Go after the hard problems: NVIDIA’s Vishal Dhupar tells the Indian tech community

Vishal Dhupar, Managing Director of Asia South at NVIDIA, urged the Indian tech community to think big and go after the hard problems.

Speaking at the 15th edition of YourStory’s annual TechSparks summit in Bengaluru, Dhupar highlighted the power of ambitious thinking and said, “If we think big, we will work towards it.” 

With the industry’s future in sight, Dhupar stressed that vision is “extremely important.” He also encouraged the audience to embrace innovation.

"Innovate along the way, because with vision comes a lot of opportunities to build up," he said.

The power of problems

Citing the example of NVIDIA, Dhupar explained that the tech giant was built on the simple premise of going after "hard problems.”

“We go after hard problems that general purpose compute cannot solve, as long as it has a societal impact and can grow big someday. We didn't know the definition of what big really means. But we absolutely knew that general purpose can do many things well, but there must be certain things it can't do well,” he elaborated, in a fireside chat with Shradha Sharma, Founder and CEO of YourStory.

Going after the hard problems may entail pain, but the result is worth the effort. "You didn't ask me to come [to TechSparks] when I started the company. You're asking me to come because now you recognise that, yes, what I went after was good,” remarked Dhupar.

He believes problem statements are the gateway to success.

“Once you see the problem statements coming in, you'll start solving them. You'll start bringing money. Once the money starts coming, you will start climbing the ladder.

"Once you climb the ladder, you will be shoulder to shoulder, you will be able to work with the world of the West, at the same length and breadth, and we have done it so many times."

NVIDIA's growth

NVIDIA went after the hard problems, and now it is a force to reckon with in the fields of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. Its innovative GPU technology has been instrumental in driving advancements in various industries.

The company’s market value is around $3 trillion.

NVIDIA's groundbreaking work in gaming hardware laid the foundation for its subsequent success in AI.

Commenting on NVDIA's focus on solutions for game development and what it learnt from it, Dhupar said, “You absolutely need to create food for yourself. And the first food that we created was called video games. Video games were so inspiring because we synthesised the real world with the digital world. We learned the

'how' part of the world. And that 'how' helped us to understand how AI gets applied,” said Dhupar.

He continued, “I knew that computer graphics was going to be as popular for video games as the personal computer would be. Every human likes to play after work. So someday everybody will play, and that gave me the volumes... You have got to think out of the box.”

Leverage resources

Dhupar also urged the Indian tech community to take advantage of open source.

People in the West are conducting extensive research and sharing it through open source, he pointed out. “Take advantage of that open source and start working... Be the practitioner. Get onto that train and start practising it."

“Who better than Indians to take advantage of open source?” he remarked, emphasising India’s ability to leverage these resources.