Dennis Sagayanathan

Dennis Sagayanathan

Founder & CEO at Hapticware

Solving problems I live in. Zero to one. And that's why I co-founded Hapticware.

AI/ML Product Founder Early Stage

About

Founder and CEO at Hapticware, building AI systems that solve real business problems. I focus on the full stack: from AI research and product strategy to GTM and scaling.

Previously co-founded GRCO Consulting, where I led AI/ML architecture for enterprise clients. I'm interested in problems where better algorithms directly unlock value and improve business outcomes.

Smart India Hackathon winner. Recipient of the Charpak Exchange Scholarship from the French Government.

Experience

Founder & CEO

Hapticware
Mar 2024 - Present
Pune District, Maharashtra, India · On-site

Handling the technical architecture, core development, and business direction. Managing the intersection of product and strategy from the ground up. Hapticware was legally incorporated in May 2025; before that, I was experimenting with the industry while doing consultancy.

Co-Founder

GRCO Consulting
Mar 2020 - Mar 2024
Pune, Maharashtra, India · On-site

Technical co-founder. Focused on building and shipping AI-driven financial workflows and custom AI/ML models for clients. Handled the architecture and dev side of the house during the early AI days, before it was a buzzword, while handling university.

Organizing Committee Member

TEDxVITChennai
Jun 2020 - Oct 2020 (5 mos)
Tamil Nadu, India · Remote

Part of the core team. Worked on the sponsorships, finance, and logistics side of things for the 2020 event.

SEO Intern

Paymint Global Payment Solutions Private Limited
Mar 2019 - Jun 2019
Pune/Pimpri-Chinchwad Area · On-site

Did this right after 12th grade. Managed to get the main site onto Google’s first page for a few key industry terms. Mostly involved technical audits, keyword research, and cleaning up metadata to fix organic reach.

Education

Vellore Institute of Technology

Mtech, Software Engineering
2019 - 2025

SIGMA Clermont

Mtech, Mechatronics, Robotics, And Automation Engineering
Sep 2020 - Jan 2021

The Orbis School Pune

Higher Secondary Education: Informatics Practices, Chemistry, Physics, Mathematics
Jul 2017 - Jun 2019

Grade: 12

The Bishop's School

Secondary Education: Computer Science, Mathematics, Science And French
Jun 2005 - Jun 2017

Grade: 10

Licenses & Certifications

AI for Product Management

Pendo.io
Dec 2024

Generative AI Overview for Project Managers

Project Management Institute
Dec 2024

Prompt Engineering for Everyone

IBM
Dec 2024

Generative AI Fundamentals

Google
Sep 2023

Introduction to Responsible AI

Google
Sep 2023

Responsible AI: Applying AI Principles with Google Cloud

Google
Sep 2023

Algorithmic Toolbox

UC San Diego
Jun 2023

Analyze Data to Answer Questions

Google
Jun 2023

Applied Data Science with Python - Level 2

IBM
Jun 2023

Ask Questions to Make Data-Driven Decisions

Google
Jun 2023

Attention Mechanism

Google Cloud Skills Boost
Jun 2023

Create Image Captioning Models

Google Cloud Skills Boost
Jun 2023

Data Analysis with R Programming

Google
Jun 2023

Data Visualization Using Python

IBM
Jun 2023

Encoder-Decoder Architecture

Google Cloud Skills Boost
Jun 2023

Foundations: Data, Data, Everywhere

Google
Jun 2023

Google Data Analytics Capstone: Complete a Case Study

Google
Jun 2023

Google Data Analytics Specialization

Google
Jun 2023

Introduction to Generative AI

Google Cloud Skills Boost
Jun 2023

Introduction to Image Generation

Google Cloud Skills Boost
Jun 2023

Introduction to Large Language Models

Google Cloud Skills Boost
Jun 2023

Prepare Data for Exploration

Google
Jun 2023

Process Data from Dirty to Clean

Google
Jun 2023

Share Data Through the Art of Visualization

Google
Jun 2023

Transformer Models and BERT Model

Google Cloud Skills Boost
Jun 2023

Accelerated Deep Learning with GPU

IBM
Oct 2022

Cloud Core

IBM
Oct 2022

Data Analysis Using Python

IBM
Oct 2022

Data Science Tools

IBM
Oct 2022

Deep Learning

IBM
Oct 2022

Deep Learning Essentials

IBM
Oct 2022

Docker Essentials: A Developer Introduction

IBM
Oct 2022

IBM Blockchain Essentials V2

IBM
Oct 2022

R Essentials

IBM
Oct 2022

Postman Student Expert

Postman
Jul 2021

DataOps Methodology

IBM
Jun 2021

Deep Learning using TensorFlow

IBM
Jun 2021

IBM Blockchain Foundation Developer

IBM
Jun 2021

IBM Cloud Essentials

IBM
Jun 2021

Python for Data Science

IBM
Jun 2021

Cisco Certified Network Associate Routing and Switching (CCNA) - Bridging

Cisco Networking Academy
Feb 2021

Introduction to Packet Tracer

Cisco Networking Academy
Feb 2021

YouTube Music Certification

YouTube
Jun 2021 - Expired Dec 2022

YouTube Music Rights Management Certification

YouTube
Jun 2021 - Expired Dec 2022

Microsoft Advertising Certified Professional

Microsoft
Jun 2021 - Expired Jun 2022

The Fundamentals of Digital Marketing

Google
Jun 2019

Microsoft Office Specialist Excel 2013

Microsoft
May 2018

Projects

Pipecat Open Source Contribution

May 2026

Contributed core functionality to Pipecat, an open-source framework for building real-time AI systems. Enhanced the framework with features that improve developer experience and system reliability.

Open Source AI/ML Infrastructure Python

VCT AI Esports Manager

May 2025

Data-engineered a solution using 20+ Valorant metrics to optimize team composition and IGL placement.

Data Engineering Esports Amazon Bedrock

EnterRAG - AI-Powered Document Insights

Oct 2024 - Dec 2024

Built a Streamlit-based platform integrating OpenAI's GPT-4 and ChromaDB to enable businesses to interact with documents using AI. Key features include real-time Q&A with document collections, PDF-to-structured-data conversion with MongoDB, and a financial intelligence dashboard for insights from quarterly reports. Integrated PDF processing, semantic search, and data visualization tools (Plotly) to enhance user experience.

OpenAI GPT-4 ChromaDB MongoDB Streamlit Plotly

IoT Soil Analyzer

Jun 2024

Built a Raspberry Pi-integrated system using color and environmental sensors to calculate NPK nutrient ratios in real-time. Developed for the Google Solution Challenge 2024.

Python Raspberry Pi PostgreSQL IoT Sensors

Global CO₂ Emissions Analysis Dashboard

Apr 2024 - Jun 2024

Developed a multi-functional platform using Streamlit, Plotly, and machine learning tools to analyze global CO₂ emissions data. Key features include an analytics dashboard for emissions trends, a geographic visualization of CO₂ levels, future emissions predictions, and industrial impact analysis by country. Integrated KNN Imputation for data preprocessing and advanced AI models for conversational insights. Designed for dynamic data exploration, interactive visualizations, and environmental impact analysis.

Streamlit Plotly Machine Learning KNN Imputation

Airline Route Decider

Mar 2023

Engineered a demand-feasibility model for Tier-2 Indian cities using DGCA data. Runner-up out of 1,500+ teams. Developed for the Rolls Royce R² Data Labs Responsible Growth Hack 2023.

Python Django SQLite Jupyter Notebooks Vercel

Strategic Missile Positioning System (SIH 2019 Winner)

Jan 2020

ML-based model for ground protection missile placement. Achieved 100% success rate across 500+ test runs. Project was halted/acquired due to data sensitivity.

Machine Learning Defense

Skills

Top Skills

Data Science 4 Data Analytics 4 Microsoft Office 8 Microsoft Excel 8 Social Media 6 Leadership 10 Management 10

Core AI/ML Skills

Machine Learning 6 Deep Learning 5 Natural Language Processing (NLP) 4 Computer Vision 5 Reinforcement Learning 7 Generative AI 13 Prompt Engineering 6 Large Language Models (LLMs) 6

Technical Skills

HTML 2 C (Programming Language) 2 Microsoft PowerPoint 5 Digital Marketing 3 Search Engine Optimization (SEO) 3 JavaScript 3 Python 6 Microsoft Azure 7 Python (for AI/ML Development) 8 TensorFlow 7 PyTorch 7 Keras 7 Scikit-learn 7 OpenCV 7 Hugging Face Transformers 8 LangChain 8 FastAPI (for AI application backends) 6 ONNX (model optimization) 5 Model Deployment (AWS, Azure, GCP) 7

Specialized AI Areas

Fine-Tuning LLMs 9 Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) 9 Model Distillation 2 Explainable AI (XAI) 10 AI Model Evaluation and Metrics 9 AI Safety and Ethics 6

Data Skills

Data Preprocessing 5 Feature Engineering 4 Data Labeling 4 Data Augmentation (for NLP or Vision) 4

Tools & Frameworks

Weights & Biases (WandB) 7 MLflow (for model lifecycle management) 7 Docker (for containerized AI deployments) 5 Kubernetes (for scaling AI systems) 6

Soft/Applied Skills

AI Product Development 5 AI Strategy 4 MLOps (Machine Learning Operations) 7 Research and Paper Implementation 5 Cross-functional Collaboration 6

Other Skills

Music 11 Music Production 11

Publications

Predicting Customer Satisfaction in Brazil E-commerce: A Comparative Study of Machine Learning Techniques

IEEE
Feb 15, 2024
View Publication

Honors & Awards

Pipecat Open Source Contributor

Pipecat AI Framework | Apr 2026

Core contributor to Pipecat, an open-source framework for building real-time AI systems.

Runner-Up, R2 Data Labs Responsible Growth Hack

Issued by Rolls Royce | May 2023

Part of the runner-up team in the Rolls Royce Data Labs Responsible Growth Hack.

Top 7, Rakuten Rakathon

Issued by Rakuten | Jul 2022

Developed an animated video resolution upscaling algorithm.

French Government Scholarship Holder

Issued by French Embassy | Sep 2020

Charpak Exchange Scholarship and French Government Scholarship recipient.

Winner, Smart India Hackathon

Issued by Vellore Institute of Technology | Jan 2020

Developed an ML solution for a defense-based problem statement, achieving 95% accuracy.

Languages

English

Native / Bilingual Proficiency

Hindi

Native / Bilingual Proficiency

Tamil

Full Professional Proficiency

Marathi

Full Professional Proficiency

French

Professional Working Proficiency

Japanese

Elementary Proficiency

Contact

dennis.sag@gmail.com
dennis@hapticware.ai