Karan Kartikeya

I’m Karan Kartikeya, currently pursuing an MS in Cognitive Systems at Universität Ulm, with a background spanning AI/ML, fullstack development, and startup leadership. My work centers on multimodal systems, reinforcement learning, and applied LLM technologies.
I’m the founding engineer at SlideCoach, where I lead AI model development for personalized presentation feedback, fine-tuning LLMs with LoRA and PEFT, and integrating multimodal inputs across slides, text, and voice. Earlier, I founded and served as CEO of 7Svar, taking it from an early idea to B2B pilot partnerships with universities and companies, generating over $15,000 in pilot revenue. I’ve also worked as a Backend Developer at BharatX (YC ’22), where I led development of a WooCommerce plugin for fintech integrations and redesigned reconciliation APIs to reduce delinquency rates, and at ZuAI (formerly ZuPay), building and securing REST APIs in Python and Flask.

I spent time at Accenture as an Associate Developer managing SAP BASIS infrastructure, and as a Research Assistant at Universität Ulm’s Human Factors department, working on car simulation environments and cognitive load research using SILAB.

I was selected for the GitHub Externship, chosen among 80 participants from over 15,000 applicants, and ranked 55th globally in MLH INIT, a one-week hackathon among the top 60 teams. I also won SAWO’s Week of Docs for building documentation and a website integrating SAWO and Stripe, and I currently hold the Stibet Scholarship at Universität Ulm for academic performance. I hold a B.Tech in Computer Science from Graphic Era Hill University.