Namma Bengaluru Meetup: Two Editions, One Growing Community
Bengaluru has no shortage of talent. What it sometimes lacks is a space where that talent sits together, speaks candidly, and works through the hard questions — without sales pitches and without polished non-answers.
That’s exactly what the Namma Bengaluru Meetup series is designed to be.
Organised by REVA Academy for Corporate Excellence (RACE), REVA University, this practitioner-first gathering brings together cybersecurity leaders, AI practitioners, architects, and decision-makers for one purpose: honest, high-quality dialogue on where AI and security are actually headed.
Two editions. Hundreds of professionals. Conversations that continue well past the event.
Here’s the story so far.
Edition 1
Cybersecurity in the Age of Agentic AI
We didn’t open with a welcome address. We opened with a question to the room.
“If you could automate one part of your security job with an AI agent tomorrow — what would it be?”
Hands went up instantly. That one prompt told us everything about the room: these were practitioners who had already thought about this, already attempted this, and had opinions worth hearing.
Sandeep Vijayaraghavan, EVP – Cybersecurity & Cloud Services at Terralogic, set the context early: AI is no longer in a pilot phase inside enterprise security. It is operational. And the industry doesn’t get the luxury of catching up slowly.
Engineering Resilience into the AI SDLC via the Adversary-to-Architect Lifecycle
Lokesh made an argument the room needed to hear: guardrails are a patch, not a strategy. As AI systems become agentic, reasoning and acting without constant human input, bolting on safety controls at the end of development is no longer enough. Resilience has to be engineered into the architecture from the first design decision. His session was a masterclass in thinking about AI security as a structural problem, not a checklist.
Lokesh holds an eMasters in Cybersecurity from IIT Kanpur, a PG Diploma in Cyber Law from NLSIU Bangalore, and certifications from SANS, ISC2, and CSA.
What threat actors are already doing with AI
This session made people uncomfortable — in the right way.
Praveen didn’t talk about hypothetical future threats. He talked about what is already happening: threat actors using AI to personalise phishing at scale, automate exploitation, and weaponise publicly available data in ways that outpace traditional defences. With over 20+ years of experience across financial services, healthcare, IT, and manufacturing, his perspective carried weight.
The room was noticeably quieter after this one.
Emerging Threats and Real-World Lessons
What stood out wasn’t just the expertise on stage. It was the candour. These weren’t curated talking points. These were practitioners sharing what they’re actually seeing in production — including the uncomfortable parts.
- Sandeep Vijayaraghavan — Terralogic | 22+ years in enterprise risk and SOC operations
- Sivakumar Dhakshinamoorthy — Head of Services Support, Lenovo | AI Security Researcher | RACE Alumnus
- Satish Sreenivasaiah — Director, Product Security Engineering, Zscaler | RACE MTech Alumnus
By the Numbers — Edition 1
- 🎯 3 icebreaker prompts that sparked the entire day’s energy
- 🧠 10 rapid-fire quiz questions with a live leaderboard and sharp competition
- 📸 LinkedIn Challenge: Top post with 50+ likes, 5+ comments & 500+ impressions walked away with goodies
- 🤝 3 industry experts on the panel from Terralogic, Lenovo & Zscaler
- ☕ 15-minute High Tea that turned into 30 minutes of unplanned networking
Edition 2
Mastering Agentic AI: From Intelligent Agents to Secure Deployment
Edition 1 asked: how do we defend systems where AI is already acting? Edition 2 asked the other side of the question: how do we responsibly get AI agents into production in the first place?
The campus setting at Yelahanka brought a different energy — and a lineup that matched the ambition of the question.
Closing the gap between demo and production
Pradeepta cut through the hype early.
There’s a significant gap between what agentic AI looks like in a demo and what it actually takes to move autonomous systems into real enterprise decision-making. He spoke about the friction, the false starts, and the organisational change that vendor decks never mention, and gave the audience a framework for navigating that gap without losing momentum.
A live demonstration, not a screenshot deck
This was the moment the room leaned forward.
Shwetha didn’t show a recorded walkthrough or a screenshot deck. She ran a live demonstration of AI agents integrated into the software development lifecycle — handling code review, testing, and deployment tasks in real time. It’s one thing to hear that AI is changing how software is built. Watching it happen is something else entirely.
What enterprise AI adoption looks like at Jio’s scale
Poornapragna mapped the journey — from early task automation scripts to genuine autonomous decisioning — and was direct about what most organisations get wrong along the way. The milestones, the pitfalls, and the questions that every AI leader eventually has to answer: she covered all of it.
From Copilots to Coworkers
No prepared remarks. No panel format. Just two people thinking out loud about what it actually means when AI shifts from being a tool you use to being a participant in the work.
Ashok’s perspective as a Swiss Re leader and a RACE alumnus brought the conversation full circle — someone who had walked through the RACE programme and was now shaping AI strategy at a global financial services firm. The room stayed completely quiet for this one.
By the Numbers — Edition 2
- 🏛 Held at REVA University, Yelahanka — bringing the community to campus
- 💡 3 keynote sessions covering deployment strategy, live AI in the SDLC, and enterprise-scale adoption
- 🎤 1 fireside chat — the most unscripted, most talked-about session of the day
- 🌐 Speakers from IBM, Jio Platforms, Beghou Consulting & Swiss Re
- 🎓 RACE Alumnus on stage as a global SVP — five years after completing the programme
What Both Editions Have in Common
Every speaker across both meetups has been someone with accountability for outcomes — not advisors, not commentators, but people who carry real responsibility for the systems they spoke about.
The topics aren’t trending for the sake of it. Agentic AI, dark web exploitation, AI-driven software delivery, DPDPA, NIST, GDPR compliance — these are the live challenges Bengaluru’s technology leaders are navigating right now, often without a clear playbook.
And across both editions, the RACE alumni thread is impossible to miss.
The community that grew inside RACE’s programmes is now visibly shaping the industry — and coming back to contribute to the next generation.
What’s Next
Meetup #3 is in planning. Date and venue to be announced.
If you are building, securing, or governing AI systems in Bengaluru and want to speak, co-host, or simply be part of the conversation, we’d love to hear from you.
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