Subtl.ai: Vishnu Ramesh on Building Cognitive Bots for Enterprise Knowledge
In the modern workplace, we are drowning in documents. From exhaustive policy manuals to complex machinery guides, the sheer volume of unstructured data—PDFs, emails, and text files—has outpaced human capacity to process it. Vishnu Ramesh, Co-founder of Subtl.ai, believes we shouldn't have to memorize what's already written. By building cognitive bots that understand context and nuance, Vishnu is turning the static "Ctrl+F" into a dynamic conversation with enterprise knowledge.
Vishnu's journey is a rare example of a "Research-to-Product" success story. A graduate of BITS Hyderabad, he spent his final years interning at IIIT Hyderabad under Professor Manish Shrivastava, a leading expert in Natural Language Processing (NLP). Together, they developed a proof-of-concept that could "read" and understand documents better than any keyword-based search engine. "I was so engrossed in the tech that I didn't even sit for placements or apply for Masters," Vishnu recalls. "I knew this was what I wanted to do."
The Problem with Unstructured Data
Enterprises have mountains of PDFs and emails that are essentially "dead" data because they can't be easily searched for meaning. "Keywords aren't enough," Vishnu explains. "If you ask a contract bot about 'expenses,' it should know that you also mean 'reimbursements.' Our relevance engine understands that these are semantically the same, giving you the exact answer without you having to hunt for the right word."
From the Lab to the Boardroom
Transitioning from a student researcher to a CEO was a steep learning curve. Vishnu joined the Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) program at IIIT Hyderabad, which provided the initial support needed to productize the research. Within six months, Subtl.ai had secured major clients, including a national bank and a defense PSU. "The defense PSU use case was particularly powerful," says Vishnu. "They have complex machinery manuals. We helped their engineers perform repairs and maintenance more productively by giving them smart, instant access to those thousands of pages."
The company's vision is deeply influenced by a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein: "Why do I have to remember something that's already written somewhere?" Vishnu and his team want to empower professionals to spend less time "learning" existing documentation and more time thinking and solving new problems.
The 'Make or Break' Moments
Entrepreneurship isn't all tech breakthroughs and client wins. Vishnu candidly shares the "dark places" of the journey. "About seven months back, we were just three developers and had two major clients coming for different things on the same day—one for an evaluation and one for a demo," he recalls. "I questioned if I was even capable of executing this. I realized the only way through is faith and taking it one day at a time."
This lack of initial experience forced Vishnu to become a master of time management. "This is not a 9-to-5 job. There are days with three hours of sleep and days you can take off on a Wednesday. You have to be able to figure out how to take parallel tracks forward."
Vishnu's Playbook for AI Founders
- Be Honest About Alternatives: Don't say there is no alternative to your product. Search engines, manuals, and human experts are your competitors. Scrutinize your value-add.
- Semantic over Keyword: If you are building in AI, focus on understanding the "intent" of the user rather than just the words they use.
- Be Shameless About Learning: Insecurity about how much you know is an inhibitor. Have the humility to learn from your team, your mentors, and your customers.
- Identify the Make-or-Break: Scrutinize your Product-Market Fit (PMF) relentlessly before scaling. If you don't think it through, it becomes a messy situation very fast.
The Future of Enterprise Knowledge
Looking forward, Subtl.ai is expanding beyond PDFs to ingest emails and other text-based communication through APIs. The goal is to create a unified, context-aware knowledge base for every enterprise. Vishnu believes that technology has finally reached a point where every employee can have a virtual assistant that has "read" everything and is ready to help at a moment's notice.
Subtl.ai at a Glance
- Core Tech: Proprietary in-house relevance engine trained on unstructured text.
- Impact: Reducing manual documentation overhead for banks and defense sectors.
- Heritage: Born out of NLP research at IIIT Hyderabad's Product Labs.
About the Guest
Vishnu Ramesh is the Co-founder of Subtl.ai. A graduate of BITS Hyderabad and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at IIIT Hyderabad, Vishnu is a young leader at the intersection of deep-tech and enterprise software. He is passionate about making information accessible and intuitive, believing that AI's greatest role is to augment human intelligence by removing manual drudgery. Vishnu is a frequent speaker on AI adoption and is committed to building a world-class AI startup from India.
Subtl.ai is a cognitive bot platform that helps enterprises unlock the value of their unstructured data. By using advanced semantic understanding, Subtl.ai enables users to "talk" to their documents, getting precise answers instantly from thousands of pages of complex data, thereby increasing organizational productivity and knowledge sharing.