Madhu Basu is a serial entrepreneur and IT visionary with a track record of building and scaling tech ventures. Born in India, he launched his first company in 1998, selling it within eight months before relocating to the US. Over the years, Basu founded five companies, including three IT firms in Austin with operations in India, and served as president of a non-profit supporting the local Indian community.
Married to Sheela with two children, Charita and Praneel, Basu balances family with his passion for solving business inefficiencies. Unnanu, his latest venture launched in 2020, is an Austin-based AI startup tackling the flaws in traditional search and recruiting. Basu's frustration with keyword-only ATS systems where 80% of resumes go unmatched due to rigid matching, sparked Unnanu's creation.
The platform uses patented technology to map resumes to jobs contextually, incorporating semantic vectors, graphs, and KPIs for 95% accuracy. In the podcast, Basu emphasizes Unnanu's focus on private, in-house AI: "Your data never leaves your walls," ensuring zero exposure to public LLMs. From Unnanu Hire for bias-free recruiting to enterprise search, it empowers businesses to unlock the 80% of private data overlooked by generic models.
What Is the Future of Search According to Madhu Basu?
Basu envisions a future where search transcends keywords to deliver intent-driven, contextual results much like human conversation. In the episode, he critiques current AI hype: "Search is for finding, not generating," distinguishing tools like ChatGPT from Unnanu's precise retrieval. With three patents and one provisional in 2025, Unnanu addresses the $300 billion annual loss from poor search, per Gartner, by analyzing unstructured data across silos.For enterprises, this means faster insights: teams query "Q3 sales trends from Slack and Salesforce" for cited summaries in seconds. Basu highlights multimodal capabilities text, voice, images, for remote work, and proactive agents that surface trends pre-query. In 2025's hybrid environments, Unnanu's cloud-agnostic design ensures scalability, from SMBs to Fortune 500s, while prioritizing GDPR/HIPAA compliance. As Basu notes, "Unnanu gets relevant information to people or businesses faster," turning data chaos into actionable intelligence.
Why Do Traditional Search and Recruiting Tools Fail?
Basu pulls no punches on why most tools flop: they ignore context, leading to irrelevant results and frustrated users. In recruiting, keyword matching misses 80% of qualified candidates, inflating time-to-hire and bias. Basu shares a personal anecdote from PMCS Services, his 16-year IT consulting firm: manual resume screening wasted hours until Unnanu automated it.Broader failures stem from public AI risks—data leaks via third-party models—and over-reliance on generative hype without privacy guardrails. Basu warns of existential threats: breaches cost $4.45 million on average, eroding trust in regulated sectors. In the podcast, he ties this to Austin's ecosystem: while talent abounds, tools must evolve to match the city's growth, as ATC champions. Unnanu's "triangular search" fixes this by weighting relevance with business metrics, reducing abandonment and boosting conversions by 25%.
How Is Unnanu Revolutionizing Enterprise Search and Hiring?
Unnanu isn't just a tool it's a paradigm shift. The platform's in-app features, like messaging, referrals, and video interviews, streamline hiring end-to-end. Basu details how it anonymizes resumes for bias-free evaluation, increasing diverse hires by 30%. For search, its SAFE AI (Secure, Auditable, Fair, Explainable) embeds encryption and audits, preventing leaks from unsandboxed calls.In the episode, Basu discusses 2023 plans: raising $3M in seed funding and hiring 12+ staff, now realized with expansions into enterprise analytics. Integrations with Salesforce and Jira make deployment seamless, cutting setup time by 25%. For Austin's tech scene, Unnanu embodies local innovation—participating in Founder Institute and Galvanize while solving global problems like data silos in e-commerce and healthcare.
Basu's chat with Thom Singer distills decades of wisdom into actionable gems. He urges founders to solve real pains: "I always found businesses to solve other businesses’ problems." On AI, prioritize private models to leverage your 80% unique data. For scaling, blend discipline with empathy—clean floors if needed—to build legacy teams. And in search, context is king: move beyond keywords to intent for true efficiency.
Madhu Basu's appearance on Thom Singer's Coolest Thing Podcast illuminates the future of search: secure, contextual, and value-driven.
As Unnanu scales with its patented tech, Basu's story inspires Austin's ecosystem and beyond. Tune in at https://thomsinger.com/podcast/Madhu-Basu/ for the full conversation, and visit https://unnanu.com/ to explore how Unnanu can transform your data challenges. In a world of AI hype, Basu's grounded approach proves: innovation wins when it protects what matters most.