This AI Startup is an Iron Man Suit for the IT Guys
With so many companies developing automation tools and AI agents, it has become increasingly challenging to identify the differentiator or the moat of your company. Three industry veterans—Sidu Ponnappa, Aakash Dharmadhikari, and Steve Sule—found themselves at the crossroads. Originally setting out to build an IT services company, their journey took an unexpected turn with the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022, which would redefine their approach to business and ultimately lead to the founding of realfast.ai. Backed by PeakXV, RTP Global and DeVC, the leading project of realfast.ai is its Vayu platform, which emerged from the team’s real-world experience. The team believes that the only way to develop a meaningful AI assistant is on top of real work—commercial work that customers are willing to pay for because it has value. “Real work is messy, with many variables, and it’s a completely different dynamic from what you might expect in a lab environment,” Dharmadhikari told AIM. The Vayu platform currently integrates deeply with the Salesforce developer platform, giving AI agents access to the same tools that human developers use but through a different interface. This approach allows AI to assist in tasks that traditionally require human intuition and experience. One of the most innovative aspects of realfast’s approach lies in the way they train the AI agents. Unlike traditional AI models that rely on vast amounts of static data, realfast.ai’s models learn from observing human developers at work. “We realised that building an applied AI product is like teaching a child,” Ponnappa explained. “You need to break down your own thinking and create exercises that teach the AI the principles you’ve learned over years of experience.” This method has led to the development of AI agents capable of handling over 700 specific tasks related to unit testing, all based on how human developers approach these tasks. “It’s a combination of natural language processing, fine-tuning, and generating large quantities of data,” Sule added. The Moat realfast.ai’s first major success came when they started working with design partners to implement their AI-driven processes. “We’ve been in production with a hybrid team—human developers assisted by AI agents—on tasks like unit testing,” Dharmadhikari shared. “We’ve seen up to a 3x speed-up in these processes.” Sidu Ponnappa As Realfast.ai continues to grow, the founders remain focused on their mission to revolutionise the IT services industry through AI. “The largest challenge we face is that there’s no existing data for this type of work,” Ponnappa noted. “The process and craft by which a finished product is created aren’t tracked or recorded anywhere because there’s been no reason to do so until now.” With an example, the founders illustrated that the company was able to streamline 3,000 lines of legacy code for a company, which is very dirty and messy. This wouldn’t have been possible with just human engineers as it’s a tedious task. Currently, the platform uses models like ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, but does not rely on open-source models as they believe that their reasoning capabilities are nowhere close to the proprietary ones. Moreover, unlike everyone else making open-source AI agents, the realfast.ai platform is SOC 2 and ISO compliant. “We think of this platform as an Iron Man suit for the IT guys,” Ponnappa joked, noting that this is how they often pitch it to the investors. The Pivot They Needed In the early days, Dharmadhikari and Ponnappa, both with extensive experience in services, especially from their time at Infosys and ThoughtWorks, respectively, decided to start a boutique IT company focusing on complex systems integration, “a space we believed had significant untapped potential”. Sule had been an advisor for the team long before he came on board as a co-founder. This plan, however, took a drastic turn with the release of ChatGPT. The founders, already bullish on IT services, quickly recognised the transformative potential of AI. “Our strategy was always tool-oriented because value to customers comes from reliable delivery,” Ponnappa explained. “When ChatGPT dropped, it was unlike any tool we had ever seen. It wasn’t just a 10% improvement here or there; it was driving unprecedented changes across the entire lifecycle, from sales to coding.” Pivoting to this field, as they continued to integrate ChatGPT into their processes, the founders quickly realised the potential of AI to revolutionise the IT services sector. “We started to see that the way IT services will look in five years post-AI adoption will be completely different from today,” Ponnappa noted. “It’s a platform problem. You need a platform where AI tools, assistants, and humans can work together seamlessly.” This insight became the foundation of realfast.ai, a company dedicated to building an AI transformation platform that could support the unique needs of IT services companies. The goal was not just to enhance existing processes but to fundamentally change how services are delivered.
Vayu integrates deeply with the Salesforce developer platform, giving AI agents access to the same tools as the human developers.
Three industry veterans—Sidu Ponnappa, Aakash Dharmadhikari, and Steve Sule—found themselves at the crossroads. Originally setting out to build an IT services company, their journey took an unexpected turn with the arrival of ChatGPT in November 2022, which would redefine their approach to business and ultimately lead to the founding of realfast.ai.
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Mohit writes about AI in simple, explainable, and often funny words. He's especially passionate about chatting with those building AI for Bharat, with the occasional detour into AGI.