Himanshu Upreti is the Co-Founder and CTO at AI Palette, a deeptech AI startup that helps CPG brands to identify what next product to launch in the market. 

Their tech is used by brands like Kellogg’s, Cargill, and Dole!

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👋🏼 How would you explain your job to someone outside tech?

I build cool tech using AI that helps CPG brands to identify what next product to launch in the market. 

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🧐 What's something about you or your job that would surprise us?

As a founder, you get extremely good at context-switching. 

That leads you on to the path of becoming a great generalist wearing multiple hats, but at the same time, you lose out on all the fun of being a specialist. 

However, you can compensate for the latter part by having a great team of specialists working with you. 

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🏆 What has been the biggest highlight of your career so far?

Building an AI platform that provides insights across 24 geographies on 6 continents (that's more than the number of countries I have traveled to) by analyzing billions of data points in 16 different languages which makes our platform one-of-a-kind.

Why? Because our team has built cutting-edge NLP models in languages that even they don't speak. 

For example, no one knows or speaks Vietnamese in our team, and yet by the power of AI, we've built a Vietnamese NLP model.

The power and capabilities of AI are truly incredible!

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🔍 What's a startup trend or space you're watching this year?‍

The rise of the LLMs and Generative AI

Although AI Palette has been at the forefront of using LLMs right from the days of BERT to T5 to now the poster boy, GPT-4 (the LLM behind ChatGPT, of course) and OpenAssistant, it has been absolutely incredible to witness the entire landscape shift in the NLP domain.

The entire experience has been akin to seeing a baby grow and become a child—full of vast future potential but irresponsible at times.

At AI Palette, we are working on our own LLM for the CPG industry that will help address the business questions asked by our customers (via the conversational AI layer). 

This vertical LLM will transform the way market research is done today and completely disrupt the new product development process bringing down time from months to days. 

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💼 What advice would you give someone starting out in your industry? 

The very first advice I give to deep tech founders starting out to disrupt an industry with technological innovation such as AI, blockchain, etc. is to get themselves familiar with the Diffusions of Innovations Theory.

 A theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread.

Simply speaking, not everyone will understand and readily adopt your solution in the beginning; therefore, be ready to hear a lot of nos than yes’. 

Also, once you get your early adopters, work with them to define and refine your product roadmap and make them feel special in every possible way so that they become the champions of your product helping you to ‘cross the chasm’. 

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🗣 What's one thing you can keep talking about for hours? 

Startups and books.

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🎥 What's your favorite movie/TV show? 

The Social Network by David Fincher.

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🍨 What's your go-to ice cream flavor?‍

Ube.

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FYI. We've edited this interview for clarity.