Biography
Maanas Mediratta is CEO and Co-Founder of Bridged Media, an AI Agent platform empowering media companies and event organizers to achieve measurable ROI through bespoke Small Language Models (SLMs) tailored for high-impact content funnels. Since launching Bridged in Barcelona in September 2022 (backed by Techstars '22), Maanas has led 2,000+ AI experiments across global publishers—from those serving 500 million monthly users to niche audiences of 50,000—delivering 300% ROI within 3-6 months and 3x engagement uplifts while keeping editorial control and human judgment at the center. Named CEO of the Year 2025, Maanas has scaled Bridged to break-even multiple times through disciplined innovation cycles that prioritize real-world outcomes over hype. His platform uses AI to identify trigger points in user journeys, enabling a sports publisher to increase email collection rates 10x by personalizing offers and eliminating guesswork. Before Bridged, Maanas founded NITL App (2020-2022), a news platform using machine learning to surface contextual social and environmental actions for readers. He began his career as Senior Analyst at Goldman Sachs (2013-2015), where he designed algorithms for 7 products serving 1,000+ users, led a $12M regulatory risk mitigation project achieving 85% risk reduction, and revolutionized storage systems cutting allocation time from 3 days to 2 hours. Maanas also founded CabAmigo, India's first cab-sharing application, acquired by Ola Cabs in 2016 after gaining 50,000+ users. A graduate of IIT, Maanas is fluent in English, Hindi, and Spanish, and serves as a thought leader on AI adoption in media and event tech.
Session
- AI For BuildersSpeaker
Debate 1 - Agents: The Real Platform Shift, or 2026's Most Overhyped Demo?
Tuesday 22 September, 12:00 – 12:55Auditorium StageEvery deck in 2026 says 'agentic.' Most agents still break the moment they touch a real workflow. Side A: agents are the genuine platform shift — the jump from copilots that suggest to systems that actually do the work, and the teams already shipping them in production are pulling ahead. Side B: 'agentic' is this cycle's most oversold demo — brittle, expensive, badly governed, a thin wrapper over the same models we already had. 55 minutes, two builders, one moderator who has actually run agents in prod, and an audience vote before and after.
With Damien Acheson, Dave Garcia
