Mahesh Kulkarni

Founder and CTO

 

A multifaceted persona and out and out technology professional having vast exposure to many technologies, he blends it with his managerial acumen, financial insights, tremendous networking skills and takes pride in providing results under challenging circumstances. So be it the cause of making the country self-reliant digital powerhouse or democratization of technology by proliferation of the Indian languages on to digital platforms, he has always strived for excellence

Vigorously pushing for Indian languages to the next stage of Natural Language Processing, he steered the development of e-dictionaries, Thesauri, Spell-checkers, grammar checkers to even encyclopaedias in Indian languages, thus bringing a rich repository of knowledge to proximate reach of the masses. Thanks to his efforts citizens now can enjoy the fruits of cutting-edge technologies such as Machine Translation, OCR, Hand-written recognition, Text to Speech, and Name Translation – all vital ingredients in the localization process.  Going forward, venturing into IPCV, NLP-NLU domain, substantial work is done on the crowd behaviour & analytics, facial recognition and allied technologies. He has evolved large scale national frameworks such as Localisation Frameworks, India Search engine, Digitisation framework and Internationalised email system. 

He paved the way to remote voting by developing Electronically Transmitted postal ballot, a first in electioneering history in India, created policies for adaptation of Internationalised Domain. bharat in all the scheduled 22 Indian languages, instrumental in enabling mobile phones with Indian languages, initiated and contributed to various Indian language standards including India’s Accessibility standard.

An internationally renowned figure, Shri Kulkarni is on the advisory panel of National and International bodies such as the BIS, W3C, Unicode, ISO, IEEE and others

His drive, vision and tireless efforts continues to motivate the younger generation to give the best in the service of the nation and as a torchbearer of technologies useful and empowering to the citizens of this country.

 

Awards and accolades:

·       Received “Atmaram Award” at the hands of Hon. Pranab Mukherjee, President of India for “Scientific and technological development in the field of literature and tools for the Hindi language

·       Received NCPUL award at the hands of Hon. IT Minister, Shri. Kapil Sibbal for outstanding contributions to Urdu language Development

·       Received award for outstanding contributions to Marathi language at the hands of Hon. CM of Maharashtra, Shri Prithiviraj Chauvan and Shri. Ashok Chauvan

 Membership / Advisory role:

·       Co-chair of NEO-Brahmi Generation panel, ICANN.

·       Member – FICCI National Task Force on Multilingual Internet and Universal Acceptance

·       Co-Chair “Working group for implementation of UA”, as a part of committee to plan, propose and implement Multilingual Internet in India, Govt of India

·       India IGF forum – Coordination & Organizing Committee member and mentor “Regional Language Committee”

·       Multilingual Internet and Universal Acceptance committee, Govt. of India – Member

·       Chairman of Audio / Video standardization Group of Bureau of Indian Standards

IEEE standardisation – Multilingual standards – GAP analysis – member and Chair of “Accessibility” subgroup.

 

Prashant Gulalkari

Evangelist and Business strategy

 e-Governance, Digital Transformation, Product & Infra Modernisation

Over 25+ years’ experience in e-Governance, Strategy consulting and business Development. Excelled in delivering e-Governance product and solutions in India. Sound Knowledge of government processes. Expert in demand generation, Concept Selling and complex bidding process. Proven expertise in bridging the gap between delivery teams and government departments. Successfully delivered large size e-Governance Consulting and Solutions Delivery Projects. Delivered data driven Governance and Analytics solution for State Governments in India.

Specialties: Complete understanding of the Business development, Deal closure and sales function for the Government and Public sector in India.

Sound knowledge of Government functioning and processes

Strong networks in Government departments and agencies. Proven skills in forming strategic partnerships & alliances during the bidding process.