Inc42 and Oracle convened CTOs and tech leaders for a closed-door dinner focussed on real-world AI infrastructure challenges, cloud optimisation and the future of technology leadership
Discussions highlighted the shift from AI experimentation to production scale, emphasising data pipelines, security guardrails, cost-efficiency and multi-model strategies as central to sustainable AI adoption
Oracle’s Palanivel Saravanan highlighted the role of data integrity, infrastructure performance and security in building scalable, business-ready AI systems
As India advances from experimenting with AI to production of AI, technology chiefs across India’s startup ecosystem are working on solutions to scale the business without breaking the tech infrastructure, overshooting the budget, or violating the security framework.
Cloud decisions that were once considered backend choices are now shaping product reliability and long-term competitiveness.
To foster meaningful conversations and collaborations around AI readiness, cloud infrastructure, and the evolving role of technology leadership, Inc42 and Oracle recently hosted The CTO Dinner in Bengaluru. It was an exclusive meetup of more than 20 CTOs and tech leaders from leading startups.
This edition of CTO Dinner brought together senior technology leaders for a one-of-a-kind networking opportunity. Hosted in a closed-door format, the event was designed to move beyond surface-level discussions and focus on the practical realities of building and scaling AI-led systems in business environments.
There were CTOs and senior tech leaders from sectors spanning across SaaS, fintech, mobility, enterprise software and consumer internet. The event hosted leaders like Mohan Krishna Devarapalli, senior director of engineering at PayU; Aneesh Kongot, head of tech and CFO of Happilo; Prakhar Verma, chief technology architect of Capillary Technologies; Chirag Maheswari, head of engineering at Fampay Solutions; Anurag Jain, founder and executive director at KredX; along with other prominent names in India’s startup ecosystem.
Inc42 also caught up with Palanivel Saravanan, VP of Cloud Engineering at Oracle India, who offered real-world examples of how large, high-throughput platforms are rethinking infrastructure choices as AI workloads mature. Use cases spanning enterprise software and manufacturing highlighted how performance optimisation and cost-efficiency are driving cloud architecture decisions.
Making Of AI, Cloud Infra And CTO Playbooks
Industry data underlines why conversations around AI are becoming urgent. The global AI infrastructure market, spanning GPUs, networking and cloud services, was valued at $101.17 Bn in 2026 and is expected to grow at over 14% annually to $202.48 Bn in 2031, with enterprises increasingly prioritising inference efficiency and data security over raw compute alone.
Addressing these shifts, Saravanan highlighted that many AI challenges emerge not from models themselves but from the surrounding systems that support them. “AI success is not about just the model or the GPU. It is about how data pipelines, security guardrails, inference efficiency and infrastructure scale come together to deliver real business outcomes,” he said.
“CTOs today have to think like strategic architects – choosing the right mix of models, infrastructure and cost structures to drive measurable efficiency across the business,” Saravanan added.
The discussion also explored how the CTO role itself is evolving. With AI increasingly embedded across engineering, operations and customer-facing workflows, technology leaders are now expected to quantify impact and align infrastructure decisions closely with business metrics.
The dinner provided opportunities for new-gen tech leaders to forge connections, collaborate, and better understand the next phase of AI adoption, defined less by experimentation and more by execution.
