[00:00:02 – 00:00:10] Nitin Bajaj

Hey everyone. Welcome to the industry show. I’m your host Nitin Bajaj and joining me today is Janardan Prasad. Janadhan, welcome on the show.

[00:00:11 – 00:00:11] Janardhan Prasad

Thanks for having me.

[00:00:11 – 00:00:16] Nitin Bajaj

Nitin, great to have you here. Let’s start with the big question. Who is Janardhan?

[00:00:17 – 00:01:16] Janardhan Prasad

I’m Janardhan. Some people know me with jp so I’ll go with JP in this. Jp, an entrepreneur, a product leader who’s passionate about harnessing technology to solve some real world problems. I’ve done a couple of startups all the way from Autorickshaw back in India. That was my first startup to doing Genai in healthcare. So I said automating autorickshaw commute to automating healthcare workflows. That’s my journey. I am a builder. I’m a builder at heart. Zero to one products is what I love building. Some of my startups have seen success, some of my startups have seen failure. Have seen it all. My most recent one was Lore IO where we built commercial analytics for life sciences. It got acquired by Alteryx and right now you know it’s one on one genii that’s keeping me excited and everything. On the personal side I apart from being an entrepreneur, I’m a husband, a good one, a father, a cool one and also a tennis player, a little bit lazy one but like that’s, that’s me in a nutshell.

[00:01:17 – 00:02:10] Nitin Bajaj

I love that self rating system. More people should adopt that. With what I love about what you shared in such a short time, the span and gamut of things that you have done and touched upon. Most importantly the impact. Autorickshaws are the lifeblood for more than a billion people and now you’re touching healthcare which is several billion people that’ll be impacted and benefit from. So love that. Let’s Talk more about 101 gen AI starting with why do this? You could have done so many other things with your experience and exposure so why this? And also walk us through, it’s relatively new but what is the impact you’ve been able to create so far? But what is the vision?

[00:02:11 – 00:04:20] Janardhan Prasad

Definitely. So first let me start with what is 101genai? 101genai is a no code health tech AI platform and our mission is to democratize access to healthcare globally. Right. So there are so many ways it could do that and then we are doing it using AI. We empower health tech entrepreneurs. We also empower healthcare systems to build, deploy and scale AI powered systems and infuse them into their workflows. It could improve their Productivity. It could include patient outcomes that could improve operational efficiency. There are so many ways it could be done right. We do it responsibly, we do it with trust, we do it with doctors, we do it with the healthcare system and we do it very, very responsibly. How did it start? Maybe let me give you a little bit history on that. It all started in, I would say, two different phases. Phase one was that during COVID Nitin, if you remember, all of us were struggling to get access to healthcare globally. I’m not just talking us, I’m talking India. All of us have horror stories about time when we lost our family members. And I would say that was the time when I felt that maybe I should have been a doctor instead of an engineer. I felt helpless. That was phase one where there was a lot of pain, but helplessness that you can’t do anything. Phase two was after Lower IO, my previous startup, after it got acquired by Alteryx. I was driving their growth and innovation. And when this AI wave came and there are so many things that we could do, I would say within my organization or with the power of generative AI, it brought me back to that pain. There’s so much that this generative AI wave unlocks that we could just do it. And that’s when around 2023 is when I started brainstorming it with my co founders and there was no doubt that healthcare is the industry that will be deeply impacted or I would say it will leapfrog to something totally different. They say that it will go from faxes to agents. That’s what we are seeing right now. So super exciting about what 101gen AI enables. Super excited about not just 101gen AI, what gen AI enables in healthcare. And I’m impressed with the way healthcare is adopting it.

[00:04:22 – 00:05:00] Nitin Bajaj

Love that more than anything. As you rightly pointed out, it’s something that defines our future for our generation, but also for generations to come. And using technology that is transforming, how can we transform something, especially here in this country, is really messed up. So I’m glad this is a problem you’ve taken on to tackle because it will take somebody like you and your team to make a difference and move the needle. As you’re going through this journey, there is a lot of hurdles I would love for you to call out the biggest challenge you’re facing.

[00:05:01 – 00:06:39] Janardhan Prasad

I think, I think the biggest challenge I would not just say about like what we are facing or whatever company is facing. The biggest challenge that the healthcare industry is facing is the efficiency right Like I know you, you spoke about this country, but like we have customers in uk, we have customers in Canada, we have customers in India. Problems are the same, right? Like, like in different ways the problems are the same, right? So efficiency is a big problem. Access to healthcare is a big problem, right? And people see the potential of AI, but there is a lot of, I would say inhibition in adopting. And if you go to the core of it, when we talk to the doctors, when we talk to the CIOs, when we talk to the founders, the biggest problem is trust and that overall comfort with putting AI in production, that’s the biggest thing that is missing. And same thing with the people are worried about data security, people are worried about compliance, people are worried about patient data being exposed to LLMs. There are so many ways that trust is not established. We see that with our customers and the way to handle that is you go step by step. You don’t try to replace any workflow, you don’t try to replace anything. You just go and you focus on a very small task. You bring efficiency to that. You do it with the experts in the loop. I think that’s super important. You do it responsibly and then slowly you do it right. So that’s what, that’s what is working for 101 gen. That’s what I think most of the other health tech, other healthcare companies are also trying that slow and steadily making progress towards a bigger adoption in healthcare. There’s no build fast, build fast in healthcare. That’s what we are realizing makes sense.

[00:06:39 – 00:06:44] Nitin Bajaj

I suppose patience is key and probably that’s what also makes you an awesome husband and a cool dad.

[00:06:45 – 00:06:51] Janardhan Prasad

So I hope so. I hope so. At times patience like, you know, backfires as well. But I agree with you on this. Call Nitin.

[00:06:53 – 00:06:59] Nitin Bajaj

Now on the flip side of challenges come opportunities. What’s the one you’re most excited about?

[00:07:00 – 00:08:51] Janardhan Prasad

I think there are many, right? There are many. Like now when we talk about use cases. We are a platform company. We are not a point solution. We are not building a diabetes app, we are not doing a mental health, we are not doing cancer detection. We are a platform and as a platform we witness so many exciting opportunities all over the place. What personally I am excited about is that how these so called various agents or all these various pieces of innovation or pieces of puzzle connect well together. We have customers doing, let’s say scribing. We have customers doing prior authorization, we have customers doing patient onboarding. We have customers doing quality and compliance. As a platform company we see how these agents built by various people, they connect together to complete a workflow. Right? So, and then you might know then that it’s a, it’s a workflow problem. It’s not just, you can’t just go and tell a hospital that I will solve just this problem with AI and I don’t care about anything else. That’s not how it works. So that’s, that’s one thing that, that makes us super excited. What we also see is that like, and then AI has a power of doing that. Generative AI, multi agent systems and MCPS have that ability that all these agents are interoperable. That means they talk to each other, they connect with each other. So no more 100 vendors solving same problem or different problems differently. Like collectively they solve a bigger healthcare workflow problem. And that is, that is most exciting if you ask me. The big bet. If I have to predict like five years from now, I don’t think people are building solutions. People will be just connecting these solutions together to solve them. Complicated workflow. Just like no one builds, I would say a new website or like that’s no more a skill now. Like it’s commoditized. Right. So I think agent builder will be commodities. The bigger art will be putting these agents and tasks together to solve a bigger healthcare challenge.

[00:08:52 – 00:09:31] Nitin Bajaj

Love that and I agree with you. Now as we look forward, I would love for you to pause and reflect and ask you to share two moments from your previous life. One where things did not work out as you’d expected. There was failure lessons you touched upon. Some of your previous ventures did not make it. But even if from the ones that did make it, there might be some stories, one that you would be most interested in sharing. The other one I would love for you to talk about something that beat your own expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

[00:09:33 – 00:13:45] Janardhan Prasad

I like the way n. You’re putting another spot on both sides. Okay, let me, let me try to do justice to it. Right? Let’s start with failure. Because that’s where I think the humble beginnings start and that’s where most of the entrepreneurs start, including me. So I’m no exception. When I did my first startup, I was not even 30. We were in the space of Auto Valley, as you know. Nitin. Right. So very operationally challenging business. But I would say we got lucky, right? It was like a blessing in disguise that it was a challenging thing. But we got lucky because there was so much demand, there was so much problem in commute in India. But one thing that we did not realize was that we thought we’ll build technology, we thought we will have this cool idea and we’ll just go live and we’ll do magic, right? But it backfired. I’ll tell you why. Within three months of launching the company, we were covered by most of the media houses at local level, at national level, at international level. And it was such a big problem that we got too much media attention too early. And the impact of that was that we got too much demand. And then in a marketplace, if you get too much demand and if you don’t have enough supply, then it leads to bad customer service. That was the lesson. That was the lesson that you should not scale prematurely. Not every good news is a good news. You feel happy that, oh, you got on the front page of let’s say some media house or New York Times or something, but next day are you ready to handle like 10,000 extra calls for that day for that city, right? And then that was the lesson, right? That not every news is a good news. Not every good news is a good news, right? That kind of thing. And going back to the systems and this is something that like hopefully other entrepreneurs, and I’m trying to do that in my current startup is building a more sustainable, more scalable, but at the same time more sustainable growth engines, right? Like there’s no like going from zero to billion in a month, right? Like that’s not something that’s sustainable, right. So sustainable and scalable is the thing that I think was the biggest lesson there. And since then we were better prepared. And over last, what’s 15 years in my journey, I’ve seen a lot of ups and downs, but I think being prepared for what’s coming, planning for success and not going crazy with certain things is the lesson that I learned, right? That’s on the failure side. That translated to a big lesson that we are doing till date. At times I say no to customers, like we will laugh at it, but like at times I say no to customers because we are not ready. At times we say no to investors, that we are not ready to digest this much money and scale, right? So I think that’s one. On the success side I’ll maybe like since I started with Auto Valley, I would say 101 Jenny, right. I think the biggest success that I see is that getting those early customers who will trust your vision, who will believe in you even when there is nothing, right. I would say that is the success that all the entrepreneurs should chase for, right? Whether you can sell, whether you can get supporters of your vision even when you don’t have anything. And I would say that’s a little bit of an art, that a little bit of a luck as well. But those early customers for any startup is super important. We got lucky with 101gen AI. Even before we launched our product, we had 10 customers using our product. Right. And I would say that’s, that’s the learning that you, you go, you can’t just build a product without keeping any customer in the loop and, and you launch a product and then realize that no one is using it. Right. So it comes with practice, it comes with patience, it comes with some, some success and failure. now we know that first you have to get customers. In this case, we got lucky. And then you build product and you do it the right way. Now when we go to our customers, now that our product is in public beta, when we go to customers, they love the product, they still give feedback, which is great. But I would say we are not fighting for that so called PMF that typical entrepreneurs do because they are just building it without talking to the customers. So it’s a combination of that. So I’ll start with getting too many customers and not having scalable systems and technologies behind the scenes. From that stage at my first startup to the startup where we are doing it more constantly and maybe, you know, doing it the right ways is what I would say.

[00:13:46 – 00:14:15] Nitin Bajaj

And what I love about this is despite all of your successes, the humility still remains. Where you mentioned luck maybe half a dozen times. And I know it’s not just luck. You’ve been strategic about it, you’ve been diligent about it. And there is some credibility that you have built over the years. And that’s why customers want to come partner with you, work with you in building something that will truly move the needle when it comes to healthcare.

[00:14:15 – 00:15:40] Janardhan Prasad

And on that I would say since you talked about needle moving things, even with these customers, it was not just technology. I’ll give you one specific example if it helps, there’s one very early customer number two, they were doing something for musculoskeletal, all the like tennis elbow. And I’m a tennis player so like, you know, I could feel that pain and spondylitis and back pain and all those things. There’s a company, they used AI for our, for infusing AI for their top of the funnel conversion. They put it on their website and they did that. And there were two, I would say, needle moving things that we realized over time. Right. One is that the top of the funnel conversion improved drastically. They went From I think 10% to almost like 40% conversion rate by using AI. So if you do it right, if you do it slowly and you work iterate with the customer, then it gives that impact. And the other is needle moving, not in terms of KPIs, but one fine day my dad visited that website without knowing that that customer is using our product and he did something and he told me that oh, this company is using AI And I tried it and he was able to upload his X ray and he was able to get some amazing results. And he was like, oh, I’m able to use AI and it’s amazing, right? And I felt good, like you know that you are not just creating impact for your customers, you are creating some impact indirectly for people like my dad who is 75, who is not very tech savvy. And that gives me confidence that if you keep working on needle moving features, if you do it the right way, then maybe it will touch 7 billion, 8 billion people as well.

[00:15:40 – 00:15:56] Nitin Bajaj

That is fascinating. That is so cool. Now switching gears a little bit. What do you do for fun? You know you said tennis, but outside of that, are there other things that help you relax de stress and not think about work?

[00:15:57 – 00:17:07] Janardhan Prasad

I’m a very social person. I’m very social person and maybe that’s why I’m able to do entrepreneurship. Because in entrepreneurship you can’t just sit in the room and run your business. You have to meet people, you have to connect with people. Apart from tennis, I do yoga, which I think keeps me calm and composed. And you said humble. I think I can’t take credit. It’s credit to my yoga teacher, maybe that do that. I love reading a lot, I love reading a lot about intersection of technology people, business communities. I think communities is another important thing. I also enjoy mentoring a lot of entrepreneurs as well. When I started my company back in Pune, I did not know anything about entrepreneurship. So we used to listen to these entrepreneurs who have  been at it for decades. And now that I’m almost about to complete two decades as entrepreneur, love to give it back. In fact, I think you and I spoke about it. I also see a connection between mentorship and parenting. You can’t scream at neither your kids nor the entrepreneurs that you are mentoring. But like I, I, I see some connection there, there. And that’s where I would say I spend most of the time socializing with friends, connecting to a lot of entrepreneurs, mentoring them, playing tennis to keep myself active and fit and doing Yoga to, to stay calm and stay composed for a long journey ahead.

[00:17:08 – 00:17:19] Nitin Bajaj

Very thought through, holistic approach and not surprised at all. Any book or podcast that is a favorite and you would like to share it with our audience.

[00:17:21 – 00:17:36] Janardhan Prasad

One book that I read recently, in fact it was a couple of months back. Right now I’m not able to give enough time to book, but like one book that I read recently finished recently is Thinking in Bets. It’s a book by Annie Duke, world poker champion, very famous woman leader.

[00:17:38 – 00:17:38] Nitin Bajaj

And.

[00:17:38 – 00:18:55] Janardhan Prasad

When I was reading that book, I could connect it to the startup journey, right? The one line that I would share, Nitin with you and the audience of Air is that they said like life is not a chess, life is a poker. Things are not very predictable at times. They say in poker you might have the best hand and you might lose and at times you might have the worst hand and you might still win. So you can’t take credit for the wins, you can’t blame yourself for the losses. And you just cumulatively and in fact the ending line was that life is just one long poker game, right? So I see entrepreneurship the same way as well, right? Like one entrepreneur, one startup, second startup, third startup, but at the end of it, it’s a journey. A lot of learnings that I had from my previous startup, like you are you probed on few. I’m putting it here. It’s a long journey. It’s a long journey. So Thinking in Words is one book that I would recommend almost everyone A it will keep them humble. The it will prepare them for the uncertainties that exist outside of your control. So that’s on the book side, right? On the podcast. Obviously there are a lot of AI podcasts, but I think what I would recommend everyone here is to follow Nitin Bajaj’s the INDUStry show. That’s one good one. That’s how we connected. I saw some of your podcasts and they were very engaging. So love it and I hope your community goes with it.

[00:18:56 – 00:19:06] Nitin Bajaj

Well, thank you for that. Now onto my favorite part of the show. We call it the one line Life lessons. Jp, I would love for you to share your life lessons with us.

[00:19:08 – 00:22:14] Janardhan Prasad

I would say tough to put it in one line, but I’ll try. I think one thing that I tell my team, and this is something that has been there since my startup one is build for impact, not just for innovation or scale. When I say scale, like don’t think that you’ll be a unicorn or don’t think that you’ll become the most famous person. Right? Like I can Focus on, focus on impact. If you do it the right way, everything else will follow. But focus on impact, right? The second thing which, which I think has been the theme of this, this podcast so far is that embrace failure as your best teacher, right? Like you start something you, you, it does not work out. It could be a product launch, it could be a startup, it could be like anything. It could be anything, right? Like it could be stock market or whatever it is, right? Like the moment you start learning, start to learn from those failures and you embrace those failures as the best teacher, I think you are good. Something that I tell my kids because I said like mentorship and parenting, there are a lot of similarities. I tell I have two daughters, 5 year and 10 year old. I keep telling them that good things take time. So have patience. Be it building Lego, be it building a chess, be it painting, be it composing of music, any good thing it takes time. And especially I would say for the younger generation and I don’t mean millennials and all, I’m talking gen alpha, gen beta and all. I think patience is what I think will build, especially with AI. I would say it will be very easy to build things, but might be tough to adopt things. So good things take time and then building it with patience is super helpful on the customer side. Because going back to entrepreneurship on the customer side, I always believe that and I told you for our company first we started with customers first we got few customers and then we solved the problem and then we built the product, right? So in one line I would say solve for the customer and growth will follow. That’s another line that I follow. And something that even when let’s say company is doing well and if you want to launch a new product or maybe some innovative idea comes up with a product team or the engineering team, the first thing is that we go and talk to the customer and only when we get two or three customers ready to sign a paper if we launch the product is when we build it. So yeah, always start with the customer and then growth and everything will follow, right? Last thing I would say, like kind of like mixing entrepreneurship, parenting and lot of risk taking poker and everything included is there’s my own which is anything that gives anxiety today will build character tomorrow, right? Like if you live in your comfort zone, if you don’t get anxious it somewhere I think you are restricting your growth and linking it back to yoga. That’s what my yoga instructor says, that growth happens at the boundary of comfort and discomfort. Right? So anxiety is when we changing cities be it changing professions, be it leaving your comfortable job and doing a startup or going on a podcast, going on a stage, playing your first league match. Whatever it is, anything that gives you anxiety will build a character for tomorrow. Same thing I teach my kids, something I learned as well that okay, it’s giving me anxiety today, but maybe tomorrow I’ll get comfortable with it.

[00:22:15 – 00:22:32] Nitin Bajaj

Love that. Spoken like a true wise person that I’ve known you to be. Jp, thank you so much. Really appreciate you sharing your journey and story. Congratulations on all the successes so far and I know you’re just getting started, so really appreciate you being here and doing what you do.

[00:22:33 – 00:22:38] Janardhan Prasad

Thanks Nitin, and thanks for doing it. Thanks for, I would say, doing this podcast and spreading the word around for the rest of you as well.

[00:22:38 – 00:22:39] Nitin Bajaj

Thank you.

[00:22:39 – 00:22:40] Janardhan Prasad

Thank you.

[00:22:40 – 00:22:41] Nitin Bajaj

Bye Bye.