• Deeksha emphasizes the importance of credentials and networks (like Wharton) in breaking barriers and gaining investor trust.
• She met her investor through the Wharton alumni network, which led to a partnership based on mutual interest in pediatric healthcare.
• She advises entrepreneurs to articulate three things: a real problem, market size, and why they’re uniquely positioned to solve it.
• Advocates for volunteering as a personal and professional growth tool, linking social work with stronger leadership and empathy.

• Range by David Epstein – on the value of generalists in today’s world.
• Entrepreneurship doesn’t always stem from a “Eureka” moment — it can be a structured, analytical process.
• Encourages small experiments to validate ideas before going all in.
• Believes generalists (with wide-ranging experience) bring unique value to entrepreneurship, as explained in the book Range.

Deeksha can be reached at https://www.linkedin.com/in/deekshasenguttuvan/

Deeksha is Building BabyMD to be a partner in parenting and give parents easy round-the-clock access to qualified medical professionals across channels. The company’s goal is to create a future where parents don’t have to navigate through multiple avenues for their child's healthcare needs and instead find everything they require under one roof.

Executive leader with 7+ years of experience building and transforming businesses. I am passionate about utilising technology in the healthcare ecosystem to improve accessibility, affordability and quality of care.

As a part of the leadership development program of The Tata Group of companies in India I have worked across various industries and functions; utilised my diverse exposure to orchestrate the digital transformation of hospitals across patient engagement, clinical quality of care, and operational activities to make them future-ready.

Outside of work I am an avid Indian classical dancer and a public speaker passionate about motivating and mentoring!

Shiv is in conversation with Allen Cooper, President and CEO of Ancilla Ventures. Their focus

is in providing tools to healthcare support staff to improve patient outcomes.

In this conversation, Allen talks about:

• Allen’s Origin Story: Transitioning from accounting to computer science, and entering the consulting world at Anderson Consulting (now Accenture).
• Consulting to Startups: The transition from corporate consulting to entrepreneurship.
• Building Ancilla: How Allen became a partner and eventually the sole proprietor.
• Choosing Healthcare Tech: The path to focusing on healthcare IT solutions.
• Finding Industry Problems: How products like WriteList and VR-90 were born.
• User Adoption Challenges: Strategies for getting hospital staff to engage with software solutions.
• Managing Development Team Motivation: Keeping engineers engaged despite stable enterprise tech.
• Scrum & Agile Benefits: How these methodologies helped balance planned work and incoming client requests.
• AI & Coding: How AI might change development roles, but won't replace programmers entirely.
• Advice for IT Careers: Guidance for both new entrants and mid-career professionals wondering about their next steps.
• Personal Productivity & Balance: Allen’s tips for staying organized, healthy, and grounded while running a company.

Allen Cooper is the Co-Founder and CEO of ReadyList, Inc., a mobile-friendly software that transforms how hospital ancillary and support service teams operate. Allen co-founded ReadyList with a deep passion for helping the behind-the-scenes workers who keep hospitals running smoothly. ReadyList’s software modules guide them through best-practice cleaning and room prep protocols, resulting in cleaner, safer facilities for both patients and staff. Allen believes the right kind of software can save hospital systems money, time, and even lives.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/allen-cooper-4a07598

Shiv is in conversation with Mathias Buus Madsen, CEO of Holepunch, Copenhagen. In this episode, Mathias shares

• his journey into software development,
• beginning as a math student and evolving into a passionate advocate for peer-to-peer technology.
• He explains the foundational concepts behind peer-to-peer systems, their advantages over centralized models, and their applications in both personal and enterprise use.
• Mathias discusses how these decentralized systems enhance security, minimize infrastructure costs, and improve accessibility—especially for remote or underserved communities.
• He also compares peer-to-peer networking with blockchain, clarifying the distinct roles each technology plays.
• He touched on real-world applications of peer-to-peer tech, including its potential for rural connectivity and resilience in low-bandwidth environments.
• Mathias also reflects on his transition from hacker to entrepreneur, sharing insights into leadership, scaling a business, and the evolving landscape of decentralized internet solutions.

As CEO of Holepunch, Mathias brings his passion and extensive expertise in open-source development to the fore, having published more than 1000 modules to npm, the Node.js package manager, totalling billions of downloads every month.

Mathias Buus is a self taught JavaScript hacker from Copenhagen. He works full time on open source projects and has been working with Node.js since the 0.2 days. Mathias likes to work with P2P and distributed systems and is the author of more than 550 modules on npm, including some of the most popular ones for working with streams. In addition he has spoken about “mad science” projects at various conferences around the world.

You can also see his Github here:https://github.com/mafintosh and more info on Pear Runtime here: https://docs.pears.com/.

Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@Pears_p2p

Social -

Mathias X: @mafintosh

Pears X: @Pears_p2p

Keet X: @keet_io

I am in conversation with Sundar Rajan, a serial entrepreneur, currently the founder of OneMyle, a platform that seeks to address the needs of hyperlocal digital marketing in neighborhoods. He was earlier the co-founder of JustBooks, a lending library chain, supported by an innovative technology platform.

Sundar reflects on his journey from a software developer to an entrepreneur, sharing his experiences and challenges along the way:

Early Career in IT:

• He worked in IT, building software for banking and financial services.
• His exposure to implementation and user experience shaped his professional growth.

Transition to Entrepreneurship:

• His entrepreneurial journey began unexpectedly with a family-run library project, Just Books, which turned out to be a success.
• He faced challenges balancing a job with entrepreneurship and gradually pivoted to focus on growing the library business.

Expansion and Challenges of Just Books:

• The business grew organically to over 60 libraries across cities, driven by franchising.
• He adapted to changes like the rise of digital books and evolving customer behaviors.

Shift to OneMyle:

• After exiting Just Books, he started OneMyle, a digital marketing platform aimed at connecting local businesses, communities, and creators.
• He shared insights into shaping the platform, testing features, and learning to target specific personas, including local creators.

Personal Practices and Reflections:

• Sundar emphasized the importance of reading code, context switching, and his method of note-taking (emails to himself) as tools for managing stress and priorities.
• He candidly discussed the unpredictable nature of entrepreneurship and the learning process involved.

Sundar Rajan is an Entrepreneur, Co-Founder Onemyle, JustBooks

Technology & Entrepreneurship remain big areas of interest.

Worked in IT industry for 15 years, before turning Entrepreneur.

While in IT, was involved in software product development for financial services industry.

As an Entrepreneur, have keen interest in 'Neighborhoods', especially the interaction between local businesses and residents nearby.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rsundarrajan/

r.sundar@onemyle.com

My guest today is David Young,Founder at Federated Computer. He has been a pioneer in cloud computing even before the term was invented. In fact, he and his team helped invent the term.

In this conversation we could recall many of the developments of a couple of decades ago as well as what keeps him engaged now, at Federated computer.

During this conversation, David touches upon:

• Introduction and Early Career Journey
• Transition to Silicon Valley and Startups
• Contrast Between Corporate and Startup Life
• Finding Problems to Solve
• Customer Empathy and Team Dynamics
• Challenges with Open Source Adoption
• AI, Open Source, and Future Potential
• Career Tips for IT and Open Source Enthusiasts
• David shares his practices and tips to Stay Grounded

About David:

CEO and founder of Joyent — the folks who invented node.js, helped stand up Twitter and the Facebook developer platform, and brought containers to market leading to the Kubernetes revolution. Seven patents. Very experienced raising and deploying venture capital. Sold Joyent to Samsung in 2016.

Started an ultra-premium ice cream company (Honeymoon Brands). Invented unique manufacturing products and processes to put ice cream in glass jars, got in to 700 grocery stores in the West, and learned grocery was a blast. Sold the company in 2018.

I've recently started an agency (Endurancy: https://www.endurancy.com) to take the marketing success I developed at Honeymoon and offer small and medium-sized brands AI-based marketing capabilities.

I’d love to work with a promising company as it develops and grows. I can bring a wealth of experience, mistakes, learnings in fundraising, product and marketing strategy, business and corporate development, engineering development to the company to help it go faster and smarter.

You can reach him @ https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidpaulyoung/

Today, as part of the women’s special series in March, 2025, Gayatri Kalyanaraman is in conversation with Karthik Karunakaran(KK), CEO, co-founder of Mobius software and chief strategist Xtract.io, male ally for women continuing their career and a serial entrepreneur talks about his career journey.

• KK shares his belief in 'Make in India' and how he stayed true to his roots, influenced by Jamshedji Tata early on
• Karthik shares his evolution from a tech enthusiast to a serial entrepreneur and co-founded Mobius Software, Overcoming the challenges of building a startup, especially after his education-focused venture didn’t scale as expected.
• Talks about the lessons learned from previous education based ventures and how they shaped his approach to business.
• Discusses how he bootstrapped his business in the early days, even covering costs by tutoring students for the CAT exam.
• Experimented with team structures to create a more agile and inclusive work environment.
• Focused on product innovation, testing different technology stacks and market strategies.
• Implemented flexible work policies to support women professionals, ensuring career continuity.
• Shares how over 80% of Mobius Software's workforce consists of women, with a strong focus on hiring from Tier 2 cities where untapped talent is available
• KK talks about why he champions women in the Workforce and actively supports women's career continuity and workplace inclusion.
• Believes in equal opportunities and creating a supportive work environment.
• Discusses the importance of mentorship and policies that help retain women in tech.
• KK shares some of the challenges in the Startup Ecosystem on funding, scaling, and leadership in the tech industry.
• Shares about the biases women face in entrepreneurship and how male allies can help.
• KK concludes with the Advice for Women Professionals as he Encourages women to build strong networks and seek mentorship and advocates for confidence and risk-taking in career growth.

Emphasizes the need for organizations to rethink policies to support women returning to work.

Karthik Karunakaran is the CEO of Mobius Knowledge Services. He is the driving force behind Mobius being a leader unstructured data processing and public information aggregation. He is also the founder of Xtract.io, a GenAI driven hyperautomation platform that is focussed on agenticAI processes . The firms' success is attributed to innovative solutions and proprietary technology in the data services area serving various industry giants across geographies. With a strong presence in fields like Information & Media, Retail/Ecommerce and Financial Services, Mobius mission is to empower clients through cutting-edge data solutions.

Karthik, KK as he’s fondly referred by friends, has co-founded education firm,fourth R India before embarking into the knowledge services domain.

KK has graduated from National Institute of Technology, Trichy in production engineering and management from XLRI Jamshedpur in Marketing and Finance.

Karthik can be contacted at https://www.linkedin.com/in/karthik-karunakaran/