10 Sessions, 10 Companies, Bangalore: What Parul University Students at Google Cloud, IBM, IISc, Trellix, Razorpay, RedBus, BigBasket, SAP, PhonePe, and Societe Generale on the AI Tech Tour.

Bangalore is not a case study. It is the operating system of India’s technology industry. Google Cloud runs from here. IBM manages Kempegowda International Airport’s IT infrastructure from here. IISc has been producing research that becomes products since 1909. Trellix secures 90 percent of global utilities from here. Razorpay processes payments for Zomato, Swiggy, Flipkart, and Uber from here. For Parul University students, spending days inside these companies with the people who run them was the kind of learning that turns textbook anxiety about AI into operational understanding.

The tour was organised as part of Parul University’s Practical Learning Tour program (146 tours, 19 cities, 280 companies) and fully sponsored by IIMUN.The program operates within a university holding NAAC A++ (CGPA 3.55), NIRF Top 50 Innovations, QS Asia 1001-1100, 2,200+ recruiters with 60 LPA highest placement (Tanish Patel and Suraj Jagtap, B.Tech CSE, Microsoft), 254 startups incubated through PIERC, and Rs 58.31 crore in government-funded research through the Micro Nano Research and Development Center (MNRDC).

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Goyal‘s career graph starts with a final-year project, which was related to Urdu Text Recognition. He started the session with a very common question: ” Will AI Take My Job?’

He used the ATM analogy: when ATMs were introduced, people believed cashiers would disappear, but their work became more efficient instead. He emphasized that AI will help humans become more intelligent and productive, not redundant. He advised students to focus on building problem-solving products: customers do not need features or design; they want their job done.

“We are all born original, but most of us die as copycats.”

Mr. Satyan Pathak (CTO, Societe Generale Global Solution Centre) delivered a session on data quality as the foundation of AI. His core message: Python skills are useless without understanding what the data represents.

He explained the risk theory in the finance market that low risk equals low return and high risk equals high return; why AI adoption models (organization-wide tools like GitHub Copilot versus specific use cases like KYC automation) are necessary; and the biggest challenge in AI implementation: data quality. Wrong phone numbers, incorrect addresses, and incomplete records make AI unreliable. His advice to students was simple but crucial: that risks should be taken, but in the finance area, it should be calculated and well researched.

“Never stop learning. The day you stop learning, you stop growing.”

Dr. Kiran brought 25 years of watching the industry transform. His career started with controlling spindle speeds in a textile mill using Assembly and C. He introduced synthetic data (generating statistically representative data without exposing real personal information), observability (monitoring thousands of IT signals to detect anomalies, using the airport infrastructure analogy), and AI ethics (bias, explainability, transparency, and governance). He managed IBM’s partnership with Bangalore International Airport for the Airport in a Box platform. His sharpest insight: routine jobs with no intelligence applied will go, but specialised skills are not going anywhere.

“Change is the only constant.”

Trellix operates in cybersecurity at infrastructure scale: securing 25 percent of global ATMs, 60 percent of oil and gas companies, 75 percent of water systems, and 90 percent of utilities. Mahipal Nair (Managing Director, Trellix India), Sudhir Kumar Rai (Director, Data Science), and Pavan Kumar Podila (Head, Threat Research) explained AI-powered threat detection: converting telemetry data into embeddings, identifying anomalies, and using LLMs to explain threats in plain language. The Ukraine case study illustrated how cyberattacks precede physical warfare. Systems generate 20 billion events per day from EDR alone. The asymmetry: attackers need to succeed once, defenders must succeed every time.

Prof. Navakanta Bhat has 300+ publications, 30+ patents, an Infosys Prize, and built the National Nanofabrication Center open to researchers across India. His session covered lab-on-chip diagnostics (PathShodh Healthcare Pvt. Ltd startup, deployed across 17 states, testing glucose, HBA1C, haemoglobin, kidney and liver function from a cell-phone-sized device), the electronic nose (sensor arrays detecting explosives and volatile organic compounds, deployed at ISRO Sriharikota), brain-inspired computing (human brain uses 20 watts versus trillions in data centres; his team processed NASA‘s Pillars of Creation image in 26,000 steps versus 1 billion on conventional hardware), and the semiconductor supply chain from silica sand to silicon wafer to chip.

“AI can do great things only if it does not burn the planet.”

Vishnu Acharya (Head, Strategy and Corporate) and Vijay Thakral (Chief Compliance Officer) explained how Razorpay operates as a full-stack fintech platform across three continents, powering Zomato, Swiggy, Flipkart, Uber, BookMyShow, and Zerodha. Topics: the complete payment lifecycle (initiation, authorization, routing, reconciliation, and settlement); agentic payments (intelligent systems initiating and optimizing payments with minimal human intervention), TPV (Total Payment Volume) as a key metric, fraud detection, RBI compliance, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act. A practical example using Zomato demonstrated that Razorpay is not just a gateway but an efficiency layer.

Vishnu Acharya (Head, Strategy and Corporate) and Vijay Thakral (Chief Compliance Officer) explained how Razorpay operates as a full-stack fintech platform across three continents, powering Zomato, Swiggy, Flipkart, Uber, BookMyShow, and Zerodha. Topics: the complete payment lifecycle (initiation, authorization, routing, reconciliation, and settlement); agentic payments (intelligent systems initiating and optimizing payments with minimal human intervention), TPV (Total Payment Volume) as a key metric, fraud detection, RBI compliance, and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act. A practical example using Zomato demonstrated that Razorpay is not just a gateway but an efficiency layer.

Keshav Kumar (22+ years, previously Amazon, Philips, Motorola) walked students through BigBasket‘s engineering: client-server architecture with backend distributed systems, ML-powered search and personalisation (NLP disambiguating queries like Apple), dynamic pricing, supply chain management from farmers to doorstep, FIFO inventory for perishables, AI demand forecasting using historical data and external factors, quick commerce (10-30 minute delivery through dark stores), gig economy workforce management, and the platform ecosystem model (Croma partnership for electronics without inventory). BigBasket started as Fabmart.com in 1999, reimagined in 2011.

“Make things even before necessity arrives.”

Sindhu Gangadharan: Managing Director SAP Labs India, Head of Customer Innovation Services, Board Member Siemens India, Chairperson NASSCOM, President IGCC, TEDx Speaker, Fortune Top 50 Leader. 26 years at SAP, started as software engineer. 87 percent of global business transactions run on SAP. 9 out of 10 automotive companies in Bangalore use SAP systems. Her message: be bold, do not fear failure. Parental encouragement shaped her unconventional tech path. Students toured SAP’s 400+ acre campus.

“Be bold. Do not fear failure.”

Amit Doshi (Chief Marketing Officer, PhonePe) focused on customer-centricity: knowing your customer means understanding real pain points and addressing them simply. Great products focus on very few but meaningful features rather than overcomplicating. He applied the classic 4Ps framework (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) to PhonePe‘s growth. Marketing works best when it reflects real product strengths, not exaggerated claims. Self-development, curiosity, and asking questions drive career growth.