The Fifth Elephant 2025 Annual Conference

The 2025 Annual Conference that was

On July 18–19, 2025, over two electrifying days in Bangalore (and online), The Fifth Elephant brought together builders, thinkers and experimenters from the data and AI world. Workshops kicked things off on Friday, followed by a Saturday packed with stories, strategy and spirited hallway debates at the Bangalore International Centre, Domlur.
Started in 2012, The Fifth Elephant has been more than just a tech conference -- it’s been a platform where the community drives the conversation.
This year was no different. Every session, speaker, and topic was curated and peer-reviewed by volunteers and practitioners who live and breathe in this space.
The format was hands-on and interactive; with workshops, roundtables and Birds of a Feather (BoF) meetups that let attendees shape the dialogue, not just listen to it.

Real Talk. Real Impact.
This wasn’t about hype. The biggest themes in 2025 were about scaling smart, being cost-aware and getting GenAI to work in production.
Visual AI wasn’t just a theory this year, it showed up in use cases across manufacturing, finance and content. Across every session, there was an strong undercurrent of practical optimism and honest reflection.

Key takeaways from the 2025 conference:

1. There is fresh thinking happening regarding tools used for data engineering and analytics. People are open to newer tools and a mix and match approach rather than chase the same few hyped trends
2. Problems of data quality, reliability and scale continue to show up. With aggressive AI and LLM adoption, they are surfacing in new contexts and catching people unawares
3. The impact of community led discussions at the event indicates a lot of independent thinking and hands on tinkering going on behind the scenes. It may be hard for companies to sell top down narratives as the younger generation is exposed to a much richer variety of information sources.

📋 2025 Conference Report coming soon

Want to know more? 👀
📅 View the complete conference schedule here
🧔 See the full organising crew

What was the conference experience like? A few testimonials 🗒️

Here’s what our participants had to say...

From the community 🗣️

“This isn’t just another conference. It’s where AI, engineering, and community intersect. And they do it with soul.”
– Gaurav Goyal on LinkedIn

“First time at @fifthel. What struck me was the people—so generous with their time, insight, and curiosity. Loved the questions, loved the vibe.”
– Aditi Ahuja on X

“A notebook full of fun, insights, and motivation.”
– Pranav Vatsa on X

“Amazing crowd.”
– Haris Ibrahim K.V. on X

From the speakers 💬

“As a first-time speaker, I felt truly seen and supported. The Fifth Elephant community is a rare gem.”
– Satyajeet Jadhav on LinkedIn

“Almost a decade ago, I attended Fifth Elephant as a newbie engineer. This year, I came back as a speaker and sponsor. Full circle. Massive love to the Hasgeek community.”
– Arnab Basu on LinkedIn

“Hosting as an emcee was such a joyful, empowering experience. This community is something else.”
– Sharmili Srinivasan on LinkedIn

What our Sponsors and Partners said 💬💬

“Spoke, shared, listened and learned. Fifth Elephant 2025 was a playground for real ideas and open conversations.”
– Jayita Bhattacharya on X and LinkedIn

“We launched our product at Fithel 2025. Amazing platform, incredible audience.”
– Amit Choudhary on LinkedIn

“We at the Anita Borg Institute are proud to support inclusive tech spaces like this one.”
– LinkedIn

“Proud to back this incredible gathering of sharp minds and bold ideas.”
– Google on LinkedIn

“Conversations here shape what we build tomorrow. This is why we keep coming back.”
– Sponsor on LinkedIn

“It’s always electric at Fifth Elephant. Thanks for the chance to support the ecosystem.”
– B. Nikhil on LinkedIn

2025 Themes That Mattered

• Data and ML Infrastructure curated by Sandeep Joshi and Pramod Biligiri
  From cost control to pipeline observability, attendees swapped lessons on running smarter systems at scale.

• Agentic AI and Practical GenAI curated by Vedang Manerikar
  LLMs aren’t just cool demos anymore—they’re tools. This year focused on agents, tool use, RAG, planning, and making AI workflows reliable in production.

• PLUS Visual AI highlight talks curated by Sidharth Ramachandran
  We dove into how machines “see”—with discussions on image/video pipelines, CV in industry, AR/VR, and navigating fairness in vision systems.

Workshops like “Graduating Your AI Agents” and “Seeing is Retrieving” filled up fast, proof that our audience is hungry to build, not just browse.

The Schedule 📅

A few track highlights

About our (data loving) community 🧑

The Fifth Elephant brought together professionals working across the data and AI stack:

• Data engineers and infrastructure architects designing scalable systems
• ML and AI engineers deploying models in production
• Researchers pushing the boundaries of what’s possible
• Product and engineering leaders making critical architectural decisions
• Founders and CTOs building AI-native products
• Developers and builders exploring tools, frameworks, and agentic workflows
• Knowledge workers leveraging latest AI-based tools to be able to do new things and be far more productive and effective

Whether they were deep into deploying agent-based systems, managing a streaming data pipeline, optimizing real-time vision models, or just getting started— there was something here for everyone.

About The Fifth Elephant 🐘

The Fifth Elephant is a community of practitioners, who share feedback on data, AI and ML practices in the industry. If you like the work that The Fifth Elephant does and want to support its activities - review of Papers, Books, building the innovation ecosystem in India through hackathons and conferences - contribute by picking up a membership.

💬 Post a comment with your questions here, or **join The Fifth Elephant Telegram group and the WhatsApp group.
Follow @fifthel on Twitter.

Contact information

📞 Call The Fifth Elephant at (91) 7676332020
📧 For inquiries about tickets and registrations, drop an email to info@hasgeek.com