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Himanshu Upreti
Co-Founder & CTO at Ai Palette
Himanshu Upreti is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Ai Palette, a Singapore-based deep-tech startup that focuses on the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry. Founded in November 2018, Ai Palette aims to revolutionize the food and personal care sectors by leveraging proprietary artificial intelligence technology to guide brands in product development decisions. Their flagship product, the "Foresight Engine 2.0," has analyzed over 60 billion data points across 24 geographies and supports multiple languages, making it a significant tool for market insights.1
Before co-founding Ai Palette, Upreti was involved with Entrepreneur First as a Founder in Residence, where he helped build deep tech companies. He also has experience as a Senior Software Engineer at Visa, where he contributed to significant projects in data analytics and optimization, earning accolades for his performance.12
Upreti's work has positioned Ai Palette as a notable player in the industry, with approximately 50% of its clientele being Fortune 500 companies, including leaders in snacks, breakfast, ingredients, and flavor houses. The company has received recognition in various global startup competitions, highlighting its innovative approach and potential impact in the market.1
Highlights
“To me, no task is beneath me"
Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of NVIDIA, embodies the true spirit of entrepreneurship. His journey from immigrant to leader of a $2.8 trillion company is a testament to the power of hard work and a "no task is beneath me" attitude.
Long before he co-founded the computer chip giant, Huang washed dishes and cleaned toilets as a teenager working at Denny’s. Years later, he would get the idea for Nvidia with his co-founders in a booth at the same Denny's.
In NVIDIA's early days, Huang didn't just lead - he got his hands dirty. From soldering circuit boards to making sales calls, he understood that building a company means doing whatever it takes. This willingness to tackle any job, no matter how small, laid the foundation for NVIDIA's culture of innovation and resilience. Huang today is a famously hands-on boss where he asks employees across the company to email him each week with the five most important things they’re working on, and then he sometimes even strolls up to employees’ desks to ask them how projects are going and weigh in with suggestions.
As startup founders, we all can learn from Huang's example:
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Embrace every task: Never get too big to do the small. Don't shy away from grunt work. Understanding every aspect of your business is crucial.
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Lead by doing: Your team will respect you more when they see you're not above any job.
Remember, the path to success is paved with countless small, often unglamorous tasks. And no task is beneath you.
AI has been around for 75 years. What's this hype about Generative AI then?
This past weekend, I was part of a fire-side chat at an Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati alumni meetup organized by IIT Guwahati Alumni Association. The panel had fellow AI builders and operators from IITG including Ajinkya who scaled and exited Playment, Y Combinator backed AI startup, and Sudarshan Kamath, whose startup smallest.ai is making waves with its deeptech work in building multi-lingual, multi-accent text-to-speech AI technology - AWAAZ
The conversation of course ventured into the topic of GenAI and its adoption across industries. Historically, AI has been focused on building systems capable of learning from data, identifying patterns, and making predictions and decisions with minimal human intervention. Generative AI is a class of AI that goes beyond analyzing data to 'generate' and 'create' never-seen-before new content—be it text, images, music, and now video—that mimics human creations. Instead of merely making decisions or predictions based on input data, Generative AI can create 'novel' data that wasn’t explicitly programmed into it. Once you understand this 'novelty' factor, the future possibilities start becoming clearer.
While we at Ai Palette were working with GenAI before it became cool, the recent advancements in stable diffusion and LLMs have been truly transformational in making our vision of "generating new consumer products with AI" come true. The kind of new product development (NPD) use cases our customers need us for, GenAI is more of a necessity than just a sufficiency. Today we use our fine-tuned GenAI models to generate new product concepts, marketing campaigns, packaging designs, etc. aligning with the brand identity and brand voice.
It's safe to claim that the future being created by GenAI is already here – and it will get evenly distributed very soon.
P.S. The event was a grand success and more than 200+ IITG folks attended it. Thanks to the organisers for bringing us all under the same roof. Sriram Kumar 🦉
Office of IITG Alumni Association E-Cell, IIT Guwahati Student Alumni Interaction Linkage, IIT Guwahati
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.