When Sumit Verma was just a boy, he lost his father. Life could easily have pressed pause there, but instead, it lit a quiet fire in him. That fire carried him to one of the toughest doors in Indian education—IIT Kharagpur, where he earned a coveted degree in Computer Science and Engineering.
Armed with his skills, Sumit took a leap across continents to Japan, landing roles at the country’s tech giants Mercari and Rakuten. For four and a half years, he thrived—earning big salaries, living the dream many aspire to. Yet, amid Tokyo’s neon skyline, something felt incomplete. The farther he went, the louder his roots in India pulled him back.
And so, in a move few make, he returned. Not for comfort, but for challenge. “When I came back, I was overwhelmed by the pace of change in India. But I also saw gaps—where tech wasn’t just solving problems, it was sometimes creating them. That’s when I knew it was time to take responsibility,” he recalls.
In June 2025, Sumit founded Responsible AI Labs, a startup with a bold mission: to build frameworks that ensure AI is not only powerful, but ethical. His team is developing the RAIL Frameworks, tools designed to test and monitor AI across fairness, safety, and toxicity. The goal? To stop algorithms from quietly harming people—whether it’s bias in hiring or unsafe outputs that lead to real-world consequences.
For Sumit, this is not abstract. He has read stories of AI leading to rejection, exclusion, even despair. “When technology makes someone feel less human, we’ve failed,” he says. “As builders, it’s our duty to do better.”
The irony? Just as he launched his startup, the phone rang with offers from global tech giants—Meta’s London office, Google India. Most would have taken the call. Sumit didn’t. He chose instead to gamble on his vision.
Today, his journey reads like a counter-story to the usual script. From hardship to IIT, from Japan’s gleaming towers back to India’s buzzing chaos, he isn’t chasing the smoothest life—he’s building the meaningful one.
Because sometimes, the bravest move isn’t leaving home. It’s coming back.
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