Archive · 24 Sep 2026
IIT Bombay Graduate’s AI Becomes Successor to Drift
Sachin Bhat is an engineer from Karnataka who studied at IIT Bombay.
He was also a chess player who won a national school competition at age fourteen.
After moving to the United States, he helped create software that could understand and organize sales conversations.
He later worked at Rippling, where he led teams building business software.
Now he is the chief technology officer of a company called 1mind.
1mind makes computer-generated people that can join video meetings and talk to customers.
The company says its AI must respond quickly and behave naturally during important sales discussions.
Clari and Salesloft chose 1mind to follow Drift, a famous sales chatbot.
Bhat also keeps an engineering team in Bengaluru.
Sachin Bhat, an IIT Bombay alumnus from Karnataka, co-founded 1mind and serves as its chief technology officer.
1mind builds multimodal AI avatars that join video calls, speak with a face and voice, and support enterprise sales meetings.
Clari and Salesloft selected 1mind as the official successor to Drift, a well-known sales chatbot.
The company has raised $40 million from Battery Ventures and Primary Venture Partners at a reported $180 million valuation.
Bhat previously co-founded Scribe, worked at Rippling, and helped develop products used by companies including HubSpot, Nutanix, and Boston Dynamics.
- Who
- Sachin Bhat and 1mind, along with enterprise software companies including Clari and Salesloft.
- What
- 1mind has developed multimodal AI avatars for live enterprise sales meetings and was selected as Drift’s official successor by Clari and Salesloft.
- When
- Bhat co-founded Scribe in 2017; Rippling launched its PEO product in 2020; 1mind’s current funding and client figures are presented without a specific date.
- Where
- The work spans Silicon Valley, the United States, and 1mind’s engineering team in Bengaluru, India.
- Why
- Bhat aimed to build AI that could make real-time operational decisions and perform naturally in sales conversations rather than merely generate chatbot responses.
- Founder
- Sachin Bhat, co-founder and chief technology officer of 1mind
- Education
- Engineering Physics graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay
- 1mind funding
- $40 million raised from Battery Ventures and Primary Venture Partners
- Reported valuation
- $180 million
- Enterprise clients
- More than 60
- Drift successor
- Clari and Salesloft selected 1mind as Drift’s official successor
- Earlier company
- Scribe reached approximately $400,000 in annual recurring revenue within five months and was acquired by Rippling in 2019