In a world where artificial intelligence and digital platforms define how people live, work, and connect, Surabhi Sankhla stands out as a product leader shaping the next generation of AI-powered systems. Her career, spanning academic research, global consulting, hypergrowth startups, and Big Tech, reflects a clear mission: transforming advanced AI capabilities into scalable digital products that empower millions. From architecting digital platforms that reimagined national labor markets and banking operations to leading global AI products at Amazon Alexa and Kore.ai, Surabhi has consistently built systems that merge intelligence with impact. She embodies a new generation of product leaders who bridge deep technical understanding with strategic vision to bring AI innovations to life. Her ongoing work is a testament to her contributions to shaping and furthering the field of AI and making it accessible to users at scale.
Building AI Foundations
Surabhi's passion for AI and autonomous systems began while she was pursuing Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, one of India's most prestigious institutions that is consistently ranked among the top engineering schools worldwide. Her early research was unified by a central theme: how to design intelligent and self-governing systems that operate efficiently under constraints, infer structure from limited information, and remain resilient in dynamic environments. She explored this across three domains—distributed sensor networks, computer vision, and security—each providing a distinct perspective on building adaptive, intelligent architectures. Her research combined novelty with high-impact real-world applications, earning recognition as a published author in coveted peer-reviewed publications.
Hierarchical Neighbor Graphs in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs): Her work introduced hierarchical neighbor graphs, a new distributed topology control mechanism that allowed a network of sensors to self-organize using only local knowledge. The system could dynamically reorganize itself as nodes' battery power depleted, extending network lifetime while minimizing information loss. The approach is particularly crucial for sensor networks deployed in remote unattended areas, where it's not practical to recharge and replace batteries regularly. Hierarchical neighbor graphs significantly outperformed contemporary topological control mechanisms, with up to 100% higher network lifetimes and 250% higher stability period till the first node dies, resulting in information loss. This was an early demonstration of scalable, self-optimizing network intelligence, akin to how modern AI systems manage resources adaptively.
'Spotlight' algorithm for Intruder Detection: Surabhi's undergrad research thesis studied intruder tracking with non-stealthy sensors that can be used for surveillance—from tracking animals to monitoring borders between nations. She explored various sleep scheduling algorithms for both motion and presence sensors that can maximize the life of the network without compromising on intruder detection. Her work culminated in the development of a new scheduling algorithm called Spotlight that worked by moving a spotlight, a cluster of adjoining sensors that are turned on at the same time, to track intrusion. The proposed algorithm significantly outperformed existing models like Random Independent Sleep by achieving comparable detection probability at a fraction (~25%) of energy consumption, thereby significantly increasing the lifetime of the network. Another marquee contribution of her work was the definition of a new intruder model, the Ideal Intruder, that knows the entire sleep schedule of sensors in the field. This model introduced a new way of conceptualizing adversarial behavior in surveillance networks and has since been cited and adopted by researchers as a foundation for developing and analyzing similar models. By providing this influential framework, her work expanded the methodological toolkit of the field of research and played a pivotal role in advancing the state of the art in designing more resilient surveillance strategies.
Single View 3D Reconstruction: Another distinctive contribution of her work was the development of a grammar-based graphical interface for single-view 3D reconstruction. This system drew upon AI principles of knowledge representation and reasoning by encoding user-provided geometric relationships—such as parallelism, orthogonality, and incidence—into a symbolic grammar. These symbolic constraints were then compiled into a unified optimization problem, allowing the system to reason holistically and generate accurate 3D reconstructions from a single image. By abstracting human input into a machine-interpretable form and automating the reasoning process, her work anticipated modern AI-driven approaches to vision and modeling, marking a significant advance in computer vision and interactive systems.
Surabhi's early research introduced her to the key principles that underpin modern AI—prediction, self-learning, and adaptive decision-making—and laid the foundation for her future career in building intelligent and scalable AI products that learn, adapt, and improve autonomously over time.
Digital Platforms for Large-Scale Transformations
From the very start of her career, Surabhi has spearheaded large-scale digital transformations that marked tectonic changes in how industries operate globally. During her time at the Boston Consulting Group, she worked with the Ministry of Labor in Saudi Arabia to launch Taqat (also called the National Labor Gateway), a unified platform for the labor market targeting over 20 million users. This platform that connected job seekers, employers, training institutes, and government bodies was the first of its kind to meet the end-to-end needs of a labor market at such a large scale. The initiative emerged in response to the 2014 oil price crash, which had exposed a critical skills gap in Saudi Arabia, with over 70% of youth lacking employable skills. Surabhi played a pivotal role in defining the product vision and coordinating a consortium of seven global IT vendors to ensure launch readiness, helping the country tackle one of its most urgent labor market challenges. The success of the effort is evident in the fact that the platform helped find over 120k jobs in less than a year, and it continues to be a key cornerstone in achieving Saudi Vision 2030. This experience marked her foray into product management for large-scale digital platforms—defining product vision, coordinating multi-vendor technology delivery, and ensuring real-world adoption at a national scale.
Surabhi also led a landmark digital transformation at the State Bank of India (SBI), India's largest bank, revamping its talent management by launching a new performance platform for over 170,000 employees. The initiative introduced a data-driven, target-based approach that replaced subjective evaluations with transparent, merit-focused assessments. By embedding objectivity and accountability into performance reviews, the system fostered a culture of meritocracy at one of India's most influential financial institutions, translating into significant improvements in both business performance and financial outcomes in the short and long term. Surabhi helped with the nationwide rollout of the new performance management platform (called Saksham) that enabled real-time tracking of employee performance against monthly targets. The platform was underpinned by deep integrations with multiple banking systems (including core banking, loan management, and other operational systems), allowing for seamless, automated measurement of each employee's contribution. She played a pivotal role in defining cross-departmental key performance indicators (KPIs), establishing standardized measurement frameworks, and architecting the data flows that automated performance tracking across teams.
Leading Innovation with Predictive AI
During her time at BCG, Surabhi played a central role in helping a client launch a new digital-first bank in India, an ambitious initiative designed to overcome the absence of a physical branch network in one of the world's largest banking markets. She led the development of a first-of-its-kind AI-enabled lending platform that operated entirely online. Targeting small and medium businesses selling on e-commerce marketplaces, the platform leveraged AI and data analytics to process cash flows, transaction histories, and even online reviews to underwrite loans digitally, setting a new benchmark for how banking could be delivered in India. Her efforts culminated in securing a landmark joint venture with e-commerce giant Amazon even before the bank officially launched, a rare achievement that spoke to the strength of the lending platform she had conceptualized and its disruptive potential.
Her early work in banking further inspired Surabhi to pioneer another AI-powered predictive system during her time at Uber—this time to help financial institutions better manage the risk of default among drivers who had taken car loans. She built data models that used indicators such as the number of days a driver drives on Uber, trips in a day, and more to predict a loan default and allowed banks to adjust the interest rates accordingly. Her work led to Uber's partnership with a leading bank as well as automobile giants such as Toyota to extend innovative vehicle financing to drivers.
At ClearMetal, a predictive logistics startup focused on global supply chains, Surabhi witnessed how AI could fundamentally reshape operations. By modeling shipment patterns, historic bottlenecks, and external disruptors such as port congestion, the team developed tools that forecasted delivery times with precision, allowing companies to adjust their plans in advance rather than scrambling after delays.
Transforming Experiences on Amazon's AI Assistant
As a senior product manager at Amazon, Surabhi built and launched products on Alexa, the company's voice AI assistant, used by millions worldwide. As part of Alexa Smart Home, she spearheaded the launch of Alexa Hunches, a breakthrough feature powered by AI models that enabled Alexa to anticipate user needs and act proactively. For example, Alexa can use AI to understand usage patterns and detect if lights have been left on accidentally and turn them off to save energy and provide peace of mind. This marked an inflection point in Alexa's evolution, expanding the envelope of what a digital assistant could do by positioning it as a truly intelligent, autonomous AI assistant. The launch was widely covered by leading tech outlets, including TechCrunch, PCMag, The Verge, Tech Radar, Gadget Advisor, Venture Beat, and Review Geek, and was recognized as a key differentiator for Alexa among global assistants. By driving such critical product innovation, Surabhi helped grow her customer base by 40% in just two years.
Surabhi also helped launch a new audio platform called Amp that revolutionized live radio by letting anyone host a radio show on their phone. Designed as a two-sided platform for both creators and listeners, Amp enabled people to build and participate in interactive audio communities, blurring the line between audience and broadcaster. As the product lead for growth, she launched the experience on Alexa, Android, and other channels, designing and building the experience from the ground up. Together, her efforts contributed to ~65% of the total active users and were crucial for the success of marquee shows that featured celebrity artists such as Nicki Minaj, with thousands of live listeners tuned in. Her work and product leadership were recognized at the highest level when Amazon ran a profile spotlight showcasing her contributions.
AI for Employee Productivity
In addition to consumer-focused products, Surabhi has been instrumental in driving the adoption of AI in enterprises and delivering direct business impact. In her current role as VP of Product Management at Kore.ai, she launched an AI for Work platform that helps employees be more productive. The platform allows enterprises to build and launch AI agents that can help employees quickly search through the enterprise data spread across numerous applications, get insights from long documents, create content, and automate repetitive tasks. Surabhi conceptualized the search experience with integrations to 70+ connectors, launched a marketplace of pre-built agents, and built critical governance features for a secure, compliant, and scalable use of AI. To accelerate the go-to-market effort, she also drove integrations with top hyperscalers, including Amazon and Microsoft. Her product leadership has been pivotal in earning Kore.ai top recognition from global research firms, with Gartner naming it a leader in Conversational and Generative AI and Forrester Wave recognizing it among the foremost Cognitive Search Platforms.
Surabhi's leadership in enterprise AI dates back to her time at YaloChat, an early conversational AI startup pioneering customer engagement on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, well before the space became mainstream. There, she led product initiatives to empower support agents with faster, more accurate responses. She spearheaded the launch of an AI-driven chat console that suggested the next best reply based on company policies, cutting wait times and improving resolution rates. Her efforts boosted adoption of the tool by 30% and delivered a 20% gain in agent productivity, directly raising customer satisfaction scores.
A Multifaceted Leader
Surabhi's career is a testament to the transformative power of artificial intelligence and digital platforms and her unwavering commitment to advancing the field. From her early research in intelligent systems at IIT Delhi to leading large-scale transformations at BCG, pioneering predictive platforms at Uber and ClearMetal, and shaping globally scaled AI products at Amazon and Kore.ai, she has consistently built and deployed AI systems that deliver measurable impact. Her journey reflects not only deep technical understanding but also excellence in end-to-end product leadership—from strategy and vision to execution and market impact. Across roles as a researcher, consultant, product innovator, and now business leader, she has driven the evolution of AI from concept to large-scale deployment, creating intelligent, user-centric products that transform how people live and work.
As a woman in technology and product leadership, Surabhi stands as a beacon of inspiration for the next generation—demonstrating that with vision, rigor, and strategic insight, product management can be a powerful force for advancing AI and digital transformation globally. Beyond her professional achievements, she is a dedicated mentor, fostering inclusive innovation and ensuring that AI-driven products and platforms create opportunity for all.
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