22. From Dot-Com Disruption to AI Utility: Cybersecurity Shifts, Rural TB Screening, and The Happiness Index with Karthik Tirupathi

Episode notes

“AI will become like internet. Everyone in every business will have to use AI just like the way we use electricity or we use water. It will become a utility.” Karthik Tirupathi, CEO and senior board executive in Healthcare IT, shares an operator’s view on how leaders can navigate disruption across markets and technology cycles. Karthik’s journey runs from early enterprise tech (including SAP and HP) to a decade as an entrepreneur building an education business preparing IT talent for Japan, to leading a healthcare software platform company through cybersecurity shocks and the early AI wave. Today, he works in board and advisory roles tied to AI-driven public health initiatives, with a focus on last-mile access. In this episode: 𝗔𝗜 𝗔𝘀 𝗔 𝗨𝘁𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 — Why Karthik believes the hype and fear cycles eventually normalize into operational necessity. 𝗗𝗼𝘁-𝗖𝗼𝗺 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗼𝗻𝘀 — How the internet boom separated “PowerPoint + homepage” businesses from real value creation. 𝗖𝘆𝗯𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝟮𝟬𝟬𝗫 — How post-COVID threat surfaces reshaped product and enterprise security expectations.