Suresh Kumar

India has abundant expertise across every domain - logistics operators, subject matter experts, local service providers, etc. What's scarce isn't capability. It's the systems that coordinate this capability at scale. Most companies see this fragmentation and default to vertical integration: build everything in-house, own all capabilities, control every aspect of delivery. This works if you have unlimited capital and time. Most companies have neither. But there's an alternative approach that we've noticed two of our portcos execute remarkably well, in completely different industries - 1. When Meesho looked at India's logistics, and they saw thousands of fragmented local operators. Instead of building warehouses and delivery fleets, they built Valmo - an orchestration platform coordinating existing partners. Individual pilots with smartphones earn sustainable incomes, small hub operators build viable businesses, and Meesho gets coverage across 15,000+ pin codes at 12% lower cost than traditional third-party-logistics. 2. Entri saw similar fragmentation in education. India has abundant teaching expertise already running offline/online programs. Entri partners with them for content while owning demand generation, platform infra, quality monitoring, and placements. This allows them to launch new categories in weeks and scale across languages without the capital intensity of building in-house teams for every vertical. If I had to pull a common thread, it's that in fragmented markets like India, the orchestration layer often matters more than asset ownership. Coordinate what exists rather than rebuilding from scratch.

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On the latest episode of Embracing Erosion I sat down with Suyog Deshpande, Co-Founder & CEO of Webless (a Fluvio Ventures portfolio company). Before starting Webless, Suyog spent years at Amplitude, Salesforce, and Samsara - shaping products and GTM strategy at scale as a product marketing leader. That perspective is now fueling one of the boldest bets in tech: 🏗️ rebuilding the web for LLMs. Instead of optimizing for clicks and SEO, Webless imagines an agentic web -where sites are designed to interact directly with AI models and agents. We dug into: - What an LLM-native web could actually look like - How companies can prepare to be LLM-ready - What metrics will matter beyond pageviews and clicks - Why safety and trust are core to agent-driven experiences - Lessons Suyog brings from “big tech” into this transformation If you’re curious about how discovery, trust, and value exchange will evolve online, this one’s worth your time. Link to the full episode in the comments 👇

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Agentic commerce is about to fundamentally disrupt how people discover products. There is an opportunity in data infrastructure to build something absolutely monumental. Investing in Ankur Modi and David Mataciunas to go after this was an easy decision for me, for two reasons: 1. Ankur is one of the most persistent, intense and fast-learning founders I’ve ever worked with 2. Their founder-market fit is unbeatable. Ankur built a commerce platform which IPO’d, he led oversight platforms at Meta, and was part of the commerce experience leadership team at Amazon. David is a NeurIPS-published researcher with experience at IBM and Cohere, whose academic work with MIT is at the bleeding edge of LLM research Ankur and David have built an infra platform that might fundamentally change commerce. In weeks, they've signed brands doing hundreds of $m in GMV. They’ll be talking in more detail about their plans today, at the Entrepreneurs First demo day in SF.

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Today I’m excited to introduce Wood Wide AI, founded by Pradeep Ravikumar and Varsha Raj, from our PearX S25 cohort! So many companies today are drowning in numeric data. Generative AI tools can’t make sense of it, but Wood Wide AI can. Pradeep and Varsha are building a table-native numeric AI that combines the flexibility of LLMs with the accuracy of ML and the reasoning power of neuro-symbolic AI to deliver real insights from any table, in any domain. Instead of relying on custom data science tooling and data teams, business users can directly run data analysis and predictions. The next evolution of tabular ML is here, and I’m excited to see what’s next for Wood Wide AI.

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"Product managers are the new prompt engineers." – Tim Simmons, Chief Product Officer, Walmart International In a standout conversation with our Head Resident CPO, Renee Niemi, Tim shared a perspective that every product leader should consider as they navigate the AI era. Prompt Engineering is Now Core PM Craft If your team learns just one new skill this year, make it prompt engineering. Tim sets the expectation that PMs and UXers must be the best prompt engineers in the enterprise. The ability to interact with AI systems fluently is now as essential as understanding user needs. This shift reframes the PM role from problem solver to AI orchestrator. Implication: CPOs must actively upskill their teams and hire with prompt fluency in mind. Build with AI, Not Just for AI From copilots to custom GPTs, Tim emphasizes the massive productivity unlock when AI is embedded in how product teams work, not just what they build. Walmart’s PMs are already using AI assistants to double speed and accuracy across the product lifecycle. Implication: You need two AI strategies: 1) Build AI into your product 2) Build with AI in your processes Both matter. The former drives differentiation. The latter drives efficiency. Bottom Line: The future of product leadership demands fluency in AI, not just as a feature but as a collaborator. The podcast conversation touches upon a few other topics such as 1) how product management has become the de facto enterprise strategy, 2) Effective product management requires platform thinking, and 3 ) Embedding curiosity into the everyday work is a key function for CPOs. Thank you Tim for an excellent conversation! https://lnkd.in/gYV3XSxq Jordan Carriere Renee Niemi SC Moatti Floyd Given Kristin Kobey - ACC Henu Kotia Gaurav Dutta Parul Jain

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In my conversation with Sameer Rajani one theme came up repeatedly: clarity changes resistance. When manufacturers were hesitant about marketplace models, he didn’t try to persuade them with stories; he showed them the math. Breaking down logistics costs, risk, margins, and net profit made the economics visible. And once the economics were clear, the hesitation reduced. In many cases, growth isn’t about convincing people. It’s about making the numbers transparent. Watch the full episode here: https://lnkd.in/g53rvqd7

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#GCCs at a Turning Point: Why #StrongFoundations Will Outlast the Hype!! There’s a lot of excitement around GCCs today. AI is driving transformation conversations. Automation is on every team’s roadmap. And talent strategies are rapidly evolving. But AI doesn’t fix a shaky foundation, it magnifies it. Recent BCG research shows: - Over 90% of high-performing GCCs have launched or scaled AI-led CoEs in the past 18 months. - Yet, only 8% have progressed into true innovation hubs. If the foundation is weak, AI will only reveal the cracks faster. The #futureofGCCs isn't just about speed or execution. It’s about strategic #alignment and #value #co-creation. GCCs, AI and the Fundamentals that still matters!! Where are you building unshakable foundations? #GCC #GlobalCapabilityCenter #AI #AILeadership #EnterpriseAI #EnterpriseTransformation #InnovationAtScale

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