Our co-founder on
smart homes and AI.
Kanishk Gulati, co-founder of meshams, joined Barkha on episode 7 of Career Talks with Barkha to talk about AI in the home, what a smart home really does, and building a hardware company in Gurugram.
Full episode, 56 minutes. Watch on YouTube →
What the episode covers
- The future of AI in everyday life, and whether parents can use it at home
- Smart home automation explained simply
- Voice assistants vs AI-powered automation
- AI for safety, comfort and saving energy
- Whether smart homes are only for luxury houses, and what one costs in India
- Building a deep-tech startup young, and product design
In his words
"Smart homes have now become quite dumb as well. First there were dumb homes, then smart homes came. Now AI is so woven into our lives, so we are working to integrate the intelligence into smart homes."
"Most of the hardware in India is Chinese white-labelled. That does not necessarily mean it is unsafe, but the data is just owned by someone else."
"Most smart home apps are very much like a banking site or a government-made site. That old, that full of friction. That is what we wanted to solve with our own application."
"None of our products have cameras. It is our responsibility to make the spaces not only intelligent but safe as well."
Short clips
Can smart homes be hacked?
Why no meshams product has a camera, and why Isaac, the air purifier, has no limbs.
Why India needs its own smart home brand
Why most smart home hardware in India is white-labelled, who owns the data it collects, and why smart home apps feel like a government website.
Can your home think for you?
What a smart home and automation actually mean, explained simply, and how AI is the next step after the phone.
Can AI make your home smarter than you?
Voice control for parents who are not tech-savvy, and checking the geyser from your phone when you are rushing to work.
About Kanishk
Kanishk Gulati co-founded meshams, a Gurugram smart home company that makes Lumos smart switches, sensors and the meshams app. He studied at Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology.
To see what the app does today, read the meshams app features and what works with Alexa, Google Home and Claude.