Latest news with #RaghavGupta
Hindustan Times
30-07-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
IIT Roorkee, Futurense collaborate to launch India's first full-stack AI certification for modern marketers
Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee is collaborating with Futurense to launch the 'PG Certificate in AI-Enabled Digital Marketing & MarTech'. The latest offering is India's first no-code, full-stack AI certification designed specifically for marketing professionals. IIT Roorkee has collaborated with Futurense to launch 'PG Certificate in AI-Enabled Digital Marketing & MarTech'. The course details are given here. (Image source: Spanning 6 months, the course begins in October 2025, and is aimed at addressing the critical orchestration gap in modern marketing where teams use over 90+ tools but often lack the systems thinking to connect them for real-time performance, a statement informed. Raghav Gupta, the founder and CEO at Futurense highlighted that the PG Certificate in AI-Enabled Digital Marketing & MarTech 'is not just another marketing course with AI added on'. Also read: IIT Kharagpur Director says full-time psychiatrist will be appointed very soon He said, 'It's India's first full-stack AI marketing certification built from the ground up for today's ecosystem, where growth depends on how well you wire content, data, automation, and personalisation together. With IIT Roorkee's academic credibility and Futurense's industry-backed learning model, this program creates marketers who can think like builders and execute like technologists.' Prof. Kaushik Ghosh, the coordinator at IIT Roorkee's Continuing Education Centre (CEC), emphasised that the goal behind the course is to create future-ready professionals by blending academic rigour with practical innovation. Also read: IIT Madras study finds access to non-farm activities, irrigation a major factor to reduce migration among rural families Prof. Ghosh added, 'This program exemplifies that vision. As marketing becomes increasingly driven by AI and real-time orchestration, professionals need more than surface-level tool knowledge; they need a deep, system-level understanding. Through this certification, we're enabling learners to build marketing engines that are intelligent, adaptive, and grounded in real-world applications.' Also read: IIT Indore, Mehta Family Foundation partner to launch 2 academic schools in Sustainability and Biomedical Engineering Explained: A first-of-its-kind program in India Following are some points that make this program a first-of-its-kind in India: The program has been designed for Full-Stack AI Marketing Orchestration The program focuses on from-scratch redesign, with emphasis on wiring CRM, CDP, analytics, automation, and GenAI into one performance engine. Provides hands-on with 30+ Real Tools. Learners learn and build systems with tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Jasper, and Segment to Zapier, HubSpot, Canva AI, GA4, and Looker Studio. Learners are provided live AI Clinics. In addition, the course also offers live weekend classes, with an optional 2-day campus immersion at IIT Roorkee. The ideal participant: Following individuals are ideal participants of this program: Aspiring digital marketers & AI-curious creatives Traditional marketers adapting to the new stack Growth/product managers building lean funnels Founders and solopreneurs automating marketing Consultants, freelancers & career switchers As per the press statement, applicants do not need a coding background. The Futurense Bridge Course ensures everyone gets up to speed with AI workflows, prompt writing, and no-code integration before the main sessions begin. Course details Course begins on: October 11, 2025 Course duration: 6 Months (120+ live hours) Format of course: Weekend Live Online Sessions Campus Immersion: Optional 2-Day at IIT Roorkee Course fee: ₹1.40 Lakhs + GST (Flexible EMIs available) Certificate: Offered from IIT Roorkee For more details, applicants may visit the official website here.
Geek Wire
25-07-2025
- Business
- Geek Wire
Taste test: Robot chef cooks lunch at GeekWire — and leaves us hungry for more work to do
GeekWire's startup coverage documents the Pacific Northwest entrepreneurial scene. Sign up for our weekly startup newsletter , and check out the GeekWire funding tracker and venture capital directory . Posha co-founder and CEO Raghav Gupta with his company's robot chef. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) The joy of cooking may mean different things to different people in the kitchen, whether it stems from the process of actually making a meal or is related more to simply filling your belly. When it comes to the work part of that equation, a robotic countertop device from a startup out of San Francisco skews toward taking full control. It leaves some of the meal prep to human hands, but it takes over the duty of actually mixing, monitoring and cookIng a dish to completion. And while automation may be a celebrated time-saver for lots of people, we were left a bit hungry for the distraction that cooking provides at the end of the day. Posha stopped by GeekWire this week for a lunchtime demo and taste test in which co-founder and CEO Raghav Gupta discussed the inspiration behind his $1,500 high-tech appliance. Previously available only in the Bay Area, Posha will start shipping to customers in Seattle and other West Coast cities this fall. 'Posha is catered toward people who cook regularly, anywhere between two and six times a week,' Gupta said. 'These are people who want to feed their families fresh meals but not want to spend a ton of time in the kitchen.' By Gupta's estimation, a home cook who normally spends an hour a day prepping and cooking a meal can cut that time to 10 minutes with Posha because all they're left to do is select a recipe and assemble ingredients. The robot chef takes care of the rest — adding ingredients to its pot at the correct time, regulating heat, stirring the food. About the size of a large microwave, the device relies on a top-mounted camera above the cooking service and computer vision software that knows what ingredients should be in the dish when and what they should look like as they cook. With spaghetti alfredo with mushrooms selected from Posha's onboard digital library of recipes, we watched Posha's Alberto Frigerio prep a few ingredients — pasta, garlic, butter, milk, cream, olives, parsley, etc. — and place them into containers ringing the machine's induction cooktop. Oil and water were added to compartments at the bottom of the device, and necessary spice capsules were loaded into a pull-out drawer above the pot. All that was left for Frigerio was to hit start. 'As soon as you put these ingredients in, you can go take a shower, you can go for a run, you can take the dog out for a walk, you can go to the gym, come back, and your food will be ready and warm,' Gupta said. Guota is a big believer in maximizing time for busy working families. He believes Posha's ideal customers are dual- income households with or without kids who want to feed fresh meals to their families but struggle to find time every single day to cook. It was a personal problem worth solving when Gupta started Posha in 2017. 'I grew up in a household where love was expressed through home-cooked meals,' he said. 'But I struggled to find the time to cook these things every single day once I moved out of the house. I saw people in my family who ended up sacrificing their professional careers to provide fresh food to their families, and people who had chosen not to eat healthy because their careers were too important.' The Posha robot is not cheap. But Gupta contends it's less costly than dining out regularly and a better investment than home-delivered meal kits from HelloFresh and others. 'I'm betting that people will put in less effort than they do in a meal kit, spend less money than they spend in a meal kit, and get a higher quality output,' he said. Posha can't flip a pancake or a steak, but it can make pastas, stews, stir fries, rice bowls, curries, noodles, egg scrambles, roasted potatoes and more. It can also do complex recipes, like Pad Thai, ramen, paneer, tikka masala, butter chicken and more. The startup has a team of chefs who come up with new recipes, which are modified so they can be cooked by Posha, which has only four ingredient containers and six spice pods. The robot can customize dishes by asking if you want extra salt and so forth. If you leave the kitchen you can track progress with an app that shows a live feed of what's being cooked. A microprocessor running tons of computer vision models on the device makes sure the food is made correctly. Gupta referenced celebrity chef Jamie Oliver's 'one-pan' technique for the spaghetti that Posha whipped up for GeekWire — with pasta that wasn't boiled on the side but rather cooked with the rest of the ingredients. After about a half-hour of cooking we shared a few bites of the alfredo with mushrooms, and Posha passed the robot-made taste test. The cream sauce was nicely seasoned, the pasta was done right, the mushrooms and garlic and olives all tasted great. It wasn't an immensely inspiring dish, but something that satisfied Gupta's intention of providing a solid meal without a lot of effort. I couldn't help but feel a little cheated by the lack of effort it took to create the meal. Part of my appreciation for eating a home-cooked meal comes from the satisfaction in knowing that I made it all happen from start to finish. Chopping ingredients, adding them to containers and then walking away doesn't cut if you're intent on happily stirring and tasting a meal like an accomplished human along the way. My colleague Taylor Soper enjoys cooking, but wouldn't mind letting a robot do the job. His main critique of Posha was that it still left a lot of work to the human — gathering ingredients, chopping veggies, etc. — while taking up substantial space on a countertop. He said he didn't see much difference between Posha and, say, an Instant Pot — a much smaller and cheaper alternative Posha will join a countertop that's becoming increasingly crowded with other 'smart' devices trying to make life simpler in the kitchen. Until now, the use of robot technology is predominantly focused on commercial enterprises where companies such as Seattle-based pizza-machine maker Picnic are focused on using automation to improve workflow and quality. Posha, which employs about 50 people, recently raised an $8 million Series A round led by Accel. The company has raised about $16 million to date. Keep scrolling for more photos from the GeekWire's Posha experience: Cream is added to an ingredient container to be weighed and then added to the Posha robot chef. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper) Spices used in the spaghetti alfredo recipe are shown loaded into the Posha spice rack. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Ingredients and some prep tips displayed on Posha's screen. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper) Pasta is automatically dumped from its recipe container into the Posha pot. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) Posha's robotic arm and spatula stir the ingredients in the spaghetti alfredo dish. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser) The completed Posha dish ready for a taste. (GeekWire Photo / Taylor Soper)
Mint
20-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Founder of Posha, a kitchen robot that cooks meals, got the startup idea from seeing working mothers
Seeing working mothers juggling between children and the kitchen and young professionals surviving on a junk diet prompted entrepreneur Raghav Gupta to build robot chefs to put home cooking on autopilot. Posha, the company he co-founded, makes countertop kitchen robots that cook your meals. It recently raised $8 million in a Series A funding round led by Accel with participation from existing investors such as Xeed Ventures, Waterbridge Ventures, Binny Bansal, the co-founder of Flipkart, and others. 'Seeing working mothers juggling between kids and the kitchen or young professionals surviving on an unhealthy junk diet of takeouts and food delivery led to the idea of a cooking robot,' says Gupta, Co-founder, Posha. Posha, which means nourishing in Sanskrit, can cook one-pot meals from paneer makhani and pad thai to 500 different recipes of various cuisines for up to four people at a time. It has an induction cooktop with a removable pan that comes with a stirrup and three different kinds of spatulas-noodle, curry and a flipping spatula. 'You can search and/or choose a recipe on the Posha screen, put in freshly chopped and other ingredients in the ingredient containers, tap cook and out comes a delicious meal,' says Gupta, while making spaghetti alfredo with mushrooms on the Posha robot. There are different containers for ingredients, including two for oil and water and a spices rack that can hold and add up to six different spices in a recipe. The robot's several sensors, including a camera, allow you to observe the food being cooked from your phone screen via the Posha App. 'New recipes are added weekly and are grouped by time of day and other criteria. The robot is context aware, not just about time for meal suggestions, but also by cuisine or dietary preferences and categories like dessert, pasta, soup, etc. If I cook a lot of Filipino food, it will show me those recipes,' says Gupta. The device that uses computer vision and AI collects intelligence via usage and cooking history. 'It knows what you cook. In my case, it's showing me a lot of vegetarian dishes because I'm a vegetarian. I get suggestions not only for Indian recipes, but also for pastas and mashed potatoes, because those are what I have previously searched and cooked.' Besides searching for a recipe by name, you can also use the robot to search by pantry-meaning if you have mushrooms and peas, the robot will list recipes that you can cook with those ingredients. The listing starts with the ones that you can cook most easily using the fewest ingredients, followed by more options and rising in complexity. .. 'Posha asks me how many people I want to cook for. When I don't want a simplified recipe with fewer optional ingredients, I can uncheck the simplify option and choose to customise to cook to my liking. It also allows me to select the spice levels- for example, hot, medium and less salt and/or oil,' tells Gupta. 'Besides the basics, Posha allows various customisations, for example, you can select if you want the pasta being cooked to be al dente (firm).' Formerly known as Nymble, the current product originally started out as a robotic arm, but the learnings at the Bosch's accelerator programme prompted the founders to change course. They also learned that consumers didn't want something that moved around their kitchen or that would be hard to clean. 'We have been super focused and obsessed with customers from day one. We don't use Freshdesk or Zendesk to chat with them. We have WhatsApp conversations with over 150 of our customers. I moved to the Bay Area in the middle of the pandemic, just to be close to my customers.' 'We're working on an integration where you'll be able to order the groceries automatically. We were in private beta around December last year. Most of our customers are based in the Bay Area,' says Gupta. With AI models more stable and having developed a support infrastructure outside of the Bay Area, they are expanding to other parts of the US. 'We're currently primarily focused on the US market as the problem is also more acute in this part of the world, because cost of services is super expensive. The intention is to continue to make a very lovable product that people continue to use,' says Gupta. Gupta grew up in Jangpura in New Delhi and spent four years in Bangalore from 2017 to 21 before moving to the US. 'We have a few thousand customers on the waitlist and we are sold out for this year. We'll continue to ship to those customers and we are taking new orders on our site,' says Gupta. The robot price was recently dropped from $1,750 to $1,500. Currently, the machine is being manufactured in China, but the founders are looking to diversify their supply chain. 'We have a supply constraint right now and the political situation with tariffs is not helping. We are trying to ship as fast as we can,' Gupta noted.'There is no concrete plan that we can make right now because of the ongoing volatility in the market. Every time you make a plan, the chances are that some bill gets stuck with some country. We are really playing the wait and watch game.' Feedback from customers has also taught Posha founders that the quality of food reigns supreme and convenience cannot replace the taste and quality parameters when you are in the food business. 'Listening to our customer feedback, we have got our recipe ratings up to roughly 4.6— at par with DoorDash. People continue to request for more recipes and a lot of customisation abilities with the recipes,' Gupta pointed out. On the hardware side, the customer requests are not too many as the founders adopted many initial requests like the machine size to fit under kitchen cabinets; machine and motor reliability; a larger pot size for cooking, dishwasher ease and safety of all containers and a design that can handle spillages with ease.
TechCrunch
06-05-2025
- Business
- TechCrunch
Meet Posha, a countertop robot that cooks your meals for you
In 2017, Raghav Gupta set out to solve a personal problem: he wanted easy access to the home-cooked meals he grew up eating without having to spend time cooking or spend money on takeout or hiring a private chef. He turned to robotics, which led him to found the startup Posha. Posha, a former TechCrunch Startup Battlefield company, builds countertop robots that make meals using computer vision. Users scroll through a list of recipes, select the one they want, add the proper amounts of the requested ingredients, and the machine makes the meal from there. The process is designed to be customizable and forgiving, Gupta told TechCrunch, so the machine allows people to make substitutions, and Posha still works if a user doesn't measure their ingredients perfectly. 'It's like a coffee machine for food,' Gupta said. 'So when you want to drink a cup of coffee, you choose a brew of coffee on your coffee machine. You put beans, sugar, and milk in different containers. You tap brew, and out comes a cup of coffee. Posha does something similar, but for food.' A coffee machine is a good, but not perfect, comparison to Posha, as Posha requires a bit more labor than a coffee maker. While Posha does a substantial amount of the work by cooking these meals, consumers still play an active role in shopping for ingredients and prepping everything that goes into the device. Chopping, especially, can take up a fair amount of a recipe's cook time. Gupta agreed that some people are just not going to go for a solution that still requires them to do some of the cooking. He said that Posha has found the most success thus far with customers who like to cook two to six times a week anyway, and are looking to lighten the load a few of those evenings. Techcrunch event Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | BOOK NOW 'These people are already spending an hour in the kitchen every single day, deciding what to eat, shopping for ingredients, cooking a meal, [and] cleaning up afterwards,' Gupta said. 'We help them shave off at least at least 70% of this time, so they now end up spending only about 10 to 20 minutes every single day.' Posha, formerly known as Nymble, originally started out as a robotic arm, Gupta said, but the company's time in Bosch's accelerator program prompted them to change course. They learned consumers didn't want something that moved around their kitchen or that would be hard to clean. The company has kept in close contact with its early customers ever since. 'We have been super focused and super obsessed with customers from day one,' Gupta said. 'We don't use Zendesk to chat with them, we have WhatsApp conversations with over 100 of our customers. Most customers know me personally. I moved to the U.S. in the middle of the pandemic, just to be close to my customers.' That system can't scale, but clearly works for Posha for now. Gupta said that, so far, Posha has mainly relied on word-of-mouth marketing for the $1,750 direct-to-consumer countertop device. Posha recently raised an $8 million Series A round led by Accel with participation from existing investors including Xeed Ventures, Waterbridge Ventures, and Binny Bansal, the co-founder of Flipkart, among others. Gupta said that Posha will use the funding to continue to develop the product. In particular, the company wants to add more recipe options and the ability for people to suggest recipe ideas and have generative AI turn those ideas into instructions and add them into the device quickly. The company launched its Posha robots in January 2025 , and has since sold out of its first batch — and is taking pre-orders for its second. 'If you look at your microwave, your dishwasher, your refrigerator, at some point in time, these devices were countertop devices,' Gupta said. 'They became so indispensable over time in consumer homes that builders started installing these devices in your homes. We feel Posha will have the same fate very soon.'
