Titan of Tech - Sudhir Bhojwani of ORO Labs

Sudhir Bhojwani is no stranger to the complexity of enterprise procurement.

With over a decade of leadership experience at SAP Ariba under his belt, he's now channeling that expertise into building something transformative.

As CEO and co-founder of ORO Labs, Bhojwani - alongside fellow co-founders Yuan Tung (CTO) and Lalitha Rajagopalan (Strategy & Operations) - is rethinking how procurement functions in the modern enterprise.

Founded almost five years ago, ORO Labs emerged not from a single lightbulb moment, but through sustained introspection.

Bhojwani's time at SAP Ariba exposed him to persistent challenges within procurement workflows. He led multiple initiatives aimed at improving user experience but repeatedly encountered a frustrating reality: even the most polished tools often failed to truly meet user needs.

The realization struck after he left SAP. Bhojwani reflected on his own experience as a business user within a large organization.

"Everything I cared for happened outside my own tool," he admits. Rather than empowering users, legacy procurement systems functioned primarily as transaction recorders - glorified accounting ledgers rather than enablers of agility and speed.

ORO Labs was created in direct response to this gap.

At its core, the company has built a procurement orchestration platform - an intelligent, AI-driven layer that sits above traditional transactional systems. This orchestration layer doesn't just log transactions; it actively guides users through them, adapts to varying workflows, and ensures compliance and transparency throughout.

According to Bhojwani, traditional procurement systems are "fundamentally transactional" and ill-equipped for the dynamic needs of modern enterprises.

ORO Labs' solution introduces what he calls an "engagement layer" that brings together automation, data interpretation, and user guidance.

Unlike rigid systems that expect users to follow a fixed process, ORO Labs embraces flexibility - allowing different users to reach the same compliant outcome via different routes.

That flexibility is powered, in large part, by AI. Bhojwani's passion for artificial intelligence predates ORO Labs.

In fact, he spent a year immersed in natural language processing before launching the company - experimenting with open-source libraries and building models at personal expense. His early commitment to AI has paid dividends: ORO Labs now leads the pack in bringing agentic AI into enterprise procurement.

Their platform is already in production with large customers, using AI agents to handle tasks traditionally executed by humans - particularly around compliance checks and risk assessments.

"The agentic workflow complements humans," Bhojwani says, "making decisions where it can and escalating where it must."

This hybrid model, he believes, strikes the right ethical balance and builds trust - especially important in an area as sensitive as enterprise procurement.

Trust and responsibility are themes Bhojwani returns to frequently. ORO Labs was the first company globally to be certified under ISO 42001, an international standard for the ethical use of AI. This underscores their commitment to not only innovation but also principled deployment of powerful technologies.

What sets ORO Labs apart in a competitive field, according to Bhojwani, is its ability to simplify complexity at scale.

"We're built for large enterprises," he explains. "We're talking about complex data, complex processes, complex IT landscapes. And we're still able to deliver a delightful user experience." That's no small feat, and it's why some of the world's largest organizations in financial services, life sciences and manufacturing are turning to ORO.

Despite the rapidly evolving AI landscape, Bhojwani is pragmatic about what lies ahead.

"The adoption curve is wild," he says. "Gone are the days when you take ten years to adopt technology - now it's ten weeks." His message to other CEOs and procurement leaders? "Be bold. Either you figure out how to leverage AI - or someone else will."

What makes Sudhir Bhojwani a Titan of Tech?

It's his rare blend of deep domain expertise, product vision, and human-centric thinking. Bhojwani doesn't just want to fix procurement - he wants people to enjoy it. "Nobody should say procurement sucks," he says. "It should be better than Amazon."

With ORO Labs, he's well on the way to making that bold vision a reality.