Mint Techcetra

HT Smartcast

The Mint Techcetra podcast is your navigator into the mesmerizing maze that is technology today. From decoding technologies, policies, enterprises, and legal decisions to sci-fi and pop culture, this podcast will cover it all. Every week hosts - Leslie D'Monte, Shouvik Das and Deepti Ahuja - will talk about important developments in tech and how they transform our lives, work and play as we know it. If you have any questions or suggestions you can reach out to the hosts on LinkedIn via their handles given below: Leslie D'Monte, Mint's Sr. Associate Editor: linkedin.com/in/leslie-d-monte-4985993 Shouvik Das, Mint's Assistant Editor, Mint: linkedin.com/in/shouvik-das-77a4bbba Deepti Ahuja, Content Head, HT Smartcast: linkedin.com/in/deeptea This is a Mint production brought to you by HT Smartcast.

  1. India's Global Capability Leap: Unlocking AI-Driven Growth in 2026

    5 DAYS AGO

    India's Global Capability Leap: Unlocking AI-Driven Growth in 2026

    In this episode of Mint Techcetra, host Nelson John explores the evolving role of Global Capability Centres (GCCs) in India with Santhosh Rao, Partner and Executive Director at IBM Consulting, India & South Asia. The conversation delves into how AI and digital transformation are reshaping enterprise operations, accelerating value creation, and enabling GCCs to become Global Value Centres (GVCs). From IBM’s journey with AI to the rise of AI-first and agentic models, the episode also looks ahead to 2026, examining the opportunities, challenges, and critical skills professionals will need in this rapidly evolving tech landscape. Santhosh also shares some great examples of the work IBM is doing with its clients across key industries.  Tune in for an insightful discussion at the intersection of technology, business strategy, and global innovation. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    34 min
  2. AI in 2025: Power, Policy, and Guardrails and other 2026 predictions

    30/12/2025

    AI in 2025: Power, Policy, and Guardrails and other 2026 predictions

    A year ago, AI was still moving faster than everyone else, outpacing companies, governments, and just about anyone trying to keep up. By the end of 2025, that finally started to change. In this episode, our host Leslie D'Monte and Shouvik Das recap 2025 - the year AI stopped being just a breakthrough story and became a governance story. As generative models gave way to agentic systems, and as frameworks like India’s DPDP Act came into sharper focus, AI entered a new phase, one where rules, guardrails, and accountability mattered as much as capability. The conversation looks at how 2025 forced a reset. Enterprises rushed to deploy GenAI and agents, only to encounter hallucinations, broken integrations, and the limitations of legacy systems. At the same time, the question shifted from what AI can do to where it should actually be used. A big part of the episode zooms out to India’s approach. Instead of heavy regulation, the focus has been on setting boundaries about content labeling, competition oversight, and applying existing laws while still pushing investments in GPUs, data centres, and Indic language models. The goal isn’t dominance; it’s relevance. And then there’s the bigger test: can AI work outside the bubble? In a country where most people don’t live in metros or use cutting-edge devices, success looks less like chatbots and more like IVRs, public services, healthcare tools, and systems that disappear into daily life. By the end, the takeaway is simple: 2025 wasn’t about AI replacing humans or reaching artificial general intelligence. It was about learning where AI fits, where it fails, and how human judgment, guardrails, and local context still matter more than raw capability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    38 min

  3. 26/12/2025

    Charting India’s Quantum Future

    In this episode of Mint Techcetra, host Nelson John discusses India's newly released National Quantum Roadmap with Dr. Amith Singhee, Director, IBM Research Indiaand CTO, IBM India, and South Asia.They explore India's ambition to become a global leader in quantum computing by 2035, the roadmap's key priorities including talent development, industry investment, and translating fundamental science breakthroughs into real-world applications. Dr. Singhee explains the potential implications of quantum computing in various sectors, and IBM's role in expanding access to quantum systems across academia, startups, and industry in India. Tune in to understand how India plans to navigate the future of quantum technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    30 min
  4. What India’s DHRUV64, Samsung’s tri-fold phone, and the foundation model transparency index say about tech in 2025

    19/12/2025

    What India’s DHRUV64, Samsung’s tri-fold phone, and the foundation model transparency index say about tech in 2025

    DHRUV64 is India’s first homegrown 64-bit dual-core microprocessor, and it quietly says a lot about where the country’s chip ambitions are headed. In this episode, our host Lesli D'Monte and Shouvik Das talk about what DHRUV64 means for India and why it matters for infrastructure and industry and how it fits into the push to reduce dependence on imported chips.From there, the conversation moves to consumer tech experiments, starting with Samsung’s tri-fold phone, a device that clearly wants to be a tablet when opened up. We talk about what Samsung is really testing with this form factor, whether folding phones are solving a real problem, and where they sit in a world where people already juggle phones, tablets, and laptops. That leads into AI tools making their way into everyday use, including ChatGPT’s Image 1.5 generator, how it stacks up against Google’s recent image models, and why image generation has suddenly become such a crowded and competitive space.We wrap with the Foundation Model Transparency Index, which puts data behind a growing concern in AI. As models become more powerful and more widely used, the index shows how little most companies still disclose about training data, risks, and design choices, raising uncomfortable questions about trust, regulation, and accountability. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    37 min
  5. How Micron is Fueling India’s Chip Story while powering AI

    19/12/2025

    How Micron is Fueling India’s Chip Story while powering AI

    If AI is the brain, memory and storage are the nervous system.” In this Mint Techcetra episode, host Nelson John sits down with Anand Ramamoorthy, Managing Director, Micron India, to flip the spotlight from models to the memory and storage backbone powering AI. They discuss why memory & storage — not just processors — decide how fast, efficiently and intelligently AI can think, learn and scale, and how Micron is building that capability in India.Anand shares Micron India’s rapid journey - a 4,000+ workforce across Bangalore and Hyderabad, 600+ patents and disclosures, and homegrown DRAM engineering that produced multiple first-silicon passes with no respins. Tune in for candid takes on edge-to-cloud product strategy, skilling, R&D vs. manufacturing, and what the next five years mean for India’s semiconductor ambition. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    20 min

  6. 28/11/2025

    From India's PSLV rocket launch to Google's Gemini AI push

    In today's episode of Mint Techcetra, our host Leslie D'Monte and Shouvik Das talked about ISRO's trusted workhorse, the PSLV, which is now set to become a private "rocket taxi" for India, marking a major milestone in the commercialization of the country's space sector. The PSLV, known for its exceptional reliability over 32 years with more than 62 launches, including the Chandrayaan and Mangalyaan missions, is being manufactured privately by a consortium of Larsen & Toubro (L&T) and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL). This shift allows ISRO to focus on core research and high-profile missions while private players handle commercial launches. The private PSLV is designed to cater to small satellite launches up to 500 kilograms in low Earth orbit, providing an on-demand space taxi service that eliminates the long waiting times associated with larger rideshare rockets like SpaceX's Falcon 9. This opens up new revenue streams and opportunities in India's growing $8 billion space economy, expected to reach $44 billion by 2033.Alongside this, the episode also touched upon the advances in AI with Google's Nano Banana, praised for its speed and improved accuracy in image generation, but raising concerns about misuse, such as fake ID creation. In the en,d we talked about a Chinese robot that walked 100 kilometres only to ask for new shoes a reminder that robots are still far from human-level dexterity, with significant progress yet to be made before true artificial general intelligence is reached. To catch the full insights on these tech turns from space taxis to AI antics and robotics, listen to the entire episode. If you have any questions, we’d love to answer them on the podcast. We’re also open to any suggestions on how we can make it even better because we want to have a fun time with all of you. Reach out to us on our social handles. We can’t wait to hear from you! Leslie D'Monte - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-d-monte-4985993/ Shouvik Das - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shouvik-das-77a4bbba/?originalSubdomain=in HT Smartcast  -  https://www.linkedin.com/company/ht-smartcast/posts/?feedView=all Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    37 min

  7. 21/11/2025

    Internet outages, massive WhatsApp data leaks, and what India's data protection laws mean for us

    With the first episode of the new season of Mint Techcetra, your host Leslie D’Monte brings over his old tech friend Shouvik Das to talk about the Cloudflare outage that quietly took big chunks of the internet offline and stalled everything from trading desks to the everyday apps we barely think about. They also dig into the recent data leak that exposed the details of nearly seventy-five million people in India and what it says about how casually platforms collect our information and how easily it slips out into the world. The conversation moves into the DPDP Act, now officially in force,  and what it actually changes for anyone using a phone or app in India. Clear consent, under-18 safeguards, what platforms can and can’t do with your information, and why companies will have to stop burying rules in walls of legal text and because privacy and AI are now inseparable, the episode also touches on India’s early AI governance approach and how it tries to guide innovation without strangling it. It’s a breakdown of outages, leaks, and new rules landing all at once and what that mix means for anyone living their life online.   If you have any questions, we’d love to answer them on the podcast. We’re also open to any suggestions on how we can make it even better because we want to have a fun time with all of you. Reach out to us on our social handles. We can’t wait to hear from you! Leslie D'Monte - https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-d-monte-4985993/ Shouvik Das - https://www.linkedin.com/in/shouvik-das-77a4bbba/?originalSubdomain=in HT Smartcast  -  https://www.linkedin.com/company/ht-smartcast/posts/?feedView=all Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    36 min
  8. Securing the Future of Bharat with AI Infrastructure: IBM preps Indian enterprises to be AI-ready

    31/10/2025

    Securing the Future of Bharat with AI Infrastructure: IBM preps Indian enterprises to be AI-ready

    Join host Nelson John in a riveting episode of Mint Techcetra as he explores the future of AI infrastructure with IBM's business leader for IBMZ and LinuxONE, Suresh Jayanthi. They discuss the critical aspects of building a robust, secure, and sustainable IT infrastructure crucial for AI adoption. Learn about the types of enterprise systems, the latest innovations like on-chip AI accelerators, and quantum-safe technologies. Discover how IBM's solutions are helping enterprises, especially in India’s BFSI sector, to scale their operations while maintaining high security and reliability. Get insights into how to make AI systems more efficient and sustainable, and understand why now is the perfect time to invest in AI-ready infrastructure. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

    34 min
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Ratings & Reviews

3.7
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

The Mint Techcetra podcast is your navigator into the mesmerizing maze that is technology today. From decoding technologies, policies, enterprises, and legal decisions to sci-fi and pop culture, this podcast will cover it all. Every week hosts - Leslie D'Monte, Shouvik Das and Deepti Ahuja - will talk about important developments in tech and how they transform our lives, work and play as we know it. If you have any questions or suggestions you can reach out to the hosts on LinkedIn via their handles given below: Leslie D'Monte, Mint's Sr. Associate Editor: linkedin.com/in/leslie-d-monte-4985993 Shouvik Das, Mint's Assistant Editor, Mint: linkedin.com/in/shouvik-das-77a4bbba Deepti Ahuja, Content Head, HT Smartcast: linkedin.com/in/deeptea This is a Mint production brought to you by HT Smartcast.

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