Building Intelligence: Garima Bharadwaj, Co-Founder & CTO, Enlite, on the Next Era of Smart Infrastructure

As buildings become increasingly connected, intelligent, and data-driven, the role of technology in shaping the built environment has never been more significant. From improving operational efficiency and sustainability to enabling real-time decision-making, digital innovation is redefining how infrastructure is designed, managed, and experienced.

At the forefront of this transformation is Garima Bharadwaj, Co-Founder and CTO of Enlite, a deep-tech company focused on bringing intelligence to buildings through wireless controls, AI-driven analytics, and cloud-native building management solutions. With a background spanning high-growth startups and product-led innovation, Garima has played a key role in developing technologies that help organizations optimize building performance while advancing sustainability goals.

In this conversation with Biltrax Media, Garima discusses the evolution of smart buildings, the growing role of artificial intelligence in infrastructure management, the challenges of building deep-tech products in India, and the opportunities that lie ahead for the future of intelligent infrastructure.

1. You began your career as an early team member at high-growth companies such as OYO and The Moms Co. What motivated your transition from consumer-focused businesses to deep-tech innovation in the built environment?

My earlier years were genuinely formative. Being part of companies that were scaling fast taught me a lot about building with urgency, staying close to the customer, and operating under pressure. But over time, I found myself drawn to problems that were more fundamental in nature. Buildings are infrastructure that every business and every person depends on, and yet the technology running them had barely evolved in decades. That gap between the criticality of the built environment and the primitiveness of how it was managed felt like exactly the kind of problem worth spending a significant part of your career on. The complexity of it, spanning hardware, software,  data, and physical infrastructure, was what made it compelling rather than daunting. 

2. As Co-Founder and CTO of Enlite, what was the core problem in the building management ecosystem that you set out to solve?

Buildings were being managed reactively and in silos. Facility teams were responding to failures after they happened, working across disconnected systems that shared no data, and relying heavily on manual oversight for tasks that should have been automated long ago. The deeper problem was that the existing approach had no learning built into it. Every day started from the same baseline regardless of what the building had experienced the day before. We set out to change that by building a system that understands a building’s behaviour over time and makes decisions dynamically based on that understanding, rather than executing fixed instructions written during commissioning.

3. Enlite’s philosophy goes beyond automation and focuses on operational intelligence. How do you define the difference between the two?

Automation executes instructions. Operational intelligence makes decisions. That distinction sounds simple, but it changes everything about how a building is managed.  An automated system will turn off the lights in a room at a scheduled time. An intelligent system understands that the room has been occupied later than usual three times this week, factors in the meeting scheduled on the calendar, and adjusts accordingly.  Automation is static by nature. It does what it was told, consistently. Operational intelligence is dynamic. It accounts for context, learns from patterns, and improves its decision-making over time. For buildings, which are living environments that change constantly, the difference between the two is that one manages, and the other actually understands.

4. Legacy buildings often struggle with outdated systems and fragmented technologies. What are some of the biggest challenges in making existing infrastructure smarter and more efficient?

The first challenge is that legacy systems were never designed to communicate with anything outside themselves. Each one speaks its own language, was installed by a different vendor, and holds data that nobody else in the building can access. Bringing intelligence to that environment means working with what exists rather than replacing it,  which requires deep protocol knowledge and a non-invasive integration approach. 

The second challenge is institutional. The people managing these buildings have built workflows around the limitations of existing systems. Change requires not just new technology but new ways of working, and that takes time and trust. 

What makes it solvable is wireless-first architecture. When you can deploy sensors and integrate systems without civil work or downtime, the barriers drop significantly, and the conversation shifts from feasibility to value.

5. Enlite recently secured a patent for its wireless building management technology. Could you tell us about the innovation behind the solution and its significance for the industry?

Patents have never defined the building automation industry. Most solutions rely on off-the-shelf hardware and vendor-locked software. Consequently, companies rarely sought patent protection because these technologies offered little that was truly original.

We have taken a different approach. We currently hold six patent filings across various layers of our technology stack. One patent has already been granted in India for a building management system that enables wireless equipment control. The remaining filings cover cloud-native building management systems, BMS controller configuration, domain-specific conversational intelligence for buildings, and the orchestration of containerized services in localized computing environments.

Taken together, they represent something the industry has not seen before: a comprehensive IP architecture built around making buildings genuinely intelligent, from the wireless control layer to conversational AI running at the edge.

6. Artificial Intelligence is rapidly transforming industries worldwide. How do you see AI reshaping the way buildings are monitored, controlled, and optimized?

The most significant shift AI brings to buildings is the move from rule-based responses to contextual decision-making. Traditional systems respond to thresholds. AI-driven systems understand patterns, anticipate conditions, and act before problems surface. A building in Delhi in peak summer heat operates under completely different conditions than the same building in February. AI factors that in continuously, rather than applying the same logic regardless of context. 

What excites me most about where this is heading is edge-native intelligence, where models run directly on the hardware rather than in the cloud. That means the system can generate diagnostics and act on them before an alert even reaches a dashboard.  The building becomes genuinely autonomous, self-measured, self-corrected, and self-optimized in ways that were simply not possible before. 

7. Enlite’s approach combines edge intelligence, wireless control, and AI-driven decision-making. What advantages does this offer compared to conventional building management systems?

Conventional BMS emerged in an era when connectivity was expensive, computing remained centralized, and buildings functioned as largely static environments. Today, those conditions no longer exist. Buildings generate vast amounts of data, systems communicate in real time, and operational demands change constantly. Our approach reflects this reality and aligns with the way modern buildings actually operate.

Wireless control enables deployment without disruption, making both new installations and retrofits genuinely practical. Edge intelligence means decisions happen at the point of action rather than after a round-trip to a remote server, which reduces latency and cloud dependency. And AI-driven decision-making means the system gets more capable over time rather than staying fixed at whatever logic was programmed during commissioning. Together, these three elements produce a system that is faster to deploy, cheaper to operate, and significantly more intelligent than anything conventional BMS can offer. 

8. As someone who has led multiple product and platform iterations, what lessons have you learned about building and scaling deep-tech products in India?

A lot has changed in the built environment. Equipment has become more sophisticated, facades have transformed, and construction methods have modernized significantly. What has been remarkably slow to change is the technology actually running these buildings. That is both the opportunity and the hard truth of working in this space. 

The most difficult lesson in deep tech is that once you commit to a technology direction, you are in it for the long term. There is no quick pivot. The choices you make early about protocols, hardware architecture, and data models follow you for years. That demands a level of conviction that is genuinely hard to sustain, especially in an ecosystem that often rewards faster, more visible wins. 

What that teaches you over time is that depth is the only real differentiator. Building something foundational, something that holds up as markets mature and standards evolve, requires staying technically close to your work every single day and resisting shortcuts that feel harmless in the moment but compound into real problems later.

9. Enlite has successfully attracted institutional investment and continues to expand its technology portfolio. What factors do investors look for when evaluating deep-tech infrastructure companies today?

The conversations have shifted meaningfully. Investors evaluating deep-tech infrastructure today are looking for defensibility that goes beyond market timing. They want to see proprietary technology, not just a product built on top of existing platforms. They want evidence that the founding team understands the problem at a depth that is hard to replicate quickly. Moreover, they want proof points, real deployments with verifiable outcomes, not projections built on assumptions. 

There is also a growing appreciation for the durability of infrastructure businesses. The sales cycles are longer, and the capital requirements are higher, but the retention is strong, and the switching costs are real. For investors with the right time horizon, that profile is increasingly attractive, particularly as ESG accountability and energy efficiency mandates create structural tailwinds for intelligent building technology.

10. What advice would you give to young professionals, particularly women, who aspire to build careers in technology, engineering, and entrepreneurship?

Stay technically curious for as long as you possibly can. The temptation to move into management or strategy early is real, and those paths have value, but the founders and builders who have the most impact are usually the ones who never lost their relationship with the actual work.

For women, my advice is simple: do not wait for permission to claim your place in spaces where you are underrepresented. Being one of the few can feel uncomfortable at first, but that discomfort fades when you consistently contribute and demonstrate your value. Seek out people who are genuinely invested in your growth, not just those who offer surface-level encouragement. Then, nurture those relationships.

Most importantly, stay clear about what you want to achieve. A strong sense of purpose will help you navigate the challenges that inevitably arise. It will also keep you moving forward when the journey becomes more demanding than you expected.

11. Looking ahead, how do you envision the future of intelligent buildings and digital infrastructure in India over the next decade?

India is at a genuinely interesting point for the built environment. The pace of commercial construction, the scale of institutional stock that needs upgrading, and the growing regulatory intent around energy efficiency all point in the same direction. Intelligent buildings are moving from a premium consideration to a baseline expectation,  and that shift will accelerate over the next decade. 

I expect the industry to drive convergence across multiple fronts. Companies will connect building systems through unified intelligence layers. They will also integrate physical and digital infrastructure as edge computing becomes more widespread. In parallel, organizations will link ESG accountability directly to operational decisions. Thus, they will manage sustainability in real time instead of treating it as a reporting exercise.

The buildings we design and retrofit today will shape India’s infrastructure for the next 30 to 50 years. Therefore, getting the intelligence layer right is not just a technology decision. It is also a long-term economic and environmental imperative. I believe the industry is beginning to recognize this and treat it with the seriousness it deserves.

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Disclaimer: The information herein is based upon information obtained in good faith from sources believed to be reliable. All such information and opinions can be subject to change. Furthermore, The image featured in this article is for representation purposes only. It does not in any way represent the project. If you wish to remove or edit the article, please email editor@biltrax.com.