Sourya Kakarla

Sourya Kakarla

Building AI that works in the real world, not just in demos

ML researcher turned founder. I love learning the fundamentals and building systems that work in the real world. My path: big tech → PhD dropout → startups. Research background in Speech, NLP & InfoSec. Alum of IIT Kharagpur and Columbia.
2025 -
Co-founder & CTO at Zone. Building AI Operations Manager that brings physics to vision and voice: multimodal ambient agents that understand physical environments, simulate future states, and take preventive action to optimize physical operations. See our solutions →
2023 - 2025
First ML hire and lead of ML team at SkyLink (YC & Menlo Ventures backed). Built a Slack agent for corporate travel that served McKinsey, Tesla, Bain & Company, and the like—over 40k users.
2022 - 2023
MS in Computer Science at Columbia University. Andrew P. Kosoresow Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching and Service.
2021 - 2022
Co-founder & CTO at Ladduu. Built speech-enabled hyperlocal e-commerce apps for rural India. Led product team of 7, serving 300+ users with multilingual mobile/web apps.
2019 - 2021
PhD (Dropout) in Computer Science at IIT Kharagpur. Research on impossible differential attacks on AES cipher. Left to pursue startups.
2017 - 2019
Software Engineer at Microsoft. Dynamics CRM team—Email Engagement feature for 1M+ users. The big tech experience clarified what I wanted: research and startups.
2012 - 2017
BTech + MTech in Computer Science at IIT Kharagpur. Cryptanalysis research—nominated for Best Master's Thesis. Best Paper Award at ASONAM 2016. Multiple hackathon wins.

View full resume →

Founding Journey

Zone

AI Operations Manager for high stakes physical operations environments. Multimodal ambient agents with physical intelligence.

The Journey

  1. The Problem: AI assistants failed bilingual, multigenerational families.
  2. The Experiment: Built a WhatsApp assistant for our own family.
  3. The Validation: Thousands adopted it, proving the need.
  4. The Foundation: Built the Zone app—an ambient agent for families.
  5. The Signal: B2B interest skyrocketed for our ambient agent architecture.
  6. The Pivot: Agents beyond the screen—Physical Intelligence.

Read the full story →

Research Interests

  • Large Language Models & Agentic AI
  • Multilingual NLP
  • Voice Assistants & Speech Recognition
  • Accessibility & Robotics
  • Cryptography & InfoSec

Publications in applied NLP and cryptanalysis. Best Paper Award at ASONAM 2016.

Publications

View my Google Scholar profile for the most up-to-date list of publications.

Journal Articles & Preprints

  1. Looney Tunes: Exposing the Lack of DRM Protection in Indian Music Streaming Services

    • Ahaan Dabholkar, Sourya Kakarla, Dhiman Saha
    • Arxiv Pre-print (In Review)

  2. DINAMITE: Internal Differential Match-in-the-end Attack on 8-round PAEQ

    • Dhiman Saha, Sourya Kakarla, Dipanwita Roy Chowdhury
    • IET Information Security (2019)

  3. Gain: Practical Key-Recovery Attacks on Round-reduced PAEQ

    • Dhiman Saha, Sourya Kakarla, Srinath Mandava, Dipanwita Roy Chowdhury
    • Journal of Hardware and Systems Security (HaSS 2017)

Conference Proceedings

  1. On the practical implementation of impossible differential cryptanalysis on reduced-round AES

    • Sourya Kakarla, Srinath Mandava, Dhiman Saha, Dipanwita Roy Chowdhury
    • International Conference on Applications and Techniques in Information Security (ATIS 2017)

  2. Gain: Practical Key-Recovery Attacks on Round-reduced PAEQ

    • Dhiman Saha, Sourya Kakarla, Srinath Mandava, Dipanwita Roy Chowdhury
    • Security, Privacy, and Applied Cryptography Engineering (SPACE 2016)

  3. Stop clickbait: Detecting and preventing clickbaits in online news media

    • Abhijnan Chakraborty, Bhargavi Paranjape, Sourya Kakarla, Niloy Ganguly
    • Advances in Social Networks Analysis and Mining (ASONAM 2016)
    • Best Paper Award

Awards

Musings

Reading

I used to hate nonfiction until my early twenties.

Fiction

Some of my favourite fiction works:

  • ASOIAF
  • HHGTG
  • Stranger in a Strange land
  • Catch 22
  • Jeffrey Archer (guilty pleasure while growing up)
  • (other cliched stuff)

Non-fiction

Then I went into a “seeking” phase where that’s all I read for a few years.

Especially existential/spiritual/religious/mythological books to make sense of the universe/myself.

Some authors/genres/fields:

  • Herman Hesse
  • Richard Dawkins
  • Yuval Noah Harari
  • Camus
  • Buddhism
    • Old Path, White Clouds
    • Two Truths
  • Sanatana Dharma (Hinduism)
    • Advaita/Non-duality
    • Shaivism/Shaktism
    • Karma, Bhakti, Gnyana, Raja Yogas

Once I got the startup bug, I read a few of the typical startup books:

  • The Hard Thing About Hard Things
  • Zero to One
  • Outliers

Currently Reading

Currently reading The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek.

Recently Completed

Some reads logged on Goodreads.

Music

My music taste has seasons. Some times I listen to eastern devotional songs like:

  • Shiva Tandava Stotram
  • Aigiri Nandini

In other phases, I listen to western classic/soft rock:

  • Pink Floyd
  • Led Zeppelin

East-West fusion in content and style is probably my favourite genre. Example:

  • Shiva Tandava Stotram by Shanti People

Can’t sing for the life of me but write occasionally. Here’s a song I wrote in Telugu - Listen Now.

Writing

Scribbling down my thoughts into “poems” is a favourite cathartic pastime.

Holy Nature - My favorite among all my amateur work got featured in Poets of Columbia.

Soccer

  • Arsenal fan, ‘Gooner/Gunner’ for life!
  • Receiving Gold Medal through MS Hall in IIT KGP General Championship is a highlight of my soccer life.
  • FIFA is pretty much the only video game I’ve played consistently. Always up for a game if time permits.