From Professional Cricket to AI Entrepreneurship: Sauvik Banerjjee's Journey from Ranji Trophy to NASDAQ

Opening the batting for India in Test cricket is the hardest job in the sport—you face the world's best bowlers with a brand new ball, every delivery swinging unpredictably, and the entire team's innings depending on your survival. Sauvik Banerjjee understands this pressure intimately. As a former Ranji Trophy cricketer who played alongside legends like Saurav Ganguly and Syed Saba Karim, he learned lessons about resilience, focus, and performing under ambiguity that would later define his entrepreneurial journey.

But Banerjjee's story isn't just about sports. It's about a remarkable transition from the cricket field to the cutting edge of artificial intelligence. Today, he stands at the helm of multiple AI ventures—Rezolve AI (the first gen AI company listed on NASDAQ in August 2024), Sirrus.ai (transforming real estate with AI), and Ziki (reimagining community platforms for urban India). His journey spans professional cricket, pioneering online music platforms, building digital capabilities for Accenture, leading technology at SAP, and architecting Tata Group's consumer platforms.

The common thread: embracing ambiguity, backing strong technology, and understanding that India's strength lies in being the smartest follower who becomes the strongest leader.

The Cricketing Foundation: Building Character Under Pressure

Banerjjee's cricketing credentials are impressive by any standard. He played at serious levels—U-16 Bengal, U-19 Bengal, India National Camp, and four years of Ranji Trophy for Bengal alongside legends who would define Indian cricket for decades.

"I played for under 16 Bengal, U-19 Bengal, was part of India National Camp, then went on to play Ranji Trophy for four years in Bengal with great minds and likes of Saurav Ganguly and Syed Saba Karim and Arun Lal," Banerjjee recalls. The experience taught him invaluable lessons about performing under pressure, handling failure, and the importance of technical fundamentals.

Even during his cricketing days, technology was making its way into his life. "While playing cricket, I used to go to England during the summer monsoon times because we never had 365 days of cricket," he explains. These international exposures, combined with coming from an academic family (his father was a senior academic and scientist, founder of multiple science colleges), set the stage for his eventual transition into technology.

The Technology Transition: From Pitch to Platform

The late 1990s marked computing's immersion into Banerjjee's life, leading to a "very different and interesting journey." His first venture was an online music platform—which today stands as one of the biggest in the world. But beyond entrepreneurship, he was pursuing research doctorates in physical robotics and natural language processing with core neural networks about 24 years back from the University of Sunderland and Durham in the UK.

This was pioneering work. "Twenty-four years back, not many people are there" in what we now call AI. Banerjjee was building neural network systems before they became buzzwords, working on natural language processing and physical robotics in the northeast of England while most of the world was just discovering the internet.

The Corporate Journey: Building Digital Giants

Before his current ventures, Banerjjee spent years building technology capabilities for some of the world's largest companies. His corporate reads like a who's who of global technology:

Early Ventures: Baroda scanning ventures, one of his youngest pioneering startups

Emphasis: Worked across Europe in consumer technology

Accenture Digital: One of the first 2-3 members who founded Accenture Digital

SAP: Built leadership in the enterprise software giant

Tata Group: Returned to India to build entire Google's consumer-facing platforms, Tata Click, and its ecosystem (Tata Digital, Tata Fintech, Tata Neu). He was part of the Tata Group for six years during the landmark acquisitions of BigBasket, 1mg, and building Chroma and other digital properties.

The Current Ventures: Three AI Companies, One Vision

Banerjjee currently runs three companies simultaneously, each solving distinct problems with AI:

1. Rezolve AI: Revolutionizing E-Commerce with Conversational AI

Rezolve AI started with Daniel Wagner, someone Banerjjee had worked with building Venda and NetSuite back in the day. The original thought was building a geolocation e-commerce platform for Europe and the US.

"Geolocation e-commerce had become pretty matured, internet accessibility with 4G and 5G was pretty decent in Europe having lower amount of consumers and the bandwidth is completely available," Banerjjee explains. The opportunity was in solving the problem of store-based models requiring people to physically move in, creating an offline-online play.

The platform uses small and large language models on dedicated product catalogs (not fragments of data across the internet). For example, if you have Best Buy's catalog of all electronic items with their SKUs and attributes, a conversational AI on this structured catalog provides far more accurate responses—like a digital companion or exactly like a store assistant.

The Achievement: Rezolve AI championed this space and was listed on NASDAQ in August 2024 as the first gen AI company. "The journey of building a public markets company as a gen AI company has started," Banerjjee notes proudly.

2. Sirrus.ai: Transforming Real Estate with AI

Sirrus.ai (under TCG Group leadership where Banerjjee is the founding leader) solves the entire home buyer's journey for real estate developers—from understanding lead quality and intelligence to actually taking the home buyer from prospect to possession, including pre-possission and post-possession settlement.

"It's not a listing platform," Banerjjee clarifies. "It's a B2B SaaS prospect and customer experience platform for a category A or category B real estate developer."

3. Ziki: Building Communities, Not Just Connections

Ziki addresses a fundamental gap in urban Indian living: while societies have WhatsApp and Facebook groups, people rarely meet in person despite living in the same buildings.

"If me and you are in a Facebook group or a WhatsApp group, even living in the same society, how many times do we meet? Never," Banerjjee observes. "We meet during Ganesh Chaturthi and Diwali, and when our kids are performing, at least I go and say hi, hello and have a jalebi and a samosa. That's it."

Ziki focuses on shared interests, shared values, and shared experiences—matching people who love trekking, wealth management discussions, studying abroad, travel clubs, hiking, biking, or any other passion. The platform monetizes through community commerce while solving the fundamental human need for connection in urban environments.

Understanding the AI Landscape: Beyond Generative Hype

Banerjjee offers a nuanced view of AI that goes beyond the generative AI hype. "GenAI is probably 8-10% of the overall AI play," he explains. The reason it has become so prominent is that "anybody and everybody is using GenAI, that's why the buzz is higher. It has become a common man tool across the planet."

"GenAI can scavenge and mine the internet, provide based on prompt, give you an image, textual response, create a video, or create an amalgamation of all three," Banerjjee explains. "But the backbone behind GenAI is still learning models based on supervised and unsupervised learning."

India's AI Future: The Smartest Follower Strategy

Banerjjee has a distinct perspective on India's role in the global AI landscape. "America and Western Europe, especially UK and China, will have their own evolution," he notes. "One language, one type of consumption, one type of food palette, one type of consuming patterns."

But India is different. "India's got multiple languages, multiple cultures, multiple food patterns, multiple lifestyles. So the AI learning of India, including GenAI, would be very disruptive and very matured."

He points to India's success in digital public infrastructure: "You've seen the Bharat Stack evolution—processing of transactions takes hours, few hundreds? We process billions of transactions thanks to UPI. You've seen the GST platform, you've seen Aadhaar across 100 crore people. India's championing the tech stack in a very different way."

According to Banerjjee, India doesn't need to pioneer everything. "AI you don't need to pioneer because Americans have pioneered from 60 years back. AI has been there for 60 years. GenAI—India is still doing decent. India's pioneering will happen in overall Cloud play, overall EV play, BCI (Brain Computing Interface) play."

The Entrepreneur's Mindset: Lessons from 25 Years

Banerjjee's 25-year career offers invaluable insights for entrepreneurs:

On Technology as a Horizontal: "Technology allows you to learn about very many industries. When I go from music to e-commerce in retail to building something for real estate, technology and AI remain a horizontal. It's an added advantage to be honest."

On Embracing Ambiguity: "People like me, it's the ambiguity which I like. I have a lot of risk appetite because I spend a lot of time committing. I spend a lot of time in researching whether this business is worth my time, money, and effort."

On Idea Validation: "I keep questioning the idea, keep figuring out the business model, keep figuring out how quickly you start making money. Not that you'll be depending on funding. I never had funding for my first two entrepreneurships—we made it profitable."

On Adoption Risk: "The difficult times is whether it will get adopted or not, and have you got the right people. Business is nothing without good people."

On Work-Life Harmony: "There's no work-life balance, but there's tremendous work-life harmony. I work very many flexi hours. Entrepreneurship is 24/7 if you want to make it work. It's not about stamping your ID card at 9:43 and getting out at 5:14."

The Reality of Entrepreneurship: Beyond the Glamour

Banerjjee offers a reality check for young entrepreneurs drawn to the glamour of startup life. "You've probably practiced 10,000 balls to practice your forward defense, and you've got only 100 test matches. You've probably practiced about 10 lakh balls. You just see the output of an entrepreneur on a magazine or the car he's driving or she's driving."

The harsh reality: "People who have made it is probably five in 500, and that's the ratio is going to be."

"Entrepreneurship goes through a journey where the world of making money and taking money from an investor and exiting is gone. You have to build profitable businesses," Banerjjee emphasizes. "Every large business group focuses on profitability. You have to commit 2-3-4-5 years. Entrepreneurship doesn't happen in one year sitting in front of your laptop."

On Product Excellence: "It has to be something stunning because in the world today we've got so many options. It's not easy. Money is an output and not everybody is becoming billion dollar people."

The Most Important Lesson: "Enjoy the journey. Extreme gruelling, extremely happy, extremely fun, and extremely ambiguous. You need to figure out what's not working, figure out what's working, and pivot. Over-index adoption."

Key Takeaways

Sauvik Banerjjee's journey from the cricket pitch to the forefront of AI innovation offers crucial insights:

For Aspiring Entrepreneurs: Focus on profitability from day one. Question your idea relentlessly for 1-1.5 years before committing 2-5 years. Build something stunning that people actually adopt. Don't depend on funding—make your business profitable.

For Tech Builders: Technology is a horizontal that works across industries. Use this advantage to learn and solve problems in different sectors. AI has multiple pillars beyond GenAI—understand the full landscape.

For India's AI Community: Don't worry about being first. Be the smartest follower who studies everyone else and then builds superior implementations. India's strength is observational learning applied at scale with diverse data.

For Everyone: Entrepreneurship is not about glamour—it's about building sustainable businesses that create real value. The journey includes extreme ambiguity, continuous learning, and work-life harmony (not balance). But for those who embrace it, the satisfaction of building is unmatched.

About the Guest

Sauvik Banerjjee is a former professional cricketer turned technology entrepreneur with 25+ years of experience building internet platforms and AI businesses. As Chief Digital Officer & Global President at Rezolve AI (NASDAQ-listed August 2024), he leads conversational AI innovation for e-commerce. He is also the Founder & CEO of Sirrus.ai, a B2B SaaS platform transforming real estate with AI, and founder of Ziki, a community platform for urban India.

His cricketing career includes playing U-16 and U-19 for Bengal, participating in India National Camp, and four years of Ranji Trophy alongside legends like Saurav Ganguly. He trained at MRF Academy before transitioning to technology.

Banerjjee's corporate leadership roles include founding Accenture Digital, building digital capabilities at SAP, and architecting Tata Group's consumer platforms (Tata Digital, Tata Click, Tata Fintech, Tata Neu) during landmark acquisitions of BigBasket and 1mg.

He holds research doctorates in physical robotics and natural language processing using neural networks from the University of Sunderland and Durham, UK. As one of the early pioneers in AI (24 years ago), he brings unique perspective on how artificial intelligence will transform industries, India's role in the global AI landscape, and what it takes to build sustainable businesses in an age of technological disruption.