Director, AI & ML Former VP Engineering 2× Co-Founder

Build the teams.
Ship the AI.
Scale the impact.

I’m Ashwin. I turn complex technology into products people use, and build the teams that take them further.

Currently Director of AI and Machine Learning at Demandbase. Leading enterprise AI, intelligent platforms, and globally distributed engineering teams.

Explore my work
Engineer by training.Builder by instinct.
Ashwin Kulkarni at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco
Ashwin KulkarniBengaluru, India

Enterprise scale.
Founder energy.

From the first prototype to the platforms behind it all.A little context
18+

Years across engineering,
AI & entrepreneurship

5–7

Global teams led,
with two direct-report managers

$25M+

Annual revenue supported
by AI / ML capabilities

2×

Co-founder. From an idea
to products in people’s hands.

Built & led atdemandbase®EMBIBEFundsCornergathr.501 LABS

How I think about AI systems

Context is the foundation.
Outcomes are the goal.

Connect the right knowledge, intent, and constraints. Give agents the context to make useful decisions, then turn those decisions into action.

Context-driven intelligenceUnderstand Reason Act Learn
01 / Ground

Rich context.

Start with what matters.

  • Enterprise knowledge
  • Goals & intent
  • Memory & history
  • Rules & permissions
02 / Reason A brain with connected neural pathways, grounded in incoming context

Connected intelligence.

Understand. Reason. Decide.

03 / Orchestrate

Purposeful agents.

The right role. The right tools.

  • ResearchFind what’s relevant
  • PlanChoose the next step
  • ActPut decisions to work
04 / Deliver

Real-world
outcomes.

  • Relevant answers
  • Useful actions
  • Measurable value
Every outcome is new context. Evaluation and human feedback improve the next decision.

01 / Selected work

Complex challenges.
Meaningful outcomes.

My work sits where AI, engineering, and product meet. A few platforms I’ve helped shape, build, and scale.

Demandbase / Agentic AI

From intelligence
to action.

I lead Agentbase R&D and application development: connected AI agents that help B2B teams work with their data and act on it.

My scope: technical direction, multi-agent orchestration, retrieval, and engineering delivery.

Agentic AIMCP & A2AAI platform strategy
Explore Agentbase
Demandbase / Conversational AI02

DB AI Chat

A conversational experience across the Demandbase suite. Bringing enterprise data, retrieval, and context together so people can ask better questions and get useful answers.

Ownership

AI application development, orchestration, and the context layer across thousands of tables and columns.

Explore Demandbase
Demandbase / Data intelligence03

Signals into intelligence.

I direct Technographics: the pipelines, models, and quality workflows that turn raw technology signals into useful B2B account intelligence.

136M+Domains tracked
47K+Technologies covered

Products contributing an additional $10M+ in annual revenue.

Explore Technographics
Earlier chapters

Embibe — Search V2 and an AI platform hosting 50+ production applications.

FundsCorner — Engineering and automation supporting ~20× growth and a ~₹90 crore loan book.

02 / Experience

Technical depth.
A wider lens.

I’ve been the engineer writing the first lines, the founder finding the market, and the leader scaling teams across the US, India, and Russia.

Today, I connect AI strategy to architecture, product roadmaps, applied R&D, and the people who make it happen.

Demandbase

2021 — Present

Director of AI and Machine Learning

January 2026 — Present

Lead 5–7 teams across AI, ML, software, and data engineering, with two managers reporting directly. Own strategy and delivery across Agentbase, DB AI Chat, and Technographics.

Growth at Demandbase

Senior Data Science ManagerJanuary 2023 — December 2025Set technical direction and product roadmaps; expanded global engineering capacity and technology-signal detection.

Principal Data ScientistOctober 2021 — January 2023Built ML and semantic systems for account intelligence and data quality.

Embibe (Reliance Jio)

2019 — 2021

Lead Data Scientist, AI Platform & Search

Re-architected search, launched Search V2, and built an internal platform hosting 50+ data science applications in production.

FundsCorner

2017 — 2019

Vice President of Engineering

Led product, technology, and automation. Delivered applied ML and computer vision for credit scoring, KYC, underwriting, and payments.

Gathr & 501 Labs

2011 — 2017

Co-Founder / Engineering & Product

Built a social discovery platform and a product studio. Shipped across mobile, backend, and web, from the first prototype to real users.

The founder chapter

Tech Mahindra

2007 — 2011

Software Engineer, Java

Enterprise systems for British Telecommunications. A foundation in reliability, software engineering, and global delivery.

03 / The founder chapter

Before the scale,
there was a spark.

Co-founding Gathr and 501 Labs taught me to own the whole problem: the product, the engineering, and the reason anyone would use it.

Co-founder & Tech Lead / 2015–2017

gathr.

Less planning.
More doing things together.

A social discovery app for spontaneous, nearby activities. Built from concept to launch across backend, web, and native Android.

2,500+users & national press coverage
Inside Gathr
An idea.
A product.
Real people. Gathr app interest selection screen Gathr app nearby activities feed
Product & Engineering / Music & community

Jaminn.

Find your people.
Make some music.

Connecting musicians by instrument, genre, and skill. Discover players nearby, plan a session, and take the conversation into the app.

Musician discoverySession planningMessaging
Inside Jaminn
Find a rhythm.
Find your
people. Jaminn feed showing jam sessions and collaborators Jaminn session form with genres, collaborators, venue, time, and date
Product development / Civic technology

Spothole.

Small reports.
A better picture of the city.

A crowdsourced approach to civic infrastructure. Bringing location, reporting, and game mechanics together to make participation more rewarding.

Crowdsourced reportsGeospatial dataGamification
Inside Spothole
From the product archive Spothole product screens showing a citizen profile, ward statistics, notifications, and newsfeed Civic participation, reimagined.
Product & Engineering / Social gaming

FrenzyQ.

Answer the question.
Then write the next one.

A multiplayer quiz powered by its players. Correct answers unlock the chance to set the next question, turning participation into the game itself.

Player-created questionsMultiplayerLeaderboards
Inside FrenzyQ
From the product archive FrenzyQ gameplay screens showing a multiple-choice question, upcoming levels, and other players A game that grows with its players.
Gathr featured inThe HinduThe Economic TimesDeccan HeraldThe New Indian Express

04 / How I think

The work behind
the work.

The questions I bring to AI platforms, engineering teams, and the next product.

01

Start with the outcome.

The interesting question is what gets better for the customer. Let that shape the model, the architecture, and the roadmap.

02

Trust is engineered.

Retrieval, evaluation, observability, and human judgment are part of the product. An intelligent system needs a way to know when it’s wrong.

03

Build teams that build.

Give people clear ownership, develop technical leaders, and stay close enough to the work to make the difficult trade-offs together.

05 / Expertise & foundations

Strategy to systems.
And everything between.

01 / Leadership

People & product

AI / ML strategy · Applied R&D · Engineering management · Product roadmaps · Global team leadership · Hiring & manager development · Cross-functional execution · Zero-to-one development

02 / Applied intelligence

AI & machine learning

Generative AI · Agentic systems · Multi-agent orchestration · Large language models (LLMs) · Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) · NLP · Semantic search & ranking · Computer vision · Human-in-the-loop workflows

03 / Engineering

Platforms & infrastructure

Python · Go · Java · PyTorch · TensorFlow · FastAPI · Flask · PostgreSQL · MongoDB · Neo4j · Kafka · AWS · Azure · Google Cloud

Always learning
Master’s in Data ScienceAI & Machine Learning · Deakin University
Post Graduate Program in AI & MLUniversity of Texas at Austin
B.E. in Computer ScienceDayananda Sagar College of Engineering

Let’s build what’s next

Bengaluru, India · A global perspective

Big ambition.
Good conversation.

Exploring Senior Director opportunities across AI, machine learning, and engineering. If you’re building an ambitious team or a product that matters, I’d love to connect.

ashwin.kulkarni.ai@gmail.com
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