We recently had the privilege of having an insightful conversation with Divyansh Lohia, Founder and CEO of Katalyst, upgrading the sales game in the B2B landscape with AI agents. A serial entrepreneur with in-depth expertise in emerging technologies like AI, Divyansh blends top-notch AI research and data analysis with hands-on primary research, offering unmatched sales solutions at Katalyst. With a team of experts at the platform, Divyansh Lohia is redefining enterprise sales, empowering sales teams to handle more deal flow than ever.
The Beginning: Career Trajectory of Divyansh Lohia
We started the session by asking, “Can you walk us through your professional journey and how it led to where you are today?”
Divyansh Lohia shared, “I began my entrepreneurial journey in 2017 when I founded Aidapp Intelligence, a field sales management platform for manufacturers and vendors in India. While we struggled to achieve product–market fit, it was an invaluable learning experience.
I then pursued my Master’s at Cornell Tech in New York to deepen my expertise in emerging technologies like AI and blockchain. From there, I gained corporate product experience at Anheuser-Busch and then Datadog, where I led three products that grew from $60M to $100M ARR. At Datadog, I saw firsthand the inefficiencies in enterprise sales teams — and as AI entered a transformational phase, I decided to build Katalyst: to reimagine the future of sales with AI-powered agents.”
Navigating through Challenges
Challenges are an inevitable part of every professional journey. To learn how Divyansh Lohia overcame the phases, we asked, “Reflecting on your career, what have been some of the most significant challenges you’ve faced, and how did you overcome them?”
“In tech, staying at the cutting edge is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity. Technology evolves so fast that if you stop learning, you quickly fall behind.
I’ve tackled this by making upskilling a lifelong habit — first through grad school, and now by dedicating a day, a week to learning. Most recently, I taught myself the intricacies of AI agents, MCP, and agent architectures. This constant curiosity ensures that I can continue building products at the forefront of innovation,” he shared.
The Art of Balancing
We further asked Divyansh Lohia to share his approach on balancing long-term vision with short-term operational needs.
Divyansh Lohia added, “I’m naturally a long-term thinker — I’m always imagining what the world, and our business, should look like in five or ten years. But execution requires balancing that vision with immediate priorities. We operate on bi-weekly sprints and set clear monthly and quarterly goals. These short-term cycles keep the team focused and adaptable, while I steer long-term strategy, culture, and product direction in parallel.”
Current Offerings at Katalyst
Interested to learn more about the services at Katalyst, we asked, “Tell us more about your services and if you are planning to add something new in the future.”
“At Katalyst, we build AI agents for enterprise sales teams, particularly in financial services. Our customers work on 12–18 month sales cycles for multi-million-dollar deals, and their reps waste up to 70% of their time on manual prep work.
Our AI agents learn your sales processes and automate account planning, meeting prep, pipeline analysis, and more — cutting prep time from hours to minutes.
We recently launched our Research & Account Planning Agent, are piloting our Meeting Prep Agent, and are building a Pipeline Agent next. Our vision is to move beyond insights to fully autonomous agents that prioritize, act, and accelerate sales cycles dramatically,” explained Divyansh.
Staying Ahead with Data-Driven Decisions
We asked Divyansh Lohia to share the methods used at Katalyst to analyze market trends, and how these assessments influence their business decisions.
“We combine cutting-edge AI research and data analysis with hands-on primary research. On one hand, we track investments, technical breakthroughs, and regulatory shifts in sales tech and fintech. And on the other, we spend a lot of time with CROs, heads of sales, and top-performing reps to understand their ground-level challenges. This approach informs not only our product roadmap but also our messaging, positioning, and compliance priorities, particularly as we operate in a data-sensitive industry,” he explained.
Redefining Businesses with the Digital Revolution
Digital transformation, particularly AI, has been playing a significant role across industries. To learn how these advancements have affected his business model, we asked Divyansh Lohia to share the same.
Divyansh Lohia mentioned, “Digital transformation, especially the rise of AI, has reshaped the economics of software. SaaS is no longer just a tool, it’s becoming a digital coworker. We’ve moved beyond static dashboards into autonomous AI agents that actually get work done. This shift has also influenced our pricing: from seat-based models to usage-based, and eventually toward ‘work done’ pricing, aligning cost with value delivered.”
We further asked, “What emerging technologies do you believe will have the most significant impact on your industry in the next five years?”
“Autonomous AI agents will fundamentally redefine white-collar work. With rapidly improving reasoning, decision-making, and multi-platform integration, these agents will handle increasingly complex workflows, transforming productivity and how software is valued.
On the business side, falling model costs and better verticalization will make AI solutions more accessible and impactful, especially in industries like ours where decisions are high-stakes and workflows are intricate,” Divyansh added.
A Transparent Approach
Employees are the backbone of a business, and ensuring they are satisfied is crucial for its sustainable success. To gather Divyansh Lohia’s perspective on this aspect, we posed the question, “What strategies do you implement to maintain high levels of employee engagement and satisfaction?”
Divyansh Lohia reflected, “We prioritize ownership, transparency, and flexibility. Everyone on the team has visibility into the company’s direction and can contribute meaningfully to decisions. We maintain daily syncs and foster a collaborative culture where every voice is heard. Ultimately, we’ve built a team of brilliant engineers, designers, and operators who take pride in doing the best work of their careers here.”
Crafting a Strong Legacy
We ended the session by asking, “How do you want your business to be remembered, and what steps are you taking to secure that legacy?”
“I want Katalyst to be remembered as a company where people did the best work of their lives, and as a business that combined customer obsession, innovative design, and meaningful impact.
We’re building not just a billion-dollar company, but a lasting institution, one that raises the bar for what enterprise software can look like and how it can serve its users. Great design, deep empathy for customers, and constant reinvention are our guiding principles as we work toward that legacy,” Divyansh concluded.
To learn more about AI-powered sales tools, follow Divyansh Lohia on LinkedIn and find Katalyst on LinkedIn and visit their website http://joinkatalyst.com/.
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