Arastu Sharma

Arastu Sharma has positioned Shodh AI at the forefront of India's AI-for-science movement. Under his leadership, the startup was selected under the IndiaAI Mission's Foundation Models initiative to lead the AI for Science pillar. 

He also unveiled Project Skanda, India's first sovereign generative AI model for material science. Developed in collaboration with NVIDIA, Skanda is among the world's first mesoscale foundation models for energy storage, designed to accelerate battery innovation by modelling the internal 3D microstructures that determine battery life, charging speed, and safety. To build the model, Shodh AI simulated more than 1 million electrochemical scenarios, creating one of the world's largest structured datasets for battery microstructures.

Sharma has consistently argued that India's sovereign AI ambitions must extend beyond language models into scientific intelligence. Rather than building another chatbot, he envisions AI as the "brain" that can power breakthroughs in energy, advanced materials, and manufacturing.