Welcome to Spirelia
Why we do what we do
Who we are
Spirelia is an AI native company we are building and is currently incubated at IIT Madras. We build agentic AI systems for innovation and R&D team typically at large organizations. They are responsible for figuring out what technology bets to make, and when, we help them make these decisions better with our expertise in innovation methods.
At present (April 2026), we have the first version of our first product, Utkarsha, that aids technology forecasting and roadmapping. The methodologies behind it has been developed and refined over years by researchers and practitioners. We have chosen 2. ATRA (Advanced Technology Roadmap Architecture) was built by MIT Prof de Weck during his time at Airbus. FORMAT was developed by Politecnico di Milano Prof Cascini and team including Dr Bala, our founder while working on an EU funded project for manufacturing technologies. Both of these methods are integrable and are mainly based on the intersection of few knowledge bases across patent intelligence, R&D strategy, and competitive foresight.
Why Spirelia
The view we take is both stage gating and innovation methods are structured enough for applying to a wide range of domains and helpful in the whole innovation process. Application of these methods is nuanced and we are constantly adding these skills to our AI products and helping humans in the loop, who will ultimately take better allocation decisions.
We started this substack because the conversations we have internally — about how AI is changing the way organizations make innovation decisions — deserve a wider audience. We anyway keep speaking to innovation leaders across industries and their views are worth spreading as well.
What to expect here
We write about AI in innovation and R&D strategy. Not the hype layer, but the basic/mundane/ops reality: how agentic systems can change technology decisioning, what it means to build auditable reasoning, what it means to be grounded in a forecasting workflow, where human judgment still matters and where it is being quietly replaced.
Expect one post every two weeks mostly analytics, case related, sector-specific technology reads. Some will be more direct dispatches from building AI products in the field.
If you work in an innovation function, lead R&D at a manufacturing or deep-tech company, or are thinking seriously about where AI fits into long-horizon strategy, this is written for you. We can only promise to keep it short, meaningful and worth the reading time. Being the story tellers we are expect at least one story per post.
If this is relevant to your work, subscribe or know someone who runs an innovation or technology strategy function, share this with them. Thanks for being part of the community.
