Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I’ve spent many years working in various corporate offices and traveling to different parts of the world. Everywhere I turned, I saw the negative effects of our socio-economic system. From the US to India and everywhere in between, the imposed hierarchy isn’t allowing underprivileged people to participate in the economy. They’re not given the same opportunities as wealthy and privileged folks. This is extremely sad for the people stuck without an opportunity for upward mobility. But truly, I saw this as the whole world being deprived of the hard work, inspiration, and innovation that all humans are capable of. Humanity is inefficient if only a portion of its talent is enabled. A system is needed to identify and enable talent to find suitable opportunities.

So I wanted to create a system that mines intelligence and finds opportunities for the majority of the people in the world. My system replaces hierarchy with an unbiased intelligent party (our AI system, The Mask), and most importantly enables peer-to-peer cooperation in a new socio-economy. This will enable individuals to enact self-governance in all kinds of situations. Currently we’re focusing on work and co-living arrangements, but the implications spread to every aspect of life where cooperation is beneficial.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?

I like this one in particular because of our cooperative success despite hearing, “It can’t be done.”

Long before I started Baanda and before I came to the US, I started my own consulting company in Calcutta. One of the first jobs we got was to live stream the Cricket World Cup finals in the railway stations. It sounds fairly easy, but there was a list of problems.

Due to legal restrictions we weren’t allowed to show footage of the games, which left us coming up with a way to display stats in real time. It was the 80’s, so long before we had the communications and broadcasting technology we have today. And to top it off, we had only nine days to come up with a solution AND implement it ourselves.

That means we had to develop the solution, get the equipment, install it, connect it, and find people to enter the stats. Cricket games can last a whole day, so this is quite different than what you’d expect.

So, we worked day and night to get it up and running. It was a success despite the fact that people said it couldn’t be done. People say that Baanda can’t be done either, but if you work hard enough and if you have a dream, you can do anything you set your mind to.

Can you tell us about the “Bleeding edge” technological breakthroughs that you are working on? How do you think that will help people?

Baanda has many new and exciting breakthroughs, some technological and some philosophical. Baanda is a “hologram-first” design, but the core of our technological breakthrough lies in our AI system, The Mask. The Mask is an unbiased humanoid communication component, that utilizes verbal and non-verbal communication cues to learn about Baanda users. This would let Banda build trust — an essential ingredient for cooperation — by sensing human emotions. After all, human’s core decision making happens not on logic, but on feelings.

Through this unbiased intelligent party, Baanda is able to assign an intricate scoring system called DCCS (Dynamic Cooperative Chemistry Score). Individuals will be scored across many dimensions, including individual’s input and self-perception, the perceptions of those who interact with this individual, and how the individual interacts with others. In this way, individuals will be able to share their scores with others, giving them a tool to find the right job, a cooperative roommate, someone to loan money to, an expert in a field, a mentor, and more. This is an extension of a credit score, but in all dimensions of life. This is a continuation of self evaluation and peer evaluation, with the added bonus of being AI driven (and therefore unbiased).

Once matched, Baanda will facilitate agreements between individuals via blockchain. But because reality is dynamic and life events demand changes to agreements, our system will also utilize what we call Softchain, which allows agreements to be amended. We do this to put into action our belief that technological systems should be more like human behavior. Because we like to make changes or improvements to our agreements over time, Baanda will facilitate this. Our AI system allows legal contracts to be written using natural language, so lawyers and their high fees are no longer needed. In case of complex agreements, Baanda will assist by providing experts.

Baanda is the future of cooperation, providing the tools for everyday people to connect, organize, and cooperate.

How do you think this might change the world?

Humanity as a machine is very inefficient.

Our philosophy is rooted in the undying belief in the talent, creativity, and innate goodness of humans. Our goal is to mine talent and bring opportunity and wellbeing to those who don’t have it. Our vision is to bring people together from all backgrounds and walks of life, creating a more efficient system, producing more wealth, freedom, and opportunity for all.

In 2017, 82% of global wealth was controlled by less than 1% of the global population with over 50% of people living below the poverty line. This points to extreme hierarchical socio-economy. With the spread of democracy, the world situation is improving.

Baanda intends to participate in this movement towards humanity as a self-governing species where every individual is sacred. Baanda is aware that when one works for another, one earns for another and that creates imbalances.

Baanda intends to

A — Enable cooperation of individuals as a way of life.

B — Enable strangers to cohabitate via dynamic and transparent agreements, witnessed by peers via blockchain technology.

C — Identify talented individuals and enable them to flourish via cooperation. Thus, Baanda bridges talent to opportunity.

D — Baanda extends trust via transparency that includes human/machine collaboration of sensing and interacting with reality via IoT devices.

E — The essence of democracy is extended by a complex decision system based on contextual equivalency

Keeping “Black Mirror” in mind can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?

Our vision is to do good, so we’re particularly aware of and sensitive to any potential negative uses of the technology. Baanda will be dealing with information about how individuals think, act, and even feel. If this were to get into the wrong hands, it could be used to propagate ideologies, influence political decisions, and market consumerism. This is a challenge, and we’re exploring various ideas to mitigate the risks.

One of these ideas has become a cornerstone promise of our mission. Baanda will never share, sell, or distribute your information to any third-party sources for any reason. In fact, we’re working to store the data in a way that makes it impossible for a third-party to make heads or tails of it, just in case there was a leak. To create checks and balances in the possibility of greed creeping into our vision, Baanda’s governance created a process so that even we can’t access the data after the intelligence is extracted.

Security isn’t just a priority for Baanda, it’s an intrinsic part of the system and the goal. We want to facilitate cooperation by building trust between individuals. For us, the first step is for individuals to build trust in Baanda.

Was there a “tipping point” that led you to this breakthrough? Can you tell us that story?

I’ve been working in the area of humanoid / AI conversation for a long time. Along the way, I’ve tried to get people like former bosses, managers, and coworkers interested, but they only associated it with making money and ownership.

I realized I wasn’t being heard, so I decided to leave the corporate wagon train, and start on my own. This is more than a startup or a tech company. This is my life’s purpose and calling.

What do you need to lead this technology to widespread adoption?

The philosophical core of Baanda is that cooperation benefits humanity. So, to reach people, I need a partnership with people who believe in the Baanda vision, and who have the capacity to enable it.

There are two main things I need for widespread adoption to take hold. The first is a tech team who I can work with, so I can launch the product with proper support, implementation, and continuity of technological and functional evolution.

The second is a way to tell the story. A marketing plan or process that gets the message out to the world so people can embrace this offering. But, like all the people involved in Baanda, I need them to play a dual role. I need them to take the messaging out the world, but also to receive the message back, giving feedback to make Baanda more aligned with the needs of the people. So what Baanda does for people, I need people to do for Baanda.

I tell people, I don’t need money; I need vision and hard work. Banda will generate wealth for participants, but Baanda will be unsuccessful if it cannot enhance the wellbeing of people worldwide. We are looking for partners who share the vision.

What have you been doing to publicize this idea? Have you been using any innovative marketing strategies?

My focus has been creating a fully operational frontend UX using MERNNED (Mongo, Express, React, Node, Neo4J, Ethereum, Dialogflow). This way, people can get the feel of what Baanda can do and why they would want to use it. Once done, we will send the UX to our email subscriber list with a survey. This is both research and marketing and it will allow us to adjust based on feedback.

In addition, we now have two storytellers on the team. One, is a fabulous voice actress and the other is a writer. You can see a video we created here.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Just like the Baanda vision, my journey to Baanda has been one of pluralism and cooperation. Therefore, I can’t pinpoint one person’s contribution for me to be where I am. But many people in various stages of my life have highlighted problems in society or helped me to think differently. These include Bertrand Russell, Yuval Harari, and Da Vinci.

One particularly eye-opening relationship, and one that has helped motivate me to build Baanda, was a friend I had long ago in Calcutta. He never had the opportunity to go to school, so he became a cart-puller, a human mule.

I had the opportunity of sustained discussions with him, and found his intellect marvelling to the point I asked myself, “How many people on the streets have equal or more capacity than those in powers of position? What if we could find and use this intellect? How would this impact the capacity of mankind?”



In the corporate world, when I tried to put forward such ideas, I saw a society oriented on competition, hierarchy, and profitability. I was told it couldn’t be done. This only added fuel to the fire as it had to be done, and it seemed no one else believed in the vision enough to do it. Now, I’m confident there will be plenty of people to assist me to make it happen.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Asking this question resulted in the creation of Baanda. In many ways, this question is Baanda. Our mission is the wellbeing of many. Our goal is to influence the world to cooperate instead of compete.

Baanda is a system designed to facilitate this cooperation, so people can work together and share the output equivalently. In the current system, we’re working for someone else, meaning you’re earning for someone else. When we work with others in a cooperative way, we share equivalency.

Baanda’s vision is to create partnerships and cooperatives to topple the traditional top down hierarchies. In this way, we redistribute the power that is currently held in the hands of a few.

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.”

— Bertrand Russell

Borrowed from the spirit of da Vinci, that there is no such thing as it cannot be done. There is only it hasn’t been done yet.

It’s relevant to my life, because I’m fascinated by how humans seem to get stuck. To think that if it hasn’t been done yet that it can’t be. However, every great mind in history has combated this claim. If we don’t think creatively, if we’re unable to imagine, then we certainly won’t be able to redeem ourselves in any efficient way.

But through cooperation and through thinking in a different way, we can truly bring about a global revolution bringing wealth, freedom, and meaning to many.

Some very well known VCs read this column. If you had 60 seconds to make a pitch to a VC, what would you say? He or she might just see this if we tag them :-)

Talent is spread throughout the world equally. Opportunity is not. With our proprietary AI utilizing causal inference, Baanda seeks to correct this by bringing people together and facilitating cooperation by using technology to create transparency and trust between strangers.

Our first product targets the global gig economy, a $2.7 trillion industry by 2025.

In our freelance marketplace, individuals and entities will be matched with opportunities, and be able to make agreements and contracts through amendable blockchain using their native tongue.

We’re currently finishing our UX, and need highly skilled programmers to help with development and support.

We’re not a tech company, we’re a paradigm shift in how humans cooperate. I’m sure you have many questions, but I have only one. Do you want to invest? Or do you want to change the world?

Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.