DGTL Voices with Ed Marx - Innovate With Constraints (ft. C.P. Gurnani)

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

C.P. Gurnani is the Founder of Aionos, an AI-enabled company he launched in April 2024 after a 44-year career in the global technology industry. He is best known for leading Tech Mahindra, and his earlier career took him through HCL under Shiv Nadar and Perot Systems under Ross Perot Sr. He continues to serve as Chair of Mahindra Holidays and founder of Mahindra University. In this second appearance on DGTL Voices, C.P. sits down with Ed for a conversation that starts with a Bollywood song about perseverance and ends with why the world's real innovation is happening in places most people aren't watching. He walks through India's advantage at the intersection of talent, data, and the willingness to work within constraints, telling the story of a friend making cancer diagnostics affordable for under one dollar. He shares the three biggest misconceptions about AI, why he thinks the world is measuring it wrong, and what it takes to build a company where the mission is to have fun and create real impact. Plus his leadership formula: discipline, determination, dedication, and the two-way street of giving and taking that made him the leader he is. https://marxadvisory.com

Welcome to another episode of Digital Voices. So excited, we have a two-time visitor, C.P. Gernani, C.P., welcome to Digital Voices. Thank you, Ed. Thank you. It's fun to be with you. And more importantly, I think I learn a lot when I'm talking to you. Oh, you're very kind. It's definitely the opposite for me. I will post in the show note our first episode that we did a couple of years ago when you were CEO of Tech Mahendra. And that's where we first met. We met around Techmahendra.

I was so thankful to be part of that organization under your leadership. I learned a tremendous amount. I grew a tremendous amount. And so I'm so thankful. So you know, CP, from the last time we met, one of the first questions we asked are songs on your playlist. So any new songs, the type of music that you're listening to? I'm a indie Bollywood buff.

And as a Bollywood buff, even as Indian movies, Bollywood means musicals. there's always a song, a few songs there. So I think if I were to say the kind of songs, I still look at, listen to the songs of 70s and 80s, because it's just the songs I grew up with. I can only say what has not changed for me here since I spent so much of time on the road

that John Denver song, Country Roads take me home. And when it comes to Hindi number, One of my favorite numbers is, which means there will be obstacles on the road, but keep going, your perseverance. And if you do not stop, you will find a way out. And so do not stop the world around, on the other side of the road is beautiful. Keep going.

I love that. That fits right in too, to life messaging and stuff. And we covered that last time. So I want to jump in really quick and talk about your career. And because I want to talk about your new organization. So what I've noticed about you, you could always reinvent yourself. You spent several years, your foundations with Perot and Perot, India, and HCL Perot. And then, Tech Mahendra.

And now you've started something new. So tell us a little bit, for those who don't know, didn't hear the first episode, Tell us a little bit about your career and then we're going to jump into what you're doing today. That long story, when you've been in the business for almost 44 years, it's been a long time. So all I can say is a small town guy. I grew up in literally a small village and my father had a transferable job. So I ended up going to seven schools before I finished my high school. went to another small town to study chemical engineering.

The good news is that while I started as a chemical engineering, but I think chemical engineering gave up on me very fast because they realized I'm too restless, too curious, I can't go and change the process is there, I can't challenge any conventional output mechanism. So the chemical engineering decided that you're better off somewhere else. and that's how I landed in computer industry. I worked for a Maverick entrepreneur called Shivnader.

He set up a company called HCL. From HCL, I ended up doing a joint venture with Perrower Systems. That brought me to Dallas. That brought me to another maverick called Ross Perro Senior. And then while the two joint ventures between Shivnarder and Rospero, Juniors, actually used to drive it, but the joint venture ultimately had a finite life. And when Perra took over, I decided to go into another joint venture, the story of joint ventures. I went into something called Mahendra, British Telecom. A wonderful man called Anandah was the chairman of the company,

but I've never seen anybody who empowers you more. I learned a lot from Anan. And fast forward in life, When I thought I was hanging up my boots, Anish, who is the successor to Anan, he called up along with Anan and said, we don't want you to leave the group. Would you consider chairing Mahendra holidays? And I thought that's a great one because I will be retiring and I'll be on holidays. I think it was the fund that lasted only for a few days and I did accept the responsibility of being the chair of the board. I continue to be the founder of Mahindra University and then I end up saying I'm too young to retire. I want to have fun. I want to create an impact and I don't want to sit at home or sit on the golf course.

So here you are. It's been about 22 months, April of 2020. I launched a company called Aionos AI on OU. When I put this word together, Chad GPD came back and said, it means everlasting in Greek. So I'm building an AI-enabled company, and I do promise you we are having fun. That's pretty amazing. And I love how, yeah, you have so much energy and passion about everything that you do. And so, yeah, there was no golf course, extended golf course time.

You definitely jump right back in and, like I said, reinvented yourself. You have so much knowledge of the industry and AI. I wanted to pivot a little bit and ask you a few questions. If you were looking ahead five years, which tech trends do you think will have the biggest impact on enterprises and how should leaders prepare for them? I think the biggest, the three parts to any tech, one is the tech being used for in-house

or is a tech being built to benefit larger masses? Number two is that today the technology has become a more of a democratic tool. A democratic tool is that you are not dependent only on a Microsoft or a Oracle or media or name any other company, SAP or anybody else. Because the reality is that you are empowered. If you choose to follow technology. So for example, last time also we discussed healthcare. Now, let's take healthcare as an example. Healthcare is probably one of the most complex subjects in the world.

And the reason it is complex is a beautiful system that the God has designed. We as engineers or biohackers, we still know maybe 20% of that system. Maybe we're not 25%. But think about it because of AI, the COVID hit us and we had a vaccine. And similarly, that today a drug discovery has become faster. Our diagnostics have become faster. Our personalized medicine has become faster. It is all thanks to the technology and AI.

So my potential of the AI, potential of learning, potential of being able to solve real life problems, and a potential of converting the infrastructure. Today, we have beautiful infrastructure, whether we call it an NVDA or whether we call it a distributed data processing by AMD or Intel. we can always say that Microsoft enabled Open AI to succeed, or we can be controversial and say Elon Musk and Grok are the game changers. But the reality is that today that level of technology in our and if we start looking at the use cases, I think the future is all about empowering each and ever. individual, each and every company, each and every industry.

And that's really where the technology will come and assist us. Yeah, I agree with you. And I want to come back to AI in a second. But you have this great global perspective, but you're also based out of India. So I had a question. We always hear about China and the U.S. and sort of the dominance with tech and scale. But where does India fit into the global tech landscape and what you? should it focus on to compete and lead?

Okay, that's a good one. Frankly, I don't know about the U.S. audience, but the audience in India would love you because I think India's advantage is the intersection of talent, intersection of data, and intersection of capability to innovate with constraints. So let me give you just a simple example. And I'll keep taking health care examples. Yeah. One of mine, Vivek Wadhwa, he lost his wife to cancer.

A very close friend of mine, Vivek is very well read. His blogs are controversial at times. He was also part of the singularity university. We all know the future is here, kind of dialogues. Now, Vivek decided that the rest of his life, he's almost mine. age. He said rest of all his life he's going to devote to making cancer diagnostics affordable and he set a target that in developing countries or in poor countries he will make it at the cost of less than one dollar. Obviously this means you reimagine technology. So he

reimagines technology by looking at how water contamination is identified. So he looks at mass spectrometry. Now, where do you think he's building his hardware? He's building his hardware in one of our leading institutes called IIT Madras. He chose not to build that hardware in Silicon Valley, not to build it in Austin, not to build it in Boston, but really build it in IIT Madras. So mass spectrometry, which if you today were to buy, you would be buying almost like a size of a boardroom table. Now, he's already been able to reduce the form factor to, I would say, like a meter. Now, what is his aim?

He wants to reduce it to one feet. And make it, anybody can carry that mass spectrometer. what is the time scale of that hardware being developed? Less than a year. Number one. Number two, what is an India advantage? India advantage was talent. India advantage was people who were willing to work with the constraints.

They did not want a perfect world. India advantage is data. Now, data, why? Because AI model that is being trained to run that diagnostics is built on data of diabetes patients, data of heart patients, data of cancer patients, and that effectively means is that he will reduce the time cycle by using India advantage, which is talent, innovation, and data. Yeah, see, I love what you say.

It really resonated with me. And I was circling it. It was funny because I was going through, I was weeding out some of my books in my library and I was coming across all these books on innovation. But I think you nailed it when you said innovate with constraints because too often we want the perfect situation. And I won't go in my examples because I'll get in a lot of trouble. But I think as a result, we've inflated prices, we've delayed, we've increased timelines because we're trying to create this perfect situation. And it's not reasonable in many cases. And so to be able to innovate within a constraint,

environment, that's where real innovation happens. I really appreciate that really resonates. And I think the lesson here is no matter where you are in the world, so if you're a listener in U.S., is, yeah, don't wait for that perfect storm, because that's what happens too with a lot of innovation. Let's talk about AI. I want to ask you about maybe the biggest misconception about AI, but I think one of the reasons we haven't gone as fast as we could or should, at least in the U.S. is that we are trying to get this government. We call it governance,

but it's rulemaking, it's bureaucracy. We try to get it so perfect that it actually stifles innovation. And I think we'll be disintermediated. Those companies will be disintermediated by those that can innovate with constraints. So anyways, enough about my thoughts on that.

What do you think are the biggest misconceptions related to AI? So first is let me try and answer that the world over any technology, development. It is the same way when we delivered an automobile we had to deliver a clutch and a break.

So I think it's the same way governments all over the world have a responsibility to create frameworks for responsible accountable, ethical enablement of artificial intelligence because we have all seen it

enough times about a misuse also. So I think I think this is where I would like to believe that some of us need to collaborate a lot more to help the government. And once we help the government in defining what that framework could be, I think we're collaborating with them. Right now what I believe is that the U.S. announces its own AI mission. You will come up with more complex mission. and some of the countries like India will try and define a framework and then we will start

fighting about the sovereignty of it. I think you raised a very valid point. All I'm trying to make a point here again is that I'm amplifying it on your behalf that the world needs a framework. Now, you said, if you want to repeat the question, but what I heard is what is the biggest misconception about AI adoption? Yes, yes.

Is that correct? Yes, right on. Most of us, so I will be a little more anecdotal and then I'll come to this. One is that humans can make things more complex than necessary.

It is like the remotes that we have to operate our air conditioners or phones or if you remember those VCR, what we needed was just a play button. or a record button or a rewind button, but we had so many signs on it that sometimes I wondered who uses them. Similarly, we have to visualize AI as a tool.

And if we are visualizing AI as a tool, then try and make it as much plug-in-play. But do not assume that a remote which will run your fan will become a remote. air conditioner. I think it's more Indian thing that we use fans and we use remotes for our fans and remotes for our air conditioner. We're just lazy. But the point I'm making out here is about no tool can alone transform the business.

Now, there is an expectation that AI is a quick fix. Number two, the misconception is AI will replace humans. The is the true value comes from augmenting human decision making. The fact is, it should be an aid to creativity. It is an aid to problem solving. AI is not replacing people.

AI is reshaping how the work gets done. The third thing is somewhere AI, I think is, being measured by the wrong outputs. The wrong output is not an agentic AI. Wrong output is not how many people became productive. Wrong output is not about how many people tried to cheat. The wrong output is not about the fake news. Wrong output is not about plagiarism.

I think this is where it's most designing a technology ecosystem term where you create and then you have people to check, people to control, and people to find faults in you. So my own assessment on this is that we as leaders need to focus on the right problems and not over-regulate ourselves and create more problems. So anyway, it's a white subject. I don't think I can do justice to it on this call, but I can only tell you it's a great technology and a few myths and misconceptions are only, I'm only amplifying it because you asked me that question. Yeah, I know it's great insight. I love that, especially how the tool alone, no tool alone can transform a business. It requires much more

than that. I love that. Let me just ask you one question on leadership before we wrap up our time. You're a legend globally in terms of all the things that you've accomplished as a leader. What are one or two key skills that you think were most beneficial? So for our audience that's listening, maybe mid-career, early career, even someone later in their career like myself, what are one or two things that we could learn from CP Gernani? Okay. Be curious, keep learning, which is what I think you do. and I learn from people like you.

Two is we all have the same finite moments, but we can make it even more result-oriented if we know what we really want. So my point is all about discipline, determination, and dedication. I am not saying that you should work 10 hours a day or six hours a day or five hours a day. But if you know what you want out of your day, then you will work in discipline, determine, and a more dedicated way.

That's all I believe is the right thing to do. And the third is whatever you do, have fun. I know these are these motherhood statements which I've gone to about 20 convocation addresses. every time I change a few lines here and there, but I sometimes wonder if anybody is listening. I think, you know, what I think they are listening, but their capacity to receive is not yet mature. And it will.

You're sowing seeds into my listeners, you're sowing seeds into the convocations. And again, I think sometimes earlier in life, earlier in career, they land, but they need to be watered continuously. I love what you shared. We ended here with the discipline, dedication, determination, have fun, remain curious, keep learning. These are all things all of us, whether we're early in a career, later in career, can apply to our life to be better humans. And I just want to end, just having you share with us because you're known as a great leader and you're a very humble person, so you didn't talk about it. But I just want to end with giving you an opportunity to share the things that you've done as a result, not only built a beautiful family, but you've set up foundations. You're helping other people. Can you talk a little bit about helping others and why that's important? And then we'll just end with that and leave listeners waiting for the third time that you come back as a guest on digital voices.

And I think this is more personal than anything else. So in everything that I've done, I have tried to look at what is an outcome. For example, as a leader, I always felt is my outcome is if I can train future leaders. I was very happy when somebody actually counted that there are about 23, 24 CEOs in the Indian technology industry that have worked with me and have acknowledged that I was able to help them. Number two is that I wanted to acknowledge all the youngsters who have shaped my destiny because those youngsters continued to challenge me. Yeah. And they are the ones who were with me during thick and thin. They were hard times.

But these youngsters, A, knew they were smarter than me, and they were able to help me understand or prioritize. So I think it's a two-way street. Overall, you want to give. But if you do not know how to take, you will never be able to give. Yeah. Very well said. CP, you're an amazing human, and just it's a gift to know you, gift to have you on digital voices.

Thank you for being our guest. Thank you, Ed. Thank you.