Judging Panel
Industry leaders with rich experience in electronics, product engineering, and robotics systems. They bring hands-on expertise to evaluate innovation, creativity, and real-world impact. As judges, they aim to inspire and mentor the next generation of hardware innovators.
Aryan Yadav​
Position: Co-founder & CTO at NeoSapien
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aryanyadav1/
Aryan Yadav is the Co-founder and CTO of NeoSapien, a Bengaluru-based startup building India's first AI-native wearable (Neo 1) — an emotion-aware pendant that acts as a "second brain" by capturing conversations, transcribing meetings, and providing summaries across 100+ languages. He is an IIT Madras alumnus (dual degree in Engineering Design) and previously worked as an AI Researcher at Siemens Technology India (building self-optimizing neural architectures for brain-tumor segmentation), Product Manager at ICICI Bank, and Quant Researcher at WorldQuant. He also co-founded SqFt 51, a generative AI SaaS for architects. NeoSapien raised $2M+ in seed funding from Merak Ventures and others, and appeared on Shark Tank India Season 4. Forbes named him to its 30 Under 30 Asia 2026 list in the AI category. His expertise spans AI/ML, wearable hardware, embedded systems, and cognitive architectures.
Ishaan Bansal​
Position: Founder at EndlessRiver | Ex-CTO at Bolt.Earth
LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ishaanbansal
Ishaan Bansal is the Founder of EndlessRiver, where he is working on the next AI interface. He previously served as Chief Technology Officer at Bolt.Earth, India's largest EV charging infrastructure provider (31,000+ charging points nationwide), where he led technology strategy and engineering. During his tenure, Bolt.Earth achieved ARAI certification for its Level 1 and 2 EV chargers. He also created Optimaiz, an LLM observability platform that tracks prompts, costs, errors, PII, and compliance, supporting OpenAI, LangChain, Anthropic, Gemini, and other AI providers. With 13+ years of software engineering experience, he has held roles at Dell EMC, EMC Software and Services, and Supertext, with expertise in product development, web development, and machine learning. He is based in Bangalore.
Ankit Acharya​
Position: Co-founder & CEO at Cautio
LinkedIn Profile: https://in.linkedin.com/in/ankitacharya
Ankit Acharya is the Co-founder and CEO of Cautio, a Bengaluru-based visual telematics and AI-powered road safety startup founded in 2023. Cautio provides AI-powered dashcams and a fleet intelligence platform with features including driver fatigue detection, distraction alerts, ADAS, and real-time incident monitoring. The startup serves clients such as redBus, Namma Yatri, Euro Cars, Shoffr, and Cityflo across 45+ cities, with over 3,000 dashcams deployed and 4.5+ crore video kilometers logged. Cautio has raised approximately $3.6M+ in seed funding from Antler India, 8i Ventures, AU Small Finance Bank, and Venture Catalysts. Prior to Cautio, Ankit spent seven years in India's mobility sector, holding leadership roles at Namma Yatri (marketing lead), Bounce Infinity, and Backstage Army, and earlier communications roles at JUSPAY and Bounce. He holds a B.F.Tech in Apparel Production Technology from NIFT Bangalore and an Executive Program in Sales & Marketing from IIM Calcutta.