Kirthiga Reddy says learning key to surviving AI 

By Ritu Jha-

The Indian-origin co-founder of Verix from Virtualness, a GenAI and blockchain platform, says AI will be an enabler for those who upgrade their tech knowledge to enhance their efficiency.

Kirthiga Reddy, the CEO and co-founder of Verix from Virtualness was the first employee of Facebook in India and the managing director for India and South Asia. On the sidelines of the recent IIT Bay Area Leadership Conference, she spoke to indica about her journey, women leaders, and Artificial Intelligence.

Question: How dramatic is the transformation that AI is effecting in the tech world?

Answer: We have all seen a lot of transformation. We have seen these transitions so many times over the decades. When the printing press came out, people burned printing presses because they felt that those were going to spread misinformation at a more rapid pace. That was decades ago. Whenever there’s a new technology, there is fear and it does cause a change of jobs. What can one do to prepare? Learning is going to be the most important superpower that we have. How is it that we stay on top of what is the next generation of technology? How can that be used to solve the real problems? We can’t be resting on what we know, or what positions we have. We have to be out there learning and staying indexed on real problems. There are a lot of problems that still need to be solved. That will use both human intelligence and the technology side of things to come together to solve this.

Q: But will AI take away jobs? 

A: AI will take away jobs but not of those people who know how to use AI. The common adage is your job for sure will be taken away by some other person who knows how to use AI if you don’t also jump in and know how to use AI. There are many jobs that AI might not take away, but people who do know how to use AI will take away jobs from people who don’t know how to use AI.

My first role in Facebook was building global operations where we had to think about fake people, real people, fake news, and real news. I was with Facebook 2010-2016. Then we had less than 100 million people on the Internet in India in 2010 and now we have over 800 million people and it’s about 14 years. I then invested with South Bank vision from 2018 to 2021. In 2022 I started Verix and now we work with Netflix, Stanford, amdocs.com, and the Guinness World Record. Anytime you ask the question is this real? We have an AI-powered blockchain platform that helps you answer questions and helps you authenticate skills, certificates, proof of work, awards, products, and content. Amdocs recently used us to certify skills for their HR professionals that are not easily certifiable and provide them with authenticated proof of their accomplishments that can be globally shared and verified.

Q: You’ve come a long way. Trace your journey back for us. 

A: We started as a B2C platform and our goal at that time was to help create monetization. We had technology like blockchain that, for the first time, helped authenticate a digital asset. Very quickly we saw demand from enterprises. Given what’s happening with Gen AI, fake awards, and diplomas were multiplying and more and more people were demanding proof of accomplishment. We started having enterprises come to us to use our platform for that kind of authentication. A lot of people told us that they were looking for a platform that offered these capabilities. Most platforms were very technical and required the end user to have a lot of knowledge of technology. It is a B2B play now and the users can use it without knowing anything about things like blockchain. They get the authentication, and the verification of documents without needing to know about the technology.

Q: What has been driving this surge in demand for Verix?

A: Two things have happened. Content creation has become easier and there’s the growing issue of deepfakes. We want to make sure that what we are doing here touches lives, and livelihoods and helps the people who have validated credentials shine and weed out imposters.

Q: What challenges did you face while building your enterprise? 

A: We did go from the B2C model to a B2B model and that transition is never easy because we were serving a huge clientele. The transition happened because of the demand that we were seeing from the enterprises and the profit margins are significantly higher in the case of a B2B business. We felt this was the best value addition and an opportunity to build the next transformative company of its time.

Q: What has your experience in India been like? 

A: We do a lot of work with India. And what we find is there’s so much innovation happening. For example, we partnered with Indri, a premium spirits brand in India, they had a limited-edition partnership with Game of Thrones and a hundred thousand limited-edition bottles. Each of their bottles has a QR code that if you scan takes you to our platform to identify it as authentic versus the ones that might not be authentic. We worked with the Mobile Marketing Association there they were doing a landmark report on AI and marketing. Anytime a landmark report comes, everyone says that they have contributed. But the association wanted to recognize the 60 AI experts who did contribute and they gave each one of them a badge of recognition that they could share and keep for their posterity.

Q: Are women progressing in leadership as quickly as you would like? 

A: Look at the single-digit percent even in the United States. The percentage of funding going to women, and the number of female founders in deep tech have stayed at a single-digit percentage. That itself tells you how challenging it is. I do think that the world needs more women leaders and we need women in every aspect, whether it’s government or non-profits. The reason for this low number is largely societal. The mindset is changing, but far too slowly. And I cannot personally wait for a woman president in the United States of America for that to be a role model that drives so much change. I think that’s the role that each of us has to play for the next generation.