Founder & CEO at Futurense | Co-Founder at 1% Club- AI CFO for your money
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
59K followers
500+ connections
About
Hi, I’m Raghav, and I build companies that help India’s workforce stay employable and financially confident in a world where AI is changing everything faster than people can keep up.
My work sits in two spaces that define the Indian middle class more than anything else:
jobs and money.
I started Futurense after realizing something unusual - India has engineers everywhere, yet companies kept saying they “can’t find good tech talent”.
I realised the talent wasn’t the problem, the training was.
So we built a model that fixes the gap from both ends - academia and industry.
- We partner with IITs and IIMs to design AI-focused degrees and certification programs taught by IIT faculty and global tech leaders, giving learners a genuine second chance at the IIT experience.
- On the other side, we work directly with Fortune 500 companies and leading GCCs through Hire-Train-Deploy and specialised hiring programs, offering free, high-quality training paired with financial stability to create deployment-ready AI talent.
- We’re also building dual-coursework pathways with US and European universities, where students complete part of their degree online in India and the rest on campus at schools like Drexel, Rutgers, and Paris Business School, making global education affordable, and Indian talent a genuine export again, not just a cost arbitrage.
Today, 25,000+ professionals trained through Futurense have been placed into GCCs and global tech teams that needed high-quality AI talent yesterday.
Our goal is simple: give people a fair shot at careers that actually move upward.
But jobs are only half the problem. The other half is what happens after you earn.
That’s why I helped build the 1% Club, now 700,000+ paid members strong, a financial education community which is now evolving into a Money OS - a system that helps people track, analyse, and act on their finances with the kind of intelligence that used to be reserved for private bankers.
I’m interested in how AI will reshape:
- The labour market
- Engineering roles and workflows
- Wealth creation for the middle class
- India’s shift from IT outsourcing to AI engineering leadership
And in the middle of all the AI noise, I still believe that technology can scale systems, but humans scale outcomes, because the real leverage comes from how we think, behave, and make decisions, shaped by the three Ps I constantly explore: philosophy, psychology, and politics.
So, if you're building for India’s talent, India’s financial future, or anywhere AI is pushing boundaries, we’ll have a lot to talk about.
Articles by Raghav
Activity
59K followers
-
Raghav Gupta reposted thisSpotify realised that using its most capable AI for every task was not smarter. It was simply more expensive. The setup is called Portal, with a Claude Code plugin named Shunt. Spotify first tried routing instructions in CLAUDE.md. That was advisory: Claude could ignore it, and every project needed its own copy. The newer system enforces the decision at the tool-call layer: → A lower-cost bulk-reader worker handles broad reads of large files and returns a concise, structured summary. → A code-writer worker handles predictable output such as test scaffolding, configuration files, and type stubs - and can write the result directly to disk. → By default, an untargeted Claude Code read of a file over 350 lines is blocked and redirected. The limit is configurable, and targeted section reads can still pass through. → Spotify’s example uses Gemini 2.5 Flash for both worker modes, while Claude remains available for the reasoning-heavy work. → In Spotify’s Java-monorepo tests, this approach delivered around 90% mean token savings for bulk reads - not necessarily 90% savings across every coding task. The better approach is understanding what the work actually requires, building the right capability for it, and putting that capability where it creates the most value.T hats the same thinking behind Hire-Train-Deploy models. The goal was never to find the most qualified person for every task. Its to match the capability to the work. Spotify did this with AI models. Companies need to start doing it with people. Where do you see companies using senior talent for work that doesnt need it?
-
Raghav Gupta shared thisAn AI agent may know the next step. But can it take that step inside the software your business actually uses? HCLSoftware, HCLTechs software division, announced this week its acquiring Robotiq.ai, a Croatia-based RPA company, for €9 million. Small deal. Bigger signal. → Robotiq.ai automates repetitive tasks across enterprise applications, including those where APIs are unavailable or insufficient. → HCLSoftware plans to add that RPA capability to HCL UnO Agentic, extending its orchestration from decision-making toward execution inside those applications. → Thats the tell: the deal targets the gap between an AI-driven decision and a task actually completed in a business application. It does not prove that UnO Agentic previously could not execute workflows. → Robotiq.ai’s platform is used in large banks, insurance groups and telecom providers - sectors HCLSoftware identifies as existing users, without claiming they are the most API-poor. The industry has spent a lot of effort making AI agents better at thinking, but HCLTech’s proposed acquisition is to make one better at doing. That gap, between an agent that can decide the right action and a system that will actually let it take that action, is where a lot of enterprise AI pilots stall. A good recommendation may be useful on its own. But when the goal is automation, the payoff depends on turning that decision into a completed, measurable workflow - not just another answer on a screen. Companies are going to learn this the hard way with people too. Hiring smarter talent doesnt move a single number if that talent cant plug into how the work actually gets done. Where's the real bottleneck in your org right now: the thinking, or the doing?
-
Raghav Gupta shared thisSpotify realised that using its most capable AI for every task was not smarter. It was simply more expensive. The setup is called Portal, with a Claude Code plugin named Shunt. Spotify first tried routing instructions in CLAUDE.md. That was advisory: Claude could ignore it, and every project needed its own copy. The newer system enforces the decision at the tool-call layer: → A lower-cost bulk-reader worker handles broad reads of large files and returns a concise, structured summary. → A code-writer worker handles predictable output such as test scaffolding, configuration files, and type stubs - and can write the result directly to disk. → By default, an untargeted Claude Code read of a file over 350 lines is blocked and redirected. The limit is configurable, and targeted section reads can still pass through. → Spotify’s example uses Gemini 2.5 Flash for both worker modes, while Claude remains available for the reasoning-heavy work. → In Spotify’s Java-monorepo tests, this approach delivered around 90% mean token savings for bulk reads - not necessarily 90% savings across every coding task. The better approach is understanding what the work actually requires, building the right capability for it, and putting that capability where it creates the most value.T hats the same thinking behind Hire-Train-Deploy models. The goal was never to find the most qualified person for every task. Its to match the capability to the work. Spotify did this with AI models. Companies need to start doing it with people. Where do you see companies using senior talent for work that doesnt need it?
-
Raghav Gupta shared this7,500 conversations later, Wipro may have found a better way to get 240,000+ employees moving on AI. Wipro spent 3 years building 144 AI learning paths for 240,000+ employees, and yet, almost nobody knew which one to pick. That’s what Wipro's new AI agent, iSkill, was built to solve. → iSkill has recorded more than 7,500 conversations with employees since its December 2025 launch, with over 100 active unique learners. → It sits inside Microsoft 365 Copilot and Teams, on top of Wipro's AI Academy. It is the internal platform built three years ago to make 240,000+ associates AI-ready. → The Academy already had 144 persona-based learning paths across hundreds AI and cloud, sourced from thousands of partner platforms. The problem was never content but actually direction. → Employees would search, read course descriptions, and often give up. Only a small percentage ever asked for suggestions, and adoption suffered. → iSkill fixes this by acting as a conversational guide: it reads an employee's role, band, function, and completed certifications, then recommends what to learn next from the catalogue. This is a pattern most large companies miss. They assume the gap in upskilling is content. It's usually navigation. When you give someone 144 options and no filter, most people won't explore; they'll just disengage. Surya Prakash Mohapatra, GM and Global Head of AI Learning (Talent Skilling) at Wipro, said that iSkill is a personal learning advocate, not a surveillance tool. The interesting shift here isn't that Wipro built an AI agent. It's that the agent's job isn't to teach. It's to guide. As AI tools multiply inside every company, the real differentiator won't be who has the most courses. It'll be who can tell 240,000 people, individually, where to start. What’s a bigger blocker to upskilling at any company?
-
Raghav Gupta shared thisBW Businessworld just covered the FDE talent gap our report surfaced, reaching 1.3 million readers across India. We spent months building this report, and honestly, you never quite know if that work will cross a certain threshold and reach a wider audience. Now BusinessWorld has covered India's widening Forward Deployed Engineer talent gap, drawing extensively from our findings with AIM Research, and it's reaching millions of people organically. The story centers on the number that's been anchoring every conversation we've had since this report went live. → 95% employer demand against 45% available talent for field-deployed AI builders, a 50 percentage-point gap. → 88% demand against 55% supply for customer-facing and consulting skills. The piece also features perspectives from Saumitra Chand at Indeed India & Singapore, Prakash Balasubramanian at Ascendion, and UnearthInsight, people seeing this gap play out from very different vantage points, and all landing on the same problem. This is the audience we wanted this in front of. Not analysts scrolling for interesting stats, but the people actually making hiring calls this quarter. Coverage link: https://lnkd.in/dhrgxeaG
-
Raghav Gupta shared thisThis Bengaluru AI startup's headcount is smaller than single client accounts at Indian IT services firms, and still a $65M valuation. A 15-person team in Bengaluru just raised $21 million, or approx 200 crore. Their product does what most companies still pay a full department to do. 📍 Runable's agent, Grow, runs ads on Meta, Google, and ChatGPT without a media buyer. 📍 It cold calls and emails leads from a real phone number, without an SDR. 📍 It handles SEO and AI search visibility, without an SEO lead. So now the company has 15 people for 1.5 million users and over $65 million valuation, backed by titans like Susquehanna and Nexus Venture Partners. That is a smaller team than most single client accounts at an Indian IT services firm. For 20 years, Indian tech scaled the same way. A client had a problem We staffed people against it because more scope meant more headcount. That math worked when execution was the bottleneck. Runable stands out because it is different. > 1 agent owns the outcome end to end, building product, then running growth on top of it. > Their team is at 15 because the work that needed 5 departments now needs maybe 5 prompts and one person watching the output. You can see the same shift inside GCCs right now. Nasscom counted over 420 India-based GCCs whose parent companies make under $100 million in revenue, small teams, high leverage, built around ownership instead of scale. Runable is that same logic, built as a product instead of a captive centre. I believe engineers should train for exactly this world and become people who own an outcome, not people who wait to be staffed onto one. Because companies that used to need 50 people before to hit this scale now only need 15. That is not a one-off. That is where hiring and the future of work in India is headed. Are you prepared for the new era?
-
Raghav Gupta shared thisJio just removed the biggest obstacle tier-3 India had for staying out of the AI race and it’s the most exciting launch ever. Reliance Jio just expanded JioPC to anyone with an internet connection, no matter the provider. → JioPC streams a full virtual computer from Jio's cloud to whatever device you already own. Plans go up to 8 virtual CPUs, 16GB RAM, and 1TB storage. → Jio says even an 8-year-old computer can now run modern AI applications without any hardware upgrade. → Pricing starts at ₹1,000 for two months, going up to ₹5,000 for a year at the higher configuration. Here's why this matters more than it sounds. The AI wave so far has helped people who could afford a decent laptop. > A student in Bengaluru with a 2-year-old machine can experiment with AI tools. > A student in a tier-3 town running an 8-year-old desktop can't because of their hardware. That's the same wall Indians keep hitting constantly: the access gap. → India has over 65 million PCs in use today, and most people replace them only once every 5-6 years, far slower in smaller towns than in metros. → JioPC attempts to fix it by making the hardware irrelevant. If Jio's servers do the heavy computing then even a 8-year-old with a desktop will be 10x more capable to leverage AI. If this works the way Jio is betting it will, the next wave of AI builders in India will come from wherever someone has ₹1,000 and a Jio connection. In light of JioPC, do you think India's next AI leap depend on better hardware, or not?
-
Raghav Gupta reposted thisRaghav Gupta reposted thisThe biggest Forward Deployed Engineer talent gap isn't in coding. As enterprises move AI from experimentation to production, the capabilities they need from engineering talent are changing. AIM Research's latest study finds that the widest gap is in customer-facing and consulting capabilities: 88% employer demand against 55% available talent, a 33-point gap. By comparison, the gap in production engineering is just 5 points. Employers increasingly want FDE talent that combines technical depth with business understanding, domain expertise, customer engagement, and end-to-end deployment ownership. As Sindhu Gangadharan, MD, SAP Labs India and President, Indo-German Chamber of Commerce, notes in the report: “The future of enterprise AI will not be defined by models alone, but by the ability to translate AI into trusted, secure, and business-specific outcomes.” As enterprise AI scales, the engineers who can connect technology, customer context, and business outcomes will increasingly shape the FDE role. Explore more insights in The Forward Deployed Engineer Talent Landscape in India, by AIM Research in collaboration with FDE Academy. https://lnkd.in/gmTk9tSU #AIMResearch #ForwardDeployedEngineer #FDE #EnterpriseAI #GenAI #AITalent #AIEngineering #ArtificialIntelligence #FutureOfWork #TalentStrategy
-
Raghav Gupta shared thisOur Forward Deployed Engineer research report with AIM is officially live. The report has been built by running a dedicated professional survey and an employer survey, and speaking directly to leaders at UiPath, SAP Labs India, Google Cloud, PwC, LatentView Analytics, CoRover and Agilisium Consulting, people who are hiring for and building this capability right now. Here's what the data shows. → Field-deployed AI builders face 95% employer demand against just 45% available talent, the widest role-level gap in the study at 50 percentage points. → Looking at specific capabilities rather than roles, customer-facing and consulting skills show 88% demand against 55% supply, a 33-point gap of their own. → 70% of India's FDE talent has 8 years of experience or less. Only 6% has crossed 15 years, this is still a young profession here. → Bengaluru holds 34% of India's FDE talent, more than Delhi NCR, Hyderabad and Pune combined. → Field-deployed AI builders also command the highest pay across every experience band, from ₹32 lakh at 0-3 years to ₹155 lakh above 15 years. → Tech and BFSI lead adoption at 68% and 60%, but healthcare, manufacturing and retail are catching up faster than we expected. As Ankush Sabharwal, Founder of CoRover, put it in the report: "The market has moved past hiring for AI literacy and is now hiring for AI accountability." The report also breaks the role into four families, transformation and risk, field-deployed builders, enterprise solution specialists, and MLOps professionals, since fragmented job titles have made this talent nearly impossible to benchmark until now. Full report is live. Link in comments.
-
Raghav Gupta liked thisThe FDE community is growing, and so is the conversation around what it takes to build AI that works in the real world. Great to see the Delhi community coming together to exchange ideas on Agentic AI, LLM solutions, and AI workflows. Thank you, Aksh, for being part of the conversation. 🙌Raghav Gupta liked thisHad a great catchup at FDE delhi meetup - connectivity with so many people from different backgrounds and seeing their insights on FDE, Agentic AI, LLM solutions shaping the future of tech Excited to be part of this journey of growing with industries great minds and turning AI into scalable and production ready workflows that solve enterprise problems #fde #AI #AgenticAI #AIEngineering
-
Raghav Gupta liked thisAI is moving from experimentation to execution and that is changing how enterprises think about engineering talent. At AIM Research, in collaboration with FDE Academy, we recently published our latest report on Forward Deployed Engineers (FDEs), exploring how this emerging role is bridging the gap between AI capabilities and real-world enterprise deployment. The report looks at the evolving FDE model, where FDEs fit within enterprise AI teams, and what their rise means for talent, operating models, and AI implementation. A useful read for CIOs, CTOs, AI leaders and technology teams navigating the journey from AI pilots to production-scale impact. Futurense Technologies Raghav Gupta Akshara Menon Swetha Suvarna Navaneeth Ramesh Abhijeet Adhikari Yashashree Vivarekar Abhishek Padhy Rohan S Vaishnavi PriyadarshiniRaghav Gupta liked thisAIM Research and FDE Academy’s latest report on India’s Forward Deployed Engineer talent market highlights a sharp hiring mismatch. Employer demand for field-deployed AI builders stands at 95%, while available talent is just 45%, creating a 50-percentage-point gap, the widest role-level shortage identified in the study. The report says employers are struggling to find professionals who combine deep technical expertise with strong customer and stakeholder capabilities. It also notes continued retention pressure from remote opportunities, start-up premiums and entrepreneurial alternatives as organisations compete for production-ready AI deployment talent across India right now. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/egc7DxzF #ArtificialIntelligence #AITalent #AIJobs #IndiaAI #TechJobs
-
Raghav Gupta liked thisRaghav Gupta liked thisAIM Research and FDE Academy’s latest report on India’s Forward Deployed Engineer talent market highlights a sharp hiring mismatch. Employer demand for field-deployed AI builders stands at 95%, while available talent is just 45%, creating a 50-percentage-point gap, the widest role-level shortage identified in the study. The report says employers are struggling to find professionals who combine deep technical expertise with strong customer and stakeholder capabilities. It also notes continued retention pressure from remote opportunities, start-up premiums and entrepreneurial alternatives as organisations compete for production-ready AI deployment talent across India right now. Read the full story here: https://lnkd.in/egc7DxzF #ArtificialIntelligence #AITalent #AIJobs #IndiaAI #TechJobs
-
Raghav Gupta liked thisRaghav Gupta liked thisThe FDE role is much more than coding at a customer site. It moves through three stages: audit, evals, and deployment. First, understand how teams work and identify where AI can create value. Then, rigorously test whether the solution works. Finally, integrate it with existing systems without disrupting the infrastructure the customer already relies on. . . . . #forwarddeployedengineer #fde #coding #AI #Techjobs #AIJobs #AIML #Engineering
-
Raghav Gupta liked thisRaghav Gupta liked thisWe are delighted to welcome Rajesh Dangi to the Futurense Leadership Council. Rajesh brings over three decades of experience as a technology leader and mentor, with expertise spanning cloud and data centre infrastructure, emerging technologies, AI/ML, information security, and digital transformation. Throughout his journey, he has worked across evolving technology landscapes, gaining valuable perspectives on how emerging technologies are shaping businesses, careers, and the future of work. As part of the Futurense Leadership Council, Rajesh will bring this wealth of industry experience closer to our learners, offering valuable perspectives on technology careers, emerging opportunities, and the skills needed to navigate a rapidly evolving digital landscape. We look forward to our learners gaining insights from his experience, perspectives, and leadership journey as they prepare to build careers in technology. Welcome to the Futurense Leadership Council, Rajesh. #futurense #futurensetech #futurenseleadershipcouncil #ai #cloudcomputing #digitaltransformation
Experience
-
180 Degrees Consulting
-
Modern School, Barakhamba Road
-
House Captain, Patel House
Modern School, Barakhamba Road
-
President, Commerce Society
Modern School, Barakhamba Road
-
Education
-
Emory University
Finance
-
Activities and Societies: Enactus Emory, Goizueta Marketing Club, and 180 Degrees Consulting
-
Modern School, Barakhamba Road
Mathematics, English, Business Studies, Economics, Accounts
-
Activities and Societies: President, Commerce Society; House Captain, Patel House; Creative Head, Editorial Board; Core Team Member, Community Development Leadership Summit
-
Brown University
Introduction To Game Theory, Brown University Pre College Economics Grade A
-
An Introduction to Game Theory is a course that introduces students with decision-making theories and related laboratory experiments in economics.
Course description and evaluation- (https://goo.gl/1iDQrf)
Volunteer Experience
-
National Committee Member
Confederation of Indian Industry
- Present 3 months
Education
Part of the CII National Committee on Industry Academia Partnerships focused on increasing %age of GDP on R&D via academia and private industry collaboration.
-
Fundraiser and Volunteer
Jagriti Enterprise Centre-Purvanchal
- Present 9 years 1 month
Economic Empowerment
- Raised 25 lakh INR ($40,000) for the development of the skill development centre
- Helped design the digital curriculum
- Ensured the proper usage of funds for the infrastructure development
- (http://jagritisocietyindia.org/volunteer/) -
Leader
Financial Literacy Project
- 6 months
Economic Empowerment
- Helped 25 low income craftsman to open bank accounts
- Taught them to trade in the Indian stock market with the help of Digital India scheme of the government
Skills
Publications
-
Future of Bitcoins - A study
Journal of Internet Banking and Commerce
See publicationEvaluated the future of bitcoin as a currency, commodity & an asset
Honors & Awards
-
Dean’s List
Emory University
Fall 2019
-
1st Position, Young Entrepreneurs Conference
The Doon School, Dehradun
- Lead the board room simulation on merger negotiations between Luxottica and Essilor
- Conceptualized the business and financial rational of the proposed merger
- Successfully negotiated an equal shareholding deal for Essilor in the merger -
Best Entrepreneur Runners Up, Dalal Street
La Martinere For Boys, Kolkata
- Won events ranging from business pitch to crisis management
- 2nd position overall for Consistent performance in this 2 daylong event (out of 350 participants)
-
1st Position, Product Launch
Delhi Public School, Vasant Kunj
- Developed a start-up idea related to the Cosmetic Industry
- Researched Industry reports and presented a plan to prove its financial feasibility
- Created and enacted an advertisement for the product
-
2nd Position, Real Estate Mania (Stock Trading)
Cambridge Foundation School
- Bought and sold properties on the basis of their features and the speculations surrounding them
- Pitched the properties to investors for funding
-
Top 30 In Asia (in terms of Portfolio Value), Team leader
KWHS Wharton Stock Trading
- Did active trading on a stock market simulator for 2 months
- Created 2 reports of our investments and strategies
-
1st position (Shark Tank), 2nd position (Total Monetary Control), 3rd position (Mock Stock), Dalal Street
La Martinere For Boys, Kolkata
- Pitched a business idea on IOT(Internet Of Things) before 1000 plus students
- Formulated an effective expansion strategy for an existing enterprise (INTEX TECHNOLOGY)
- Earned the 2nd highest returns in the mock stock market
-
2nd Position, Shark Tank
Sanskriti School, Delhi
- Created a product and pitched it in front of judges (actual investors)
- Made a prototype of the product, which was a Nasal Filter
Languages
-
English
Full professional proficiency
-
Hindi
Full professional proficiency
-
Sanskrit
Elementary proficiency
Recommendations received
-
LinkedIn User
2 people have recommended Raghav
Join now to viewOther similar profiles
Explore more posts
Explore collaborative articles
We’re unlocking community knowledge in a new way. Experts add insights directly into each article, started with the help of AI.
Explore MoreOthers named Raghav Gupta
1983 others named Raghav Gupta are on LinkedIn
See others named Raghav Gupta