The 40 Under 40 Innovators

EDITORIAL

CREDITS Ashish Sukhadeve

Smriti Srivastava

Preetipadma K

Editor-in-Chief

Associate Manager

Content Analyst

Shruthi Talla

Nikita Das

Research Analyst

Research Manager

I

Ritesh Raj Gurukar

Sukhada Raj

Art & Design Director

Creative Head

Sachin Wasnik

Amit Kumar

Marketing Manager

Web Development

n today’s highly ambitious market, the ability to innovate is one of the most quintessential skills for business success. The visionary entrepreneurs who have been trendsetters of their respective markets have brought in the wave of technology innovations that are changing our lives. Their groundbreaking new ideas and possible discoveries to a new way of transformation into the future are what we seek today.

Innovators are usually confused with people who do different things but the idea behind becoming an innovator is doing things differently in an unexplored way. Talking about business innovators, we need to understand that these are the people who set new ecosystem and trends across their offices where their employees can perform efficiently to push boundaries and depict sustainable growth.

New age innovators are also potential authentic leaders who develop a vibrant and highly productive and value-based setup and allow their juniors to grow and take on new challenges and responsibilities. As they understand that innovation never takes place in a vacuum, innovators value, build and sustain active, vibrant networks of people, assets, and organizations. Instead of viewing collab-

oration as a challenge, they see it as an opportunity to identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

According to the Board of Innovation, there exist four different types of innovators – hunters, builders, explorers, and experimenters.

The hunters are characterized by a high investment into innovation with a focus on external sources. Often these types of organizations place heavy emphasis on cooperation with startups, acquisitions, and corporate venturing. Google is a perfect example of hunters. Being a highly innovative company it invests significant resources into new technologies and business models. Interestingly this innovation doesn’t only occur internally, but happens largely through acquisitions. Google has, for example, spent billions of dollars on buying and incorporating different startups in the past few years.

Builders are the type of innovators who choose high investments in innovation but innovates mainly internally. This means builders invest significant resources into transforming their organization and build highly innovative departments and even internal spin-offs. Apple is a famous ex-

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ample of a builder. The company has a massive track record of new products and continues to set the bar for user experience and new technology. In contrast to Google, though, they focus more on building internal capacities to build new products, rather than on acquiring external expertise. GE on the other hand has a similar history of innovation, through building internal innovation capabilities.

Moreover, the explorers are the low investment variant of the hunter. Similar to the work ethics of hunter, the former also mainly look outside of their organization for new opportunities. But they are still at the level of experimentation and don’t orient their entire organization onto innovation.

An explorer can fall under the category of a big corporation who is moving into innovation by having hackathons or first contacts with startups or partners. Explorer organizations are those in need to explore new avenues for their business but aren’t ready to go all-in yet. They also see that they don’t have enough internal capacity for innovation, so they mainly look for inspiration outside their building’s walls. Orange and Thomson Reuters are examples of explorers, as they intensely foster innovation through external focus.

Lastly, the experimenters are committed to lowering investment in innovation with a focus on internal innovation. These organizations focus their attention on internal actions such

as innovation training sessions and design sprints. Experimenters are generally just starting their innovation journey, but they also see enough resources inside their organization to, over time, build this capacity internally. Spotify and Netflix are examples of successful global players currently in this phase of their innovation journey.

Therefore, it is important to differentiate between the type of innovator one is to stand out in the crowd of new-age entrepreneurs. Be it hunter, builder, explorer, or experimenter, all are responsible for constantly challenging the status quo of existing norms. Such innovators do not avoid taking risk or influence any significant transformation. To conclude, let’s understand innovation and innovators in one-liners given by famous tech personalities who also happen to be the great innovators of the current generation - Jeff Bezos said, “What’s dangerous is not to evolve,” while Elon Musk’s “single best piece of advice was to constantly think about how you could be doing things better and questioning yourself.”

On the other hand, Steve Jobs’ innovations idea was “to put a ding in the universe.”

Smriti Srivastava Associate Manager

Name

Company

Designation

Industry

Focus Area

Innovation

Arun Jhamb

EY Global Delivery Services India Private Limited

Director, Global Markets – EY Knowledge

Knowledge Management

RPA, AI

Automation and Optimization of EY’s Knowledge Management Processes

Derek Distenfield

Maninder Singh

Randy Malluk

Dante Cassanego

Xabi UribeEtxebarria

Assaf Ben Or

Vishal Srivastava

Nitin Sharma

James Tsai

Prashant Kakade

Sara Dechmerowski

GSD Venture Studios

Manzeera Solutions

COO & Co-Founder

Managing Director

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, IoT, Cloud Computing

Combining the Power of Innovators to Propel Global Technology Standards

Multi-Industry

RPA/Chatbots/Automation, Big Data Analytics, IoT, Cloud Computing

Easing the Process of Data Extraction through ‘iERPExtraction Framework’

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Big Data Analytics

Delivering World-Class Insights with Data-Driven Technologies

Natural Language Processing

Rebuilding Customer Trust with Banks Leveraging Conversational AI

Augmenting Business Potential with World Class AI Capabilities

Venture Capital

Insights Analytics

CEO & Chief Analytics Officer

Multi-Industry

Juntos

CTO & Head of Product

BFSI

Founder & CEO

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Big Data Analytics, IoT, Cloud Computing

Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Big Data Analytics, IoT, Cloud Computing

Chief Executive Officer

Energy and Resources

Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics, IoT, Cloud Computing

Optimizing Resources Efficiency with Innovative Green Energy Network

Vice President, Data

BFSI

Artificial Intelligence, Data Science

Driving Smart Decision-Making through Artificial Intelligence and Data Science

Multi-Industry

Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Robotics, RPA/Chatbots/ Automation, Big Data Analytics, IoT

Driving Business Transformation with New Tech Methodologies

Manufacturing, Retail

Big Data Analytics and Augmented and Virtual Reality

Delivering Immersive Innovations for Business through AR/VR Capabilities

Cognitive RPA/ Intelligent Automation, Organizational Resiliency Automation & Management

Enabling Digital Transformation through an Intelligent Enterprise Automation Platform- Av3ar™

Machine learning, Reserch and Development

Leveraging AI and ML to Analyse Human Cognitive Capabilities to Improve Defence Services

Shepra.ai

Greeneum

Marcus by Goldman Sachs

People’s Techno

YajanTech

Founder & CEO

Chief Executive Officer

Perpetuuiti Technosoft PTE

Co-Founder & Director of Global Delivery

Software

Design Interactive Inc.

Vice President

Defense

Ilya Volodarsky

Segment

President & CoFounder

Multi-Industry

Big Data Analytics, Data Warehouse

Creating Ultimate Data Foundation with Best Product Analytics, A/B testing, and Data Warehouse Tools

Rhys David

Credas

Chief Executive Officer

iD Verification and Document Authentication

Face/Image Recognition & Radio-Frequency Identification

Powering Businesses Remotely with Identity Verification Technologies and a Suite of Connected Services

Alexey Khitrov

ID R&D

President

Biometric Authentication

Facial Recognition, Artificial Intelligence

Leveraging Advanced Artificial Intelligence Tools for Frictionless Biometric Authentication Process

Yahoel Van Essen

Eleos Robotics

Chief Executive Officer

Agriculture and Farming

Artificial Intelligence, Robotics

Revolutionizing Farming with EcoFriendly and Intelligent Robotics Technology

Name

Company

Designation

Industry

Focus Area

Innovation

Sven Manutiu

Roboyo

Co-Founder & MD

Multi-Industry

Intelligent Automation, RPA, AI

Anchoring Dynamic Business Needs with Innovative Automation Solutions

Amita Mirajkar

Clairvoyant

Co-Founder & CEO

Multi-Industry

Big Data Analytics, Product Architecture, Cloud

Transforming Businesses with Digital Disruption Empowered by Data-Driven Technologies

Samay Kohli

GreyOrange

Co-Founder & CEO

Retail

AI, Robotics

Integrating Robots and AI-enabled Software for Fluidity and Real-Time Decisioning

Cheryl Nieder

3Pillar Global

Chief Executive Officer

Software

Data analytics and SaaS

Building Digital Products to Empower Organization Drive Revenue

Peter Reinhardt

Segment

Chief Executive Officer

Technology

Big Data analytics

Providing Customer Data Infrastructure for Digital Transformation

Andriy Krupa

ELEKS

Chief Executive Officer

Multi-Industry

Data Science, IoT

Offering Custom Software Engineering and Consulting Services

Yi Wang

Liulishuo

Co-founder & CEO

Education

AI

An AI Platform that Creates and Delivers Products and Services to Popularize English Learning

Anand JK Jain

MSys Technologies

Vice President

Multi-Industry

AI/ML, Big Data Analytics, Automation, IoT

Bringing Software Products to Life through Digital Transformation and Advanced Technologies

Junaid Qureshi

Alteryx

Vice President

Multi-Industry

Big Data Analytics, Technology Integration

Unleashing the Power of Data Analytics to Solve Business and Societal Problems

Rakesh Pant

smartData Enterprises

Vice President

Multi-Industry

IT

Delivering Robust IT business Consulting and Integrator Services

Kulraj Smagh

Ciklum

Chief Executive Officer

Multi-Industry

RPA, Cyber Security, Data Analytics

Enabling Organisations to Make more DataDriven Decisions

Viktor Bilyanski

ScaleFocus

Co-founder & CTO

Technology

Data Analytics

An Innovative Business and Operational Data Analytics Platform

Priit Alamäe

Nortal

Founder & CEO

Technology

Big Data Analytics

Combining Strategic Approach with DataDriven Technology

Kosuke Sogo

AnyMind Group

Chief Executive Officer

Technology/ Software

Cloud

Driving Efficiency and Scale with Innovative Cloud Platforms

Vinil Menon

CitiusTech

CTO/SVP

Software and Services

AI, Big Data, Analytics, BI

Driving Clinical Value Chain Excellence through Data

Samir Parekh

ThinkSense.ai

Founder

Multi-Industry

RPA, AI, Machine Learning

Developed SmartSense which Uses AI and Cognitive Algorithms for Process Mining

Jose Ralat

Neptuno

Owner

Technology/ Software

Data Management, Cloud, Cybersecurity

Delivering Top-Tier Network Connectivity for Business and Enterprise

Victor Molen

Indivd

CEO & Co-Founder

Technology

Video Analytics, AI

Developed Privacy Innovation "Indivd Anonymizer" for Retail Insights

Henrique Oliveira

Daitan Group

Chief Technology Officer

Technology/ Software

Automation, Chatbots

Enabling Workflow Automation with Customized NLP-Based Chatbots

Danielle Kramer

Palantir Technologies

Chief Technology Officer

Multi-Industry

Big Data Analytics

Offers Palantir Foundry to Accelerate End-toEnd Data Transformation

Nathan George

New Mind Robotics

Chief Executive Officer

Technology/ Software

Robotics

Transforming Innovative Ideas into Robotics Business through Autonomous Solutions

Chethan K R

SynctacticAI

Chief Executive Officer

Technology/ Software

Data Science

A Smart Data Science Platform to Transform Business Outcomes

Ryan Kelly

Capital Rx

Chief Technology Officer

Healthcare

AI

A Next Generation Pharmacy Benefit Manager for Better Healthcare Insights

Christopher Molaro

NeuroFlow

Chief Executive Officer

Healthcare

AI

Combining workflow automation and AI, patient engagement tools to Promote Behavioral Health

12

30

ASSAF BEN OR

40

JAMES TSAI

22

NITIN SHARMA

VISHAL SRIVASTAVA

50

SARA

DECHMEROWSKI

DEREK DISTENFIELD

08

56

RANDY MALLUK

ARTICLE

26

ARUN JHAMB

18

DANTE CASSANEGO

ARTICLE

How AI

54

Innovations

Remarkable

Induced

Traits of

Industry-Wide

Leadership

Advancements in 2019

36

MANINDER SINGH

46

PRASHANT KAKADE

with an Innovative Mindset

60

XABI URIBEETXEBARRIA

INNOVATION

Automation and Optimization of EY’s Knowledge Management Processes INDUSTRY Knowledge Management

FOCUS AREA RPA and AI

nowledge Management (KM) continues to play an evolving role as organizations look for the best cost-efficient and cost-effective ways to capture and share accumulated knowledge. The emerging market of Knowledge Services is predicted to see new heights of economic attention in the coming years. As the upsurge is inevitable, more and more innovations are rising at the forefront of contemporary KM products and services market. As an organization of member firms across the globe, EY competes in a market where knowledge is the product; its insights, research and thought leadership are the key differentiators. EY is helping more clients, in more places, as they tackle more of their toughest challenges than ever before. The company’s clients rely on EY practitioners to understand their problems and know how to fix them, quickly.

By constantly innovating processes, Arun Jhamb, who serves as a Director, Global Markets – EY Knowledge, has been able to provide clients with relevant data, customized research and analysis, and insights. Deep sector and functional knowledge

mean EY’s knowledge solutions can help across industries, from financial services to technology, and to the consumer.

Over the last few years, Arun has worked closely with many key initiatives, including Digital service formats; Automated content aggregation; Intelligent knowledge curation; Automated knowledge collection; Automated classification of content; Automated provisioning and decommissioning of sites; Automated content redaction and publishing; Digital infusion of knowledge at scale; Automated reporting of content usage; Intelligent analytics; and Chatbots.

K ARUN JHAMB Director, Global Markets – EY Knowledge EY Global Delivery Services India Private Limited 8 | FORTY UNDER FORTY

Delivering Transformational Leadership Arun accepted the role of an innovation leader in 2016. He had already been driving process improvement and new-age innovation through robotic process automation (RPA) and artificial intelligence (AI), but the new role formalized his focus on the “art of the possible”. Arun was able to identify and map capabilities internally and externally and to automate and optimize

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World RPA Cognitive and AI Summit 2018 and significantly contributed to thought leadership initiatives by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII).

the company’s knowledge management processes. To achieve the desired objectives, he conducted a deep diagnosis of more than 150 global processes to identify gaps and propose solutions.

Automated solutions are focused on all aspects of the knowledge management value chain, including knowledge harvesting, content redaction, and promotion of “high-value” content in the global knowledge portal for EY, Discover. This resulted in the deployment of eight bots.

In addition, Arun executed Process Improvement (PI) projects for more than 50 processes, achieving efficiency gains of more than 20%. Since 2016, he continues to identify and execute automation and PI projects for KM processes, pursuing efficiency gains and increased engagement through automation.

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Moreover, in early 2019, EY accelerated its innovation culture by deploying the global innovation process tool, CogniStreamer. Owing to Arun’s extensive innovation experience, he was selected to lead this initiative. With CogniStreamer, the company can rapidly capture and cycle through innovative ideas to enhance EY’s knowledge offerings. He also developed a recognition framework for top innovation contributors, ensuring that the company rewards all top idea contributors, not just winning ideas. The reward framework has been very well received by his team members and stakeholders.

Additionally, this year, Arun earned Bronze and Silver EY Badges* in RPA and two Bronze badges for design thinking and transformational leadership.

He also presented on RPA and innovation at the

Driving Innovation through Intelligent Automation Arun believes that automation is transforming the knowledge management industry. The ways in which knowledge is gathered, processed and communicated have undergone a paradigm shift. Despite the constant disruption, EY Knowledge (the global knowledge organization) is staying at the forefront of change.

He says, after participating in workshops designed to identify service excellence opportunities aligned with EY priorities, he and his team identified and evaluated the feasibility, strategic impact and priority alignment of these opportunities, categorizing them as Automation (AI + RPA), RPA, Process Improvements, and Quick Wins.

Such automation projects have saved the EY organization US$ 250,000 in just a year. Over three years, the projected savings reached US$ 850,000. Intangible benefits from these projects include: increased transparency in sharing information and updates; enhanced consistency in reviews and audits; improved career value of team members, and boosting the morale of EY professionals. Furthermore, this has enabled EY leaders to measure operational effectiveness and drive improvements in efficiency. Along with the team working on this project, Arun was awarded with the EY Quality Evangelist Award 2019.

As a determined innovator, he has been involved in the successful execution of some of the most innovative Automation / RPA projects in past years which includes Content redaction bot; Content promotion bot; Automated reporting; and SharePoint Site Lifecycle Management bot.

Overcoming Business Challenges As EY Knowledge is highly integrated and works across different geographies, it has its own set of challenges, which may include regional or country-specific compliance measures, risk assessments, and requirements.

Within the organization, there are natural cultural differences. Over the years, Arun has been able to overcome these to a large extent by having proper checks/frameworks and recognition mechanisms.

To help the company’s talent adopt a “knowledge-sharing and innovation mindset”, new joiners are introduced to the EY proprietary global knowledge platform, Discover, through a digital learning experience, “Knowledge at EY”. This interactive learning helps professionals access the best of EY thinking and

differentiate themselves through what they know. The new Discover archiving project ensures that EY offers the latest information to its practitioners.

Adding an extra edge to that, Arun shares knowledge internally through a variety of ways, including lunch-and-learn gatherings, demo bars, workshops, virtual schools, and webcasts. He wants to help people effectively use EY insights and resources and encourage them to discuss and share ideas and build their networks and personal brands.

According to him, Yammer integration in Discover makes it easy for EY employees to instantly access and share the company’s collective intelligence. Yammer groups cover hot topics such as robotics, digital and cybersecurity, making it easy to find latest news, share case studies, or brainstorm ideas. Fast, facilitated YamJam sessions encourage knowledge sharing in private or public communities of practice.

Being a progressive leader, Arun is often invited to share his thoughts and ideas on KM innovation with clients and external audiences. EY teams use CogniStreamer with clients to foster collaboration within their organizations. It has consistently been recognized by Forrester and Gartner as a leading innovation management platform. When solving innovation challenges, EY teams leverage their collaborations with organizations like UiPath and Automation Anywhere to co-create solutions.

About the Experience Leader and Innovator Arun has worked in knowledge management (KM), managing globally diverse teams and functions for 17 years. In his current role, he leads business transformation initiatives related to RPA and AI. Arun also has extensive experience in setting up and leading shared service centers across multiple locations and managing large, complex global programs.

At EY as a Knowledge Leader, Arun is keenly aware that new services and products come from fresh insights of EY clients’ businesses and the evolving marketplace. Accordingly, he works closely and often with clients, converting what they know into practical advice. Externalizing knowledge and encouraging new ideas and knowledge creation are performance-related requirements for Arun. EY shares these insights with clients and the public through regular conferences, publications, and webcasts.

-------------*EY Badges are internal credentials in future-focused skills like data science, data visualization, artificial intelligence and RPA, designed to help EY people shape their careers. There are four levels of badge distinction (Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum).

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INNOVATION

Optimizing Resources Efficiency with Innovative Green Energy Network INDUSTRY Energy and Resources

T ASSAF BEN OR CEO

Greeneum 12 | FORTY UNDER FORTY

he rise in innovative startups tackling energy and resources area and the recent topics that have dominated industry events and publications in the last couple of years point to the trend of carbon footprint and reduced carbon emissions unfolding. Greeneum firmly believes that new applications will need to consider peer-to-peer interactions like many other industries and sectors already have, such as transportation and accommodation. These trends are positive indicators that efficient energy production, monitoring, consumption will become the de rigueur. Assaf Ben Or, CEO of Greeneum, feels this reinforces his company’s view that Greeneum has come on the scene at the right time, at the right inflection point between shifting consumer demands and the increased technological ability to meet them.

By visioning and working for a route to this new reality and supporting the industry with the hardware and software to embrace this change, Greeneum remains in sync with the forthcoming changes to the energy industry allowing stakeholders to adopt and invest in green technologies.

FOCUS AREA Machine Learning, Big Data Analytics, IoT, Cloud Computing As a dedicated green energy network that incentivizes all of the participants in the renewable energy industry, the company sees the concept of Greeneum itself as being innovative. Its decentralized network allows energy producers, prosumers, consumers, investors, and affiliates to interact with each other seamlessly, whilst ensuring transparency, independence, and adherence to data security. The result is that Greeneum is positioned to be the No.1 predictor of fluctuations in energy demand and renewable energy impact.

The company’s ability to deliver this green energy network, according to Assaf is underpinned by a specific innovation in blockchain protocol. This unique protocol specifically addresses the digitization and management of renewable energy by optimizing readings and distributing profits between all the stakeholders in the network. Greeneum develops the Proof of Energy Transactions Protocol (PET) algorithm to validate and certify energy transactions in real-time. Through Green and Solar PETs which are connected to the renewable or solar assets, data is collected, calculated, and stored across software

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people to create more and do more whilst working globally to erase borders. The company is fortunate enough to be in touch with a number of global producers and brands in the market. Greeneum, moreover, looks forward to taking itself and its community to new heights in the second part of 2020 and beyond.

Paradoxically, the technology that has allowed the company to innovate also presents challenges. These challenges can be seen from a technological viewpoint and governmental viewpoint due to the changing regulations in the energy and financial sectors.

and devices to accurately assess the green energy produced, purchased, or sold to producers and consumers. PETs can be used by any producer or consumer through a plug and play mechanism that integrates with various hardware assets.

Data is then recorded to certify and optimize energy transactions for trading across the supply chain as credits representing carbon emission reduction or use.

Assaf says, this unique mechanism encoded in the blockchain to allow peer-to-peer carbon credit interactions and the issuance of green certificates from green producers is a first for the industry.

Greeneum plans to further extend globally by allowing the GREEN tokens which allow it to exchange values of energy and emissions between the peer-to-peer members.

The culmination of the company’s efforts to bring this innovative network to life is that Greeneum becomes the all-in-one platform to seamlessly and efficiently incentivize users to monitor their carbon footprint and reduce carbon emissions.

The company’s innovative green network has allowed, for the first time, all of the participants in the industry to interact with each other on one platform. Greeneum has used technology to address fragmentation and inefficiency in the industry and in doing so, it has incentivized real-world

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change at all participant levels. Consumers who want to engage in greater renewable efforts can now do so and be appropriately incentivized.

Equally, producers who have ideas to generate renewable energy can seek out investors through Greeneum platform. The company also has plans to launch the Greeneum Green Fund that will also complement its work in this area.

The company is breaking down the highly centralized energy market and replacing it with trust and transparency. Greeneum firmly believes that the cost of green energy production and consumption can decrease and become more efficient when the participants can work in tandem across a shared network.

Greeneum started with an ideology and this brought forth the innovation, so in that respect, its innovation is a manifestation of the company, they are one and the same.

Greeneum is delighted that its hardware and software innovations have contributed to the renewable energy community. The company’s Solar PETs for instance have been extremely successful and highly sought after. It has also inspired Greeneum to go further and Assaf mentioned that it is now working on Wind PETs to calculate, collect, and store data about wind energy.

He views Greeneum’s innovation as he drives

Assaf feels the laws relating to renewable energy tend to vary wildly across different governments, and unfortunately, tend to be outdated and highly complex. This presents a challenge in delivering a customized service across the Greeneum network to comply with local renewable energy laws.

Coupled with this challenge is the intense scrutiny on data security and data privacy. The company understood this to be a challenge at the beginning and built-in a mechanism to address concerns right from the outset. Greeneum applications only validate necessary data and the company can do it next to the site or on the cloud. For that, it uses comprehensive cybersecurity and encrypted data mining process that utilizes secure mechanisms to keep user data safe and private.

Greeneum is continually developing and updating both its hardware and software elements to keep up with the ever-changing standards in this area.

The company has been working since its existence with a few global partners such as startup accelerators and international brands, and many energy companies worldwide have joined Greeneum’s affiliate program and play an important part in the network. The affiliate program allows energy companies to find business opportunities around the network and partners with customers and other stakeholders. These partnerships are important not only to enlarge the scale of its outreach but also for the network decentralization and long-term governance.

The case studies Greeneum has established with a microgrid in Israel and one in Cyprus helped it to integrate and distribute green energy to the nearby farms, factories, and homes and enables it to optimize the solution for future partners from the global markets. In 2020, Greeneum, according to Assaf, will supercharge these partnerships and scale-up the company’s solutions for decentralized energy grids with the partners through its affiliate program.

A Thoughtful Innovator Contributing to Sustainable Tomorrow Assaf Ben Or is the Founder and CEO of Greeneum, a green energy company that uses blockchain technology and machine learning to incentivize production and investment in renewable energy technologies & projects.

Greeneum is the result of a lifelong passion that started after his time in university when he was working in the startup and software world and was asking himself what innovation and research are needed to make solar energy more efficient and popular. Assaf participated in a Ph.D. research and was doing new high-efficiency Solar cell models for desert and sunny areas, but their funding was not sufficient to complete the research and to get full results as it was a quite challenging concept. During that time, he explored various subjects ranging from deep science research to data science and blockchain on how to support the scale of solar energy and bring it to its full potential. It was the start of a 15-year career of exploration into how Assaf could better understand and contribute to sustainability initiatives around the world. He honed his expertise in machine learning, AI, and scientific research at a range of global institutions and companies, including SAP and IBM, that allowed him to pair education with real-world impact.

Assaf started to get into the topic in the time around December 2015, after a few years of research, he founded with his brother an initiative called “solar change” with the intent to optimize and create more efficient solar energy using blockchain. They researched what was needed to scale this technology up properly and came up with different ideas. Assaf aimed to create a platform that went beyond trading to incentivize and encourage green energy production on a global scale. He made it his mission at Greeneum to bring together all the participants from across the value chain including producers, consumers, prosumers, and investors to create a network for sustainable green energy production and consumption.

In the last 2 years, the company has developed and verified a data infrastructure to mine data efficiently and connect solar energy in real-time for different sets of applications for the energy stakeholders. Assaf has a wonderful team of experts and contributors worldwide who work together daily to bring new ideas and innovations to the network and promote green energy.

Greeneum’s core objective is to bring renewable energy to every corner of the world, to decentralize energy systems, and in doing so provide freedom for producers and consumers to interact with each other for sustainable, common good.

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INNOVATION

Rebuilding Customer Trust with Banks Leveraging Conversational AI INDUSTRY BFSI (Banking)

F DANTE CASSANEGO CTO & Head of Product Juntos

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rom the inception of banking, institutions have understood that they are in the business of trust. Trust is the lifeblood of banks. Capital flowing to and from bank clients lays the foundation of the sophisticated and powerful financial system.

Banks used to lay a foundation of trust through personal relationships between their employees and the clients they serve.

As banking grew, it became more and more difficult to maintain these personal relationships. Quantity came at the expense of quality.

Juntos helps rebuild trusting relationships between consumers and their banks. The company’s platform for Conversational Account Management enables financial institutions around the world to proactively engage their customers at scale. Using Juntos, Financial Institutions (FIs) create engaging, one-onone, long term conversations designed to build trusting relationships. To date, financial institutions have used the platform to engage millions of customers across four continents. Juntos platform delivers a highly scalable means of proactive custom-

FOCUS AREA Natural Language Processing

er engagement while maintaining a warm, personal customer experience proven across millions of customers to build longterm relationships.

To blow life into such innovation, Dante Cassanego, the Chief Technology Officer and Head of Product, has played a crucial role. At Juntos, he oversees all aspects of product development, engineering, and data analytics.

Furthermore, Banks using Juntos to invest in stronger customer relationships have seen that translate into increased lifetime value: - 5+ increase in NPS - 2x - 4x increase in loan uptake - 15% - 40% growth in deposits - 10% - 25% growth in digital transactions Recent product innovations have accelerated Juntos’ ability to deliver conversational account management to market. For example, in January 2020, the product team deployed a “Zero Data API” that allows the platform to send SMS messages to

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bank customers without ever taking possession of their mobile phone number. This innovation has greatly reduced the risk and compliance issues for banks working with Juntos.

However, Banks looking to adopt Juntos must understand that building long-term relationships is a long-term endeavor. Just as in people’s personal lives, relationships between banks and their customers take months and sometimes years, to reach their full potential.

To enrich its innovation with great resources, according to Dante, Juntos partners with a wide profile of banks. First, the company partners with large established banks who are leaders in their market. For example, Bancolombia, Colombia’s largest bank. Bancolombia has used Juntos over six years to drive growth and engagement among key segments including mass market, merchant, and newly digital consumers. Together, Juntos has helped Bancolombia forge stronger financial relationships with more than 1.5 million customers.

Second, Juntos also partners with new-age digital banks. For example, Tymebank in South Africa, recently, launched a new financial literacy educational service to help its EveryDay accountholders navigate their financial lives amidst the COVID-19

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outbreak. The new service is powered by Juntos Global’s Conversational Account Management (CAM) platform. The latter’s platform engages TymeBank customers in interactive SMS messaging. Accountholders receive financial literacy tips, advice, and reminders, and are encouraged to ask questions and share their experiences for customized learning and support.

An Unprecedented Leadership with Remarkable Achievements Dante Cassanego is the CTO and Co-founder of Juntos. He began his career at Intuit where he was the youngest member of both the Technical Leadership Council and the Intuit Innovation Lab. During his tenure, Dante filed nine patents in five years. He was also honored with Intuit’s two highest awards: The Scott Cook Innovation Award and the CEO Leadership Award.

Dante is a BS graduate in Computer Science from Stanford University and also holds an MBA from MIT.

INNOVATION

Combining the Power of Innovators to Propel Global Technology Standards INDUSTRY Venture Capital

I DEREK DISTENFIELD COO and Co-Founder GSD Venture Studios 22 | FORTY UNDER FORTY

nnovation is about doing things differently, and finding ideas that answer the call of the market. It’s about not looking at how things were and are, but looking at how they can be. Derek Distenfield, COO and Co-Founder at GSD Venture Studio, does that by looking everywhere and at everything. He searched the globe looking for resilient and talented teams.

Intellectual capacity is evenly spread across the world - but opportunity is not. Derek innovates by finding ways to provide opportunities. Connecting to investors, radically altering a business model to connect to current trends, and making sure companies are seen by global partners. He alters the conversation to make it a success both for the innovators and for those who believe in them.

Derek has developed a venture studio model that partners with artificial intelligence startups from Eastern Europe, Israel, and Asia. Typically, they have product-market fit in one country and because of political and cultural dynamics the have challenges in becoming global. GSD Venture Studio has taken operational roles focusing on several things.

FOCUS AREA Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, IoT, Cloud Computing A strong sales and marketing strategy and execution - GSD Ventures designs a story, website, make product recommendations, and uses its network and team to identify early US adopters.

A strong influencers strategy – GSD Ventures aligns with the company with the best advisors from business, academia, and more to ensure that the startup is intellectually part of the intellectual discussion in the category they are monopolizing.

An investment strategy – The company develops and executes a strategy that intertwines with their sales and marketing and influences strategy.

Systems – GSD Ventures develops and designs optimal systems but also ensures that the company is designed legally and operationally in a way that is comfortable to VC. Moreover, GSD Ventures Studio has six AI startups in its portfolio that have millions of dollars in sales and hundreds of millions of dollars in the pipeline. Some of them include Irex.al, Zemplee.com, Bidease.com, and Wattsbattery.com.

The company is a top startup factory that believes intellectual

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capacity is evenly spread throughout the world but opportunity is not. By partnering with entrepreneurs and startups outside of the “Silicon Valley Bubble” they are ensuring that more artificial intelligence engineers are able to build great products.

Talking about the challenges faced during the journey, Derek recalls, Bill Gates has cautioned that AI has great potential as well as challenges.

He believes that as artificial intelligence continues to grow, the industry will have to determine new ethics and global rules of operating.

Furthermore, to thrive ahead with innovations, GSD Ventures Studio has created a global catalytic ecosystem that combines people from the tech industry, education, accelerators, legal and political leaders.

A Leadership with Midas Touch Derek Distenfield is the Co-Founder of GSD Venture Studios. He travels the world investing in resilient teams bold enough to #GoGlobal.

Known for bringing revolutionary new ideas to organizations that deliver explosive growth and

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for being efficient with limited resources, Derek has a high tolerance for ambiguity and complexity. For over 15 years, he has blazed high impact careers in startups, corporations, governments, and non-profit organizations.

As the growth strategist behind Bunker Labs, Derek transformed a non-profit serving veteran entrepreneurs into a premier national brand. He also ignited immediate growth in a highly regulated industry as CEO of NextGenJustice, a social enterprise startup that served as an alternative to traditional legal venues. As the founding visionary and chief evangelist, Derek developed a product that grew its consumer base 50% in 17 of 18 months in business.

Derek has been a keynote speaker in several settings: Winter Wonderland, I’m Not a Robot, Military Defense and Veterans Opportunities Summit, One Spark Innovation Conference, and International Conference on Business Incubation. He is a mentor and an advisor for GrowthX, Google Pioneer Accelerator, LifeFlip Media, and several other organizations.

How AI Innovations Induced Industry-Wide Advancements in 2019?

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L

iving in a world surrounded by technologies, we can conveniently verify that Artificial Intelligence is behind most of the innovations that take place today. It has become one of the innovation resources of the current era.

From finances to healthcare, technology has its reach everywhere, transforming every industry for better. Although every technology in the mainstream today is evolving at a fast pace, in comparison to other fields, AI has shown some great and remarkable advancements in the past year. Let’s have a look back into 2019 and see how the technology has introduced some of the most innovative breakthroughs of this decade.

In the monetary arena, the innovations empowered by AI and ML have taken a significant leap. As per the observation presented by a Deloitte report, “AI leaders In financial services: Common traits of frontrunners in the artificial intelligence race“, various AI platforms and tools are revolutionizing several aspects of the BFSI sector. In particular, machine learning tools are driving better customer engagement while helping authorities manage portfolios and plan future services and scenarios. Through ML implementation, financial institutions are also able to own long-term strategies and enforce operational improvements. As illustrated by the report, organizations that are dubbed “frontrunners” are observing revenue growth of 19% company-wide. This significant implementation of AI subset to achieve better business can be attributed as an AI innovation.

Transforming the agriculture sector, an Australia-based agtech company FluroSat served farmers with real-time information. Using this information, farmers were able to assess plant health and detect crop stress. FluroSat’s platform, FluroSense, provides a mix of satellite data, farming records, and AI in an analytics engine that helps farmworkers foresee crop performance. Also, using the received data, the AI tool can provide recommendations on how to optimize crops. Since its launch in 2019, FluroSense is being employed by more than 1000 agronomists across eight countries.

Moreover, across the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry, technology is making great advancements. Living under the reign of terror induced by a coronavirus, no other generation than us can understand the true benefits of technology in reshaping the healthcare industry. Today AI and its subsets are

being used extensively for drug discovery and medical treatment planning. However, the upsurge of AI in this industry has been noted in 2019 when a Hong Kong biotech startup called InSilico Medicine partnered with the University of Toronto researchers to create a drug in order to advance the concept to initial testing.

As noted by Fortune, the significance of AI on pre-clinical development and on the economics of healthcare is worth watching. “What’s eye-popping here is the timescale: just 46 days from molecular design to animal testing in mice. Considering that, on average, it takes more than a decade and costs US$350 million to US$2.7 billion to bring a new drug to market, depending on which study one believes, the potential impact on the pharmaceutical industry is huge.”

In an effort to transform recruitment processes and HR operations, Harver developed an AI software that automates the hiring process making use of data to sort, test, and vet candidates. The software is extremely helpful in simplifying the hiring process with decreased chances of unconscious bias in the process. As noted by Springwise, Harver is different from other AI-based hiring programs because it focuses on the pre-interview selection process. The company’s software offers HR teams several adaptable assessment modules. The tests can examine everything from personality to typing skills. The program then assesses the results and determines which candidates are the best fit for an interview.

In its creative approaches, the innovations of AI are quite remarkable. One of the most prestigious publications the New Yorker recently agitated a discussion if AI possesses the capability to write for the publication. The article mentions the recently-released GPT-2 by Open.AI. GPT-2 is an AI platform that builds on deep training of a vast “neural net” in order to establish fairly realistic language abilities. According to Open.

AI, “We’ve trained a large-scale unsupervised language model which generates coherent paragraphs of text, achieves stateof-the-art performance on many language modeling benchmarks, and performs rudimentary reading comprehension, machine translation, question answering, and summarization—all without task-specific training.” Moreover, some kindred mechanism is being employed to create basic articles, and sports reports.

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INNOVATION

Delivering Immersive Innovations for Business through AR/VR Capabilities INDUSTRY Manufacturing and Retail

D JAMES TSAI CEO

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isruptive technologies like Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (AR/VR) have awakened the creative senses of the mankind. Excelling from the gaming and entertainment sector, it is transforming several industries; retail and industrial being the most influenced ones.

The surprising acceleration in interest in AR/VR is owing to its performance efficiency and managing risk. The technology has arrived to shape a new innovative and immersive business ecosystem.

Evidently, with the rise in technology and demand, many AR/ VR innovators are coming into light. James Tsai is one of them.

He is the CEO of YajanTech and responsible to manage and design the road map of the company. In the AR/VR world, designing an application is hard and it cost much effort and money. So, YajanTech designs a crossed platform solution for its client to design multi-platform AR/VR applications easy and fast. The company helps its client save more than 70% effort to have its own application in the market.

On the retail front, YajanTech uses AR and face recognition

FOCUS AREA Big Data Analytics and Augmented and Virtual Reality technology to help its clients collect data form their users. Most retail clients don’t have the tool and budget to design the application to collect the data form the user. So the company designs a system to help clients implement it. They don’t need to have high-level knowledge and budget to use it, YajanTech helps them to understand it.

According to James, at the factory and industrial front, most employees are old but use high technology and good experience whereas new men who come to the factory need more time and a good mentor to teach them. So, YajanTech offers an AR solution for the factory to record the data process done by mentors and make a virtual training data for new men. By this solution import, factories saves much time to train new people in understanding the work process.

James believes that AR and VR technology is not a new norm but people use the technology to serve different industries.

Every industry has its own know-how and workflow, but with this immersive technology, the import can help clients do more or use less time to train new people. The solution import does

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not reduce 100% work effort but helps immensely in reducing work flow and time.

Apparently, inventing AR and VR technology is the skill of YajanTech. The company focuses on low-level technology but uses what people need in different fields. To have those solutions and help clients to import them effectively helps YajanTech with revenues and experience. The company does project, lease applications, systems, and SDK. With the three-way business model, YajanTech can do more and get more from the client and make the kernel software engine grow up.

In its further pursuit of innovation and to develop the kernel software engine, the company will focus on competitors like Google, Apple, and Facebook. All of them have the AR engine and offer tools to users to design their own AR applications. But a crossed platform engine is YajanTech’s competitive advantage.

To drive such innovation, the company has partnered with AR glasses, 5G chip, and 5G-Provider companies in Taiwan. Yajan-

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Tech’s focus remains on software and kernel design. With these software, the company finds partners in different industries and helps them through its business connections. James believes that one company can’t do 100% on their own and YajanTech’s growing network and business partners can help them achieve their business objectives.

A Proficient Leadership James Tsai is the CEO of YajanTech. He is an engineer who designed the APP and Kernel software when he started to work.

He previously worked with Foxconn, ITRI in Taiwan, and later founded YajanTech. James has a major in information management. He is extremely proficient at software and business plan design. Under his leadership, YajanTech co-works with the indicative company in Japan and Taiwan to converge AR and image processing businesses.

INNOVATION

Easing the Process of Data Extraction Through ‘iERPExtraction Framework’ INDUSTRY Multi-Industry

B MANINDER SINGH Managing Director Manzeera Solutions 36 | FORTY UNDER FORTY

usiness Intelligence industry is undeniably thriving at a great pace and new-age solutions like IERPExtraction Framework leading the contemporary market. The product has been specifically designed to resolve a challenge faced by many large enterprises worldwide. Organizations have been seeking innovative and automated ways to utilize data from ERP systems, IoT, and enable self-service analytics. IERPExtraction Framework enables organizations to utilize this often hard to reach data through minimal manual intervention and push self-service analytics and a data-driven culture into the organization.

Through Manzeera Solutions, Maninder Singh, Managing Director, created this new technology ‘IERPExtraction Framework’ that can be utilized by many organizations to increase the ease of data extraction from hard to reach systems and sources. It is a data bridge that can provide integration services between systems, technologies, and platforms with minimal human intervention. IERPExtraction Framework offers huge value through its ability to extract data from world-leading ERP

FOCUS AREA RPA/Chatbots/Automation, Big Data Analytics, IoT, Cloud Computing vendors such as SAP, Oracle, Infor, Mainframe, and more. Manzeera’s solution currently has over 200 connections with more being built and released every month.

The data that IERPExtraction Framework extracts is then delivered to cloud products or platforms. This enables the user to utilize the data from ERP systems in the shortest possible time, reducing data time to value and leading to the generation of insights in a swift and self-service manner. This solution is the shortest path to success, cutting down the time between data generation and consumption, reducing manual effort, and reducing silos created by the use of multiple technologies.

IERPExtraction Framework removes the high manual effort involved to extract data from a company’s multiple systems. It can be set up on an automated schedule, reducing any impact on the performance of the ERP system.

In summary, IERPExtraction Framework cuts down the time to extract data from legacy systems, cuts down the systems involved in the data migration process, and reduces the individuals needed to perform the extraction – enabling self-service

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analytics on previously unreachable data.

Moreover, the solution has huge ROI potential for all organizations that have ERP systems in their landscape. IERPExtraction Framework enables businesses to utilize data for decision making that was previously inaccessible to them. Access to this data provides new, innovative insights for the business that were previously going unnoticed. These discoveries can drive numerous business benefits such as increased revenue, decreased costs, increased operational efficiency, reduced risks, etc.

Manzeera Solutions as a whole provides numerous services to large organizations. IERPExtraction Framework is the most recent innovation that has been developed and released to the market.

Manzeera Solutions is constantly adding more bridges/connectivity to the IERPExtraction Framework Solution. Increased ERP connectors enable Manzeera to service more and more clients globally and spread awareness of the Manzeera brand.

However, as a relatively new product, IERPExtraction Framework faces potential challenges in regard to brand and customer outreach. Whilst the technology fulfils industry demand across multiple sectors, IERPExtraction Framework is still lesser known in the industry, meaning there are currently lost opportunities.

This leads more broadly to Manzeera’s main challenge. As a relatively small startup that is in its growing stage, larger companies are not aware of such niche players in the market that are introducing disruptive technologies. These disruptive technologies are able to provide organizations cutting-edge solutions and extremely competitive prices but are going unnoticed due to lack of brand awareness.

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Moving ahead of challenges, every 7 months or so, Manzeera is consistently reviewing the market for the most innovative Business Intelligence platforms to partner with. This enables Manzeera to provide the most up-to-date solutions to its clients.

The platforms that they have picked in recent months’ places emphasis on maximum time to value between data generation and consumption, and enabling easy to use self-service analytics to executives and non-specialized data consumers alike.

This strategy has been working successfully, and Manzeera has ongoing successful projects with large international enterprise organizations in sectors such as academic publishing, world sports organizations, transportation, and media outlets.

The company strives to have product key partnerships where every party is aligned to provide the best service and products for the clients.

An Experienced Leadership with Extensive BI Capabilities Maninder Singh is highly experienced in the business intelligence industry. Having spent over 15 years in the sector, he developed extensive in-depth knowledge across a broad range of different software, platforms, and technologies, understanding how they interact with each other and form a cohesive environment. During these years, Maninder repeatedly perceived challenges that multiple enterprises were facing in their data, BI, and IT landscapes.

From these experiences and observations, Maninder created the company Manzeera Solutions to combat the common challenges that these companies were facing. Maninder is the Managing Director of the company whilst continuing to drive, innovate, and architect both strategy and technologies.

INNOVATION

Driving Business Transformation with New Tech Methodologies INDUSTRY Multi-industry

P NITIN SHARMA Founder and CEO People’s Techno

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eople’s Techno has been wrought into a habit to practice new techniques and methodologies for software innovations by shaping thoughts into reality. ‘Innovation drives Excellence’ is one of the founding mantras at People’s Techno. The company keeps inventing new ways as to how innovation can benefit the way it works to achieve the best out of everything. People’s Techno doesn’t always go by the rules or practices. The company has devised its own processes and methodologies for better results. They may be a combination of existing practices or completely inventive. This also goes for People’s Techno’s internal way of working. The company’s approach to understanding a problem is precisely that it gets the root of an issue. It is like a diagnostic of Why, What, and How! That way People’s Techno is able to achieve residue that goes beyond expectations.

Nitin, the Founder, and CEO at People’s Techno, believes that working with thought leaders keeps one on his toes! They are the ones who are trying to make this world a little better for everyone and people just augment their efforts and play their

FOCUS AREA Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Robotics, RPA/Chatbots/ Automation, Big Data Analytics, IoT little bit in contributing to the process. People’s Techno’s ways have been able to bridge the gap that inventors have in lack of functional knowledge, methodology, and the right mix of people to do the job; building prototypes and blueprints to validate ideas and concepts that are capable of transforming the way people live.

According to Nitin, one of the most difficult things to accomplish is to provide a solution to a problem, even in real life.

Today, not only business environment is facing problems, but the entire periphery of humankind is under threat. It is not easy to keep a stable head all the time. At the same time, one just cannot keep his heads down. The only thing the professionals advocate at People’s Techno is to be a problem solver and not a problem creator; the world has enough problems.

The last 3-4 months though have been challenging and full of crisis, however, the company has slowly and gradually paced its way to where it is today. From simple product development to ideation has been a journey worth the travel. Creating solutions saw many ways that enriched the company in Wisdom,

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Knowledge, and Execution. People’s Techno’s key area of learning is ‘what not to do’ and that has made all the difference.

Inventors and thought leaders may have the best idea, but they may not have the right set of tools and resources to make it a reality. The domain expertise is People’s Techno’s strength where a type of technology is just a facilitator.

The CORONA Pandemic has woken everybody up from the slumber and they are now preparing themselves for contingency.

Healthcare and Education are the ones that have suffered the most. Those are the two areas that are currently focused on. Nitin says, “Our Children (Education) and general well-being (Healthcare) of our people has been at the forefront of our Innovation. The Pandemic only facilitated our action. These two industrial segments would never face a downturn in any economic situation.”

People’s Techno is currently working on building an extensive Learning Management System

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(LMS) for educational institutes from an idea.

The concept is never seen before and has the capacity to revolutionize the way kids study. The system is not just about the processes and workflows and efficiency. It is about what and why children learn. According to him, ten years from now, what kids learn would be obsolete. People aren’t sure if what their kids learn today would be relevant in 10 or 15 years far! The coming of age of IoT and NLP would be making even codes that programmers write a thing of past.

Amid this, People’s Techno’s prototype in the discussion is expected to be completed by end of August 2020 and would be an evidence of thoughts put to work. One can then play around with the miniature system and validate features, functionality, and flow. It would demonstrate if the design, concept, architecture, and eventual business vision is feasible.

As the company keeps saying to its people, “The last 2000 years witnessed the taming of Animals; the next few centuries would be the age of

taming Machines!”

Nitin believes that the ‘Future’ is already here! And today’s technology is already obsolete. People’s Techno’s current disposition is a natural progression from solutions to ideative engineering where it believes “Thoughts Become Things!”

According to him, “Ideation gives answers to the questions we don’t normally ask. We do the best of old things in a brand new way; giving an absolutely new dimension to the whole perspective and therefore results.” Determining the purpose and proposition surrounding the idea provides a larger picture of the thoughts. People’s Techno help inventors visualize the vision and the business goals; short term as well as long. From idea screening and validation to research, planning, and prototype.

All of the above leads to lower risks when it comes to the final development of the solution. People’s Techno’s study suggests that following precise practices, major delays and the economic cost associated with it can be reduced by up to 80%.

Nitin recalls, “As our mentor at People’s Techno says, if vision, business as well as product is the center of this initiative called ideation, then research is the epicenter of the center. It is like proton within the nucleus; the powerhouse and brain of a single cell. It is like data processing of all the information collected in the customer phase.” The impact of the People’s Techno initiative is huge! It eliminates rework, close to 80% reduction in rework cost. Moreover, it saves time and energy and improves time to market by 28%. The initiative also enables absolute cost-saving, an overall 36% less cost. The above data is based on People’s Techno’s internal study on the projects delivered in the last one year.

Furthermore, when it comes to innovation, Nitin believes that the company’s innovation has bolstered customers’ faith and trust in it. The difference between a successful and not so successful product lies not in the codes and programs, but in the understanding of the problem and the need for the solution.

“What you gather from the problem and how you use that information in fulfilling the promise of a solution makes all the difference.”

Nitin says, “My Pride, as I love to call them are more motivated and inspired now as they know what they are creating would make an impact on millions of people across the world. Customers not always praise you, but when they ask for more help and support in areas you specialize then it is a matter of inordinate dignity and that is what we all strive for at People’s Techno!”

Talking about challenges faced in the journey of success, Nitin refers to them as stepping stones to success. Just like any new initiative, ideation too came up with its own set of challenges

for People’s Techno. Initially, people were not willing to listen as they lacked trust. However, the company had faith in what it was doing and the practices and methodologies that it follows.

It sometimes took engagement with customers for more than 3 months before they trusted People’s Techno.

And then, as usual, finding the right set of people who could do the precise research in the industry landscape of the customer is another challenge.

However, to overcome such issues and catalyze progress, the company has partnered with Self-belief, Knowledge, and Wisdom! People’s Techno has also partnered with a couple of Engineering Colleges from North India and Western India and a Placement Consultant based out of Mumbai, Pune, and New Delhi.

An Impeccable Leadership with Unmatched Business Understanding Nitin Sharma, the Founder, and CEO is a Connector! Connecting the dots and connecting the right people with the right ones.

With an education in Engineering and Business Administration in Finance, he landed with his first job as a Sales Executive and since then there was no looking back. Realizing that he loves to talk and meet new people, Nitin stuck with the Sales profile.

Sales are like a teacher that teaches you much, which in turn can be used to educate the ignorant.

Coming from a strong product development background in providing solutions, Nitin has been at the forefront in taking the company initiatives forward. Having worked in varied industries from Banking to Manufacturing, Retail, Healthcare, Education, and Travel among others, he has had the privilege of being in different domains and understand the business processes and laws.

Nitin’s strength lies in empowering the other. Be it the team or the customer. He creates a strategy on how best to take a solution to the fore. Nitin sets the tone and lets the team use their jurisprudence to discuss with people who can best benefit from the solutions. He is the best when it comes to engaging and plugs all holes between the requirement and its understanding.

Nitin reads between the lines and shows the side that nobody sees!

People’s Techno isn’t just a bunch of techies, the people at the company understand businesses from life’s perspective with a human touch. People’s Techno is supporting entrepreneurs and businesses alike with its zeal and knowledge to help them in building a future all desire to see.

INNOVATION

Enabling Digital Transformation through an Intelligent Enterprise Automation Platform- Av3ar™ INDUSTRY Software

T PRASHANT KAKADE Co-Founder & Director of Global Delivery Perpetuuiti Technosoft PTE 46 | FORTY UNDER FORTY

he growing complexity of devices, network and systems may lead to organizations facing complex business problems including frequent data loss, interruption of services and IT infrastructure disruption. These interruptions often result in prolonged periods of IT downtime, impacting business in critical ways ranging from revenue loss, reduced productivity and customer dissatisfaction. They can even lead to systemic failures that can affect the ability to operate, highlighting the need for organizations to have Business Resiliency Planning and Recovery Assurance (BCP/ IT) solutions in place.

With impeccable expertise in Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Management, Prashant Kakade co-founded Perpetuuiti to accelerate the growth of new innovative products, addressing to the huge market gap in meeting the automation requirements of the customers in the BCP/ Recovery market. With the mission to develop a product which would help customers in automating, managing and orchestrating their recovery and organizational resiliency needs, Continuity Patrol™ was launched.

FOCUS AREA Cognitive RPA/ Intelligent Automation, Organizational Resiliency Automation & Management Continuity Patrol™ uniquely enables “Live Business Impact Analysis” functionality that leverages the dependency definitions and cost data to calculate quantitative financial impacts that can be specific to a single production application, a set of production applications or the entire datacentre.

Speaking about Perpetuuiti’s most recent innovation Prashant adds, that the team closely studied and researched the current market and found that business organizations are increasingly adopting automation to achieve greater efficiencies. To embrace automation, these organizations tend to buy too many products which are not integrated and hence, the number of touchpoints increases which hampers the overall manageability, visibility and accountability. This further adds to the operational and SMEs’ cost and thereby increases the RTO of decision-making increasing the revenue loss to the customer organisation. Prashant and his team understood that most of the products available in the market offered piecemeal solutions with no integration to one another and they all work in Silos.

Thus, to help solve the customer’s problems, a one-of its kind

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“Intelligent Enterprise Automation Platform” was built with a unique approach in enabling organization-wide resiliency through digital transformation and cognitive automation that helps enterprises (of all sizes) to automate their business and IT processes swiftly, seamlessly and non-intrusively. This single platform distinctively combines IT Autonomics and RPA to help organizations reap maximum efficiency by building an environment in which virtual and human labour collaborate to solve crucial problems. The user organizations can deploy RPA to perform simple and repetitive tasks that would be time-consuming, mundane or impossible for a human to perform; organizations can also benefit from IT Autonomics that self-manages the technologies which operate independently of direct human oversight to perform activities within a complex system.

Never before such a transformative shift in the way of working is seen. Artificially Intelligent software bots are changing how people, processes and technology interact for productivity gains. In this environment, digital workforce from Av3ar™ AIOps platform is arguably more important than ever in driving organizational adaptation and resilience, strengthening Perpetuuiti’s role as a strategic technology partner to its customers in many ways becomes more emphasized.

The company’s recent launch, Av3ar™ is a unique AIOps platform, embedded with Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cognitive Computing (CC) and Machine Learning (ML) algorithms to sense, predict, analyse and solve customer issues. Many Fortune 500 enterprises across industries and geographies have hired intelligent digital employees like Aida from Av3ar AIOps platform to work alongside and assist their human counterparts. These intelligent digital employees from Av3ar™ independently and seamlessly auto48 | FORTY UNDER FORTY

mate the customer’s critical IT and business processes like BoD/EoD Processes, IT autonomics, bank reconciliations, claims processing, invoice processing, data migration, payroll and HRMS automation and many other such intrinsic tasks while delivering an average of 10x efficiency enhancement in their business and IT processes.

In addition to harnessing AI, Av3ar’s digital employees immaculately use ML capabilities and computer vision technology for intelligent data extraction (from varied structured as well as unstructured and scanned input sources), anomaly/ fraud detection and signature-photo matching. This has made digital KRA/ KYC processing simpler, easier and efficient for many of Perpetuuiti’s BFSI customers who are now enjoying improved consistency and control over these processes.

Perpetuuiti’s innovative Intelligent Enterprise Automation platform is already helping companies transcend conventional performance trade-offs to achieve unprecedented levels of efficiency and quality. Applications range from the routine to the revolutionary: from collecting, analysing, and making decisions about textual information to guiding advanced robots. To automate any business process, end-to-end, implies an impossibly broad range of AI capabilities coupled with deep RPA functionality. The key is natively integrating core cognitive technologies while at the same time being any-AI compatible. Perpetuuiti’s Intelligent Enterprise Automation platform with built-in cognitive technologies is designed to address this challenge.

Perpetuuiti’s users can automate unstructured data processes using AI technologies like computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), fuzzy logic, and machine learning (ML) without calling in data scientists or highly trained specialists. The digital workers (bots) from Av3ar™ have intelligent eyes to “see” screen elements

using contextual relationships - just as humans do, bringing unrivalled accuracy and precision to automation, at the speed of bots. To achieve this, Perpetuuiti’s computer vision technology uses a range of algorithms and machine learning principles to recognize, interpret and understand images. Its bots recognize and interact more with on-screen fields and components like PDFs and images unlike other bots that are limited to locating screen elements with configured searches or coordinates.

The bots immaculately detect instances of semantic objects of a certain class (such as humans, buildings, or cars) in digital images and videos. Some of the use cases and features that are helping its customers include anomaly/ fraud detection, signature-photo matching for digital KRA/ KYC, loan origination and much more with multilingual support and intelligent data extraction using Av3ar OCR subsystem.

Harbouring satisfied clients from Fortune 500 diverse set of industry verticals such as telecom, banking, manufacturing, insurance, government, BPM, high-tech and consumer products, Perpetuuiti strongly believes that customer’s success is its success and continues to incorporate new technology applications and best practices into its solutions. The dedicated team keeps innovating to ensure they are abreast with the latest technological advancements and continue to focus on how to diversify the scope of the products and solutions.

The company prides itself with well-defined and redefined business strategies, go-to-market strategy, product scope and features to ensure it is with/ahead of the market trends and technological innovations and requirements. Thus, its innovations pave the way to innovate further and keep delivering the best of the best’s solutions to customers. This, in turn, enriches the company in many ways from creating an innovation-first environment to develop internationally-scalable solutions which keep its employees motivated and engaged, a critical factor contributing to the company’s top-line growth.

Often, companies tend to face one key challenge of ever-evolving customer’s problem statement to help solve a real customer problem and their changing needs. Today’s environment is so dynamic that a constant need to keep innovating to stay ahead of the curve is necessary. While Perpetuuiti does not see any potential drawbacks of its innovation but the team does face challenges while trying to deliver the best to its customers which include: » Defining and re-defining the GoTo market strategy. » Good pool of resources with the excellent domain expertise to keep innovating in this ever-evolving technological environment. » Refining, redefining and evolving product scope and fea-

tures to match market trends and technology innovation. » Long selling cycle due to complexities involved like bringing more confidence in the customers through multiple rounds of demos, PoC cycles and other discussions with customers. » New business models being innovated disrupting the old ones. » Improved revenues through efficient operations. » Business enablement & customer engagement through digital channels. » Increased productivity by optimizing processes to reduce errors & waste. » Enhance service excellence. » Reduce operational risks. » Engaging & empowering employees.

Perpetuuiti’s very strong partner ecosystem helps to drive innovation. Its partner ecosystem includes global industry-giants like HPe, IBM, TCS and Tech M. The company holds strategic collaboration with TCS as the COIN partner.

Some of the milestones that Perpetuuiti has achieved with its partners include» Its flagship products, Continuity Patrol™ and eBDR™ are HPE Helion 9 & 10 certified. » A global sale, services and consulting partnership agreement with HPE for its Continuity Patrol and eBDR solutions to strengthen growth opportunities across geographies by leveraging Perpetuuiti’s integrated business-IT resiliency, cloud migration and replication portfolio along with the HPE-Perpetuuiti GTM strategy. » Partnership with OOREDOO (Qatar Telecom) to deploy Continuity Patrol and Continuity Vault solutions to offer seamless services to their customers on the cloud. » Partnership with Netmagic to deploy Continuity Patrol and eBDR to offer services to their customers on the cloud.

A Visionary Leader Behind Exceptional Business Excellence Prashant Kakade, the Co-Founder & Director of Global Delivery, Perpetuuiti, brings over 24 years of extensive experience in software product delivery, with expertise in Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Management. As a visionary leader, Prashant is responsible for extending delivery excellence across the company and finding new ways to solve customer problems, add value, and deliver exceptional customer experiences.

Prashant’s strategic priorities towards Perpetuuiti include accelerating the growth of new innovative products, delivering exceptional service and value to customers, and maintaining a focus on the financial health and growth of the overall business.

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INNOVATION

Delivering World-Class Insights with Data-Driven Technologies INDUSTRY Multi-Industry

B RANDY MALLUK CEO & Chief Analytics Officer Insights Analytics

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usiness proliferation has become quintessential for today’s organizations. To achieve this ambition, they have started to employ innovative insight platforms. Such platforms help them to maintain bidirectional communication with their clients and customer while acknowledging and nurturing their interests and preferences. Moreover, with the widespread application of insight platforms, Insights Analytics, a world-class Analytics, Testing, Data Science, BI Reporting, and Research services provider has grown at a great pace.

Randy Malluk, the CEO and Chief Analytics Officer at Insights Analytics belives that the company is growing at an astronomical pace. As individual data professionals and organizations alike sign up to list their solutions through the company’s platform (which is still completely FREE to join), Insight Analytics is growing exponentially, and adding not only Digital Products but has now also turned on a new custom offering called “Sell Services”.

FOCUS AREA Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Big Data Analytics He says, “So now our Data Pros can create and list their custom business services to offer through the platform as well, which have been extremely popular.”

Malluk continued that having a vast expanse of data professionals is an incredible asset that many other organizations have and there are virtually no analytics projects that Insights Analytics cannot tackle as the depth and breadth of the network of their talent continue to grow.

Over his career, he has held senior data analytics leadership roles growing teams within the ad-tech, agency, banking, CPG, franchise, hardware, healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and technology industries; instrumental in making major advancements for his organizations’ data science and analytics capabilities.

Malluk’s groundbreaking work has been widely recognized in the Analytics Industry and has involved innovations behind several patents, including anti-fraud, incremental measurement, and new forms of advertising targeting and analytic advancements.

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He pioneered the development and launch of a ground breaking E-commerce marketplace for Digital Business Solutions. “We’re like an AppStore for business, only instead of ‘Developers and Games’ its ‘DataPros and Solutions!’”

Just like with other major digital marketplaces (think Apple, Amazon, Etsy, Uber, etc.), Insights Analytics provides a secure platform with instant vendor payments and a standard rev-share split on all transactions, powered by PayPal payments. “It couldn’t be simpler from either side of our industry,” says Malluk, “Whether you’re a Data Pro who wants to monetize a great solution like a Financial Template or a Predictive Model; OR even a Data Leader who needs to buy one for your organization!”

Furthermore, Malluk also shared his excitement about the career and earning potential that this new marketplace platform provides for data professionals at all levels... “One of the challenges that we have faced is our industry has been on the rise of automation and loss of jobs. While I think many in our field have largely been lucky because of the detailed nature of our work, automation is still here and increasingly more on the way.”

Malluk was quick to acknowledge that no industry will escape this trend and mentioned that his company’s model will offer some needed relief. The platform provides a NEW model for data professionals to provide themselves with a new form of independence.

First: to provide greater economic freedom.

Second, to work from anywhere remotely, which in the new post-corona-virus world is so important.

Third: to create innovative business solutions that push the industry forward with great products and services!

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Insights Analytics’ goal at the end of the day is very simple: to bring people and technology together to offer the best business solutions and services across the world with a focus on corporate data analysis.

Moreover, the company has benefited immensely. In many ways, Insights Analytics has had to completely shift its business model to streamline many processes so it could think in terms of scale! Everything the company does has to ask itself “Does it scale?”

Now Insights Analytics has built something that it feels truly does. Additionally, even though the company is still a “small” organization in the sense that the management team at HQ is tiny, it feels it has built something incredibly large compared to what it ever would have been able to do otherwise – had Insights Analytics not chosen to pivot and think differently. So much more is possible now that the company had turned its four-walls inside-out and invited the world of analytics in so to speak! Insights Analytics has become the most exciting thing it has ever been a part of, and the company feels like it has lightning in a bottle.

However, at a flip, under the layers of all glittering success, it is hard to even gauge the efforts Insights Analytics has put in to overcome the industry challenges. At first glance, an individual data practitioner might look at the company’s model and say something like “Hey wait a minute, isn’t this BAD for our industry? If a company can purchase a solution in 3 minutes for US$3,000 then they would have paid someone US$30,000 in salary to produce manually over the next 3 months? Won’t that analyst lose their job?” and this is where Randy always says “Stop! Hit the pause button. Absolutely Not!” For three major reasons.

First: having thousands of analysts across the planet grinding away at the same problem each in their own cubicles may be providing work for each of those individuals, but it does nobody any favors if one doesn’t isolate the best solutions for all, and make them available to all! That is totally wasteful. The industry needs to think bigger picture. If one has a platform that can make the work more impactful, they absolutely should. Randy says that he does agree that if the large employer has the opportunity to realize cost savings on an analyst’s time, they will.

But he also knows from experience that they will sooner re-invest that capital in intelligent ways than letting a great analyst go. Randy also knows that any analyst worth their salt hates doing busy work. What that organization might instead do is purchase a dozen fantastic solutions that this analyst now has the pleasure to implement, manage, customize, and improve upon... thus further pushing that organization, analyst, and the entire industry forward!

Second: only the largest companies are paying full-time data professionals right now, which is probably less than 5-10% of all organizations. Insights Analytics platform will open-up analytics options to the entire rest of the business world who were previously completely priced-out of activating their incredibly valuable business data! Additionally, for the most part they have many of the same technology platforms as the big boys since so many have moved to license-based models. However, until now, they have not had access to talent! So, guess what that means? Insights Analytics has a massive opportunity to close this gap... and that gap represents 90+ percent of the world’s data economy. Randy says, “We are not going to lose work opportunity; we are going to gain a lot more of it!”

Third: He completely understands that not every single practitioner is a product creator or innovator but that does not mean they are not amazing practitioners. Sure, there will be some individuals who because they got on the platform early, get very successful and blow-up or go viral with their solutions (i.e. right product, right-time, Right-LinkedIn-marketing). According to Randy, “They will be our version of Angry Birds. Let us call them “Angry Nerds.” While these Angry Nerds will generally be more exception than the rule, I would never look at these individuals as opponents since they will be market leaders in their own right. These girls and guys will be in a very interesting position and we are already watching it happen. They are creating instant digital download solutions that become so successful that they simply neither need nor have the personal time to support personally.” Quoting an example here, Randy says, let’s say you become an Angry Nerd! You create a Data Model in Excel and price it at US$299 and it starts getting 100 sales per week. Con-

gratulations, you are making nearly US$30k per week. Chances are you are probably going to leave the number crunching to the others. But perhaps 20% of your customers might want an up-sell on this product for analyst support to have your Data Model customized even further. Congratulations again, you just created a ton of economic opportunity for many of your fellow data practitioners who would gladly accept the work.

So, wait a minute, isn’t this bad for our industry? “Stop. Hit the pause button. Absolutely Not.” That’s how Insights Analytics has won over several industry challenges and is determined to pass with flying colours in the future as well through its innovations.

Furthermore, highlighting the significant aspects responsible for driving Insights Analytics’ success, Randy says, every single data practitioner that signs-up is valued and trusted key partnership. The company would never have been able to build this incredible platform without its incredible network of DataPros!

Its platform is still FREE to join. For more information please go to https://insightsanalytics.com/data-pros-network An Innovative Leadership Driving Data-Driven Culture At Insights Analytics, Malluk brings an extensive track record of experience and innovation in data, technology, data science, AI, BI, analytics, measurement, and machine learning to Insights Analytics.

In his role as an innovator, Randy oversees Insights’ efforts to extend the power of analytics to deliver greater measurement value to clients globally, while increasing the efficiency, accuracy, and predictability of their many data-driven needs. Insights is investing significantly in new data-related initiatives that augment the value of its practice’s performance with extensive investments and innovation in technology, process, development, human assets, functional area capabilities, tools, and solutions.

Over his career, Randy has led numerous game-changing and cutting-edge innovation initiatives in the areas of retail analytics, business intelligence, data governance, consumer insights and research, data science, and decision support systems.

While at Insights, he led many major initiatives in consumer, corporate, media, marketing, technology, services, and major global reporting platform implementations.

Additionally, he also currently serves as an advisor and member among several boards including the Consumer Brand Advisory Board for Bank of America, the Consumer Brand Advisory Board for Jaguar Land Rover North America, and the Advisory Board for Digital Marketing at the University of South Florida, Muma College of Business.

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“W

Remarkable Traits of Leadership with an Innovative Mindset 54 | FORTY UNDER FORTY

ithout tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd.

Without innovation, it is a

corpse.”

The above words by Winston Churchill, emphasizes on the necessity for innovation that acts as a catalyst and has the power to determine your zenith in life. Without it, a person finds itself confined to the walls of aimless, sedentary, and monotonous life.

Have you ever wondered how people like Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Steve Jobs were able to grow their companies from nothing to a world-renowned and respected brand? What makes them unique while a software company employee too struggles in the 24-hour time every day? The answer lies in the ability to innovate beyond the challenges and constraints.

These are tough and competitive times. Everyone seems to possess the same set of skills and access to resources like you. So, it is imperative that we surround ourselves with minds that encourage us to keep up with the innovations that are taking place in both the traditional markets and the modern technologies, and innovators who inspire.

For the latter, we need to identify the characteristics these leaders own and understand how they get new ideas or transform an old one into an asset, which can boost the company’s market image and economy. Or as Dr William R. Brody, puts it “The calculus of innovation is really quite simple: Knowledge drives innovation, innovation drives productivity, productivity drives economic growth.” Some of these qualities are: Innovators tend to do things from a different angle of perspective, unlike others. They firmly believe in this principle, and create an environment for their followers, equipped with tools and resources to break the status quo, consider sky as limit and advance themselves to achieve growth.

Leaders with an innovative mindset are not afraid to dream, create, experiment, nor fail. They keep hustling even when they face adversities. They rarely lose their composure and have immense levels of patience. In addition to that, they are so full of self-belief that they see an obstacle as an opportunity to learn by identifying its strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

They prefer leading their team from a centralized

approach, with dynamic control. They inspire their followers to push beyond their comfort zones when it comes to creativity and hones new skills that shall help them to grow forward in their careers.

They believe in diversity and emphasis on the need to have multiple POVs to remain impartial and gain a total understanding of the situations and challenges posed from technical, organizational, and economic grounds. They always prefer taking risks to shortcuts for steady growth.

Everyone can be an innovator! Innovators are authentic leaders who acknowledge this fact and are committed to creating flexible, highly productive, and values-based organizations that hire people who are passionate about their work; give them opportunities to grow. They ensure to make these new minds feel valued and respected; provide them with clarity about their roles and responsibilities. This is because innovators believe in expanding the network and foster a culture of sharing ideas instead of keeping it to themselves. Plus, they never forget to appreciate the actual efforts and hard work put by an employee.

Innovators know that innovation is not a one-time thing. Therefore, they consistently put effort into attempting to rise above the praises and beyond their past laurels to stay competitive. This requires innovators to be active change managers who know how to navigate through resistance to their ideas.

They never hesitate to break traditional norms when required, and continuously think outside the box.

They know that innovation begins when they carefully observe and pay attention to customer needs.

They do understand that if they spend too much attention to conventional business metrics, it can restrict them from creating or reaching significant milestones.

To bring any kind of growth in business spheres, change is a definitive element. And that change comes from innovation which in turn propels us towards progress. So, it is a must to be a strong leader who strives and demands innovation than be content with stagnant success. To quote the immortal words of Steve Jobs, “Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” Hence, it is better to think and act tangentially like an evolving innovator than to follow the pursuit of generic thoughts.

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INNOVATION

Driving Smart DecisionMaking Through Artificial Intelligence and Data Science INDUSTRY Financial Services

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n the current times, while all consumer and client centric businesses are accelerating their digital transformation, it becomes essential for businesses to be mindful of embedding simplicity and personalization in their customer experience. Consumers expect most of their experiences to be as seamless as one-touch click and ordering. However, many financial institutions still largely rely on legacy technology and provide very less transparency and ease of use to their customers. Transforming how customers manage their personal finance was the primary inspiration behind Clarity Money.

Clarity Money, launched in 2017 by serial entrepreneur Adam Dell and CTO Matt Jacobs, is a personal finance mobile app that acts as your financial champion. Ushering in the new era of mobile personal finance management apps, Clarity Money uses artificial intelligence and data science to help consumers make smarter financial decisions and get the most from their money. Vishal joined Clarity Money as a founding member, where he served as Head of Data, building the infrastructure, algorithms and models that enable Clarity Money’s revolution-

FOCUS AREA Artificial Intelligence, Data Science

ary features like allowing users to manage their recurring payments, estimate their income and create budgets based on their spending patterns.

Innovation & Impact Managing personal finance is getting more complex for consumers by each day. People are struggling to understand their spending, cut out credit card debts, while also wanting to start saving, resulting in a financial haze. Clarity Money was built with the vision to provide overall financial clarity in the regular consumer’s life.

One key product in the Clarity app was that of identifying the recurrence pattern on spendings and earnings using a combination of rules-based engine and mathematical transforms.

Vishal was a key contributor to building this patent-pending innovative solution. This recurring bill feature was one of the most well received features by consumers as well as industry.

Many other Fintech apps quickly followed suit by offering similar features that magnified the benefits of the innovation. With-

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in an year of launch, Clarity Money witnessed tremendous success as the app was downloaded by more than a million users.

In 2018, Clarity Money was acquired by Goldman Sachs’s digital first consumer bank, Marcus. Vishal continues to serve as Head of Data for the digital storefront business at Marcus.

A Data-Versed Leader Vishal started his career at IBM India Software Labs where he published numerous defensive papers and worked with researchers on new algorithms to process very large tree-based documents. He then enrolled at Columbia University where in his capacity as a Research and Teaching Assistant, worked with professors to offer the University’s first cloud computing course and worked in finding and fixing vulnerabilities in small operating systems. Thereafter, Vishal joined Barclays Investment Bank where he and his team worked on a major data and digital transformation project to modernize the risk, trade and analytics data reporting, winning the annual CIO award. He then joined Bluefly, a well-known e-commerce platform, where he managed the data infrastructure and built recommendation engines generating millions of dollars in revenue. Vishal

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later joined About.com where he worked on data infrastructure that supported petabytes of data as well as bot detection algorithms.

Vishal is passionate about creating new business value and products by solving challenging problems utilizing innovation in data engineering, data science and software/algorithmic engineering. As a well-respected technology leader, Vishal has been invited to judge numerous hackathons and business plan competitions at universities like the John Hopkins University, Wharton Business School and Princeton University. He is also a senior member of IEEE, a member of ACM and an invited member of International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences (organizer of The Webby awards). He has won numerous intra-company and industry awards such as IBM Graduate Scholarship Award, Barclays CIO Award, Webby honoree and Appy Award in the finance category. He advises a few non-profit foundations and is a strong proponent of open source software. Vishal holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from Columbia University and an undergrad degree in Engineering from Cochin University.

INNOVATION

Augmenting Business Potential with World Class AI Capabilities INDUSTRY IT Services

A

XABI URIBE-ETXEBARRIA Founder & CEO Shepra.ai

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rtificial Intelligence and its subsets, in particular, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, drive a lot of industries towards an innovative juncture solving some significant business challenges that occurred in the path of success. Convinced that AI has the ability to solve the urgent challenges facing humanity and our planet, Xabi Uribe-Etxebarria founded Sherpa.ai, a company dedicated to putting AI at the service of the people, to change people’s lives and make them better. And become a better world. In just a few years, Sherpa.ai has become a leading AI services company at the global level. The company continues adding more and more countries in its operations like the USA and others.

Sherpa.ai has been considered as one of the top 100 most innovative companies in rankings including the Fortune AI 100 and CB Insights’ AI in 2020. Datamation magazine named it one of the 10 leading Artificial Intelligence companies, along with Google, IBM, Microsoft, etc.

Xabi believing the potential of Sherpa and what it can achieve went on to add more gems to his management team. He has

FOCUS AREA Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Natural Language Processing, Big Data Analytics, IoT, Cloud Computing hired Tom Gruber (Co-founder and former CTO of Siri) on board, and in 2020, Sherpa.ai added Joanna Hoffman (Ex-VP of Marketing at Macintosh, General Magic, and NeXT; Steve Jobs’ right-hand person as portrayed by Kate Winslet in the movie Steve Jobs) to the team of Sherpa.ai.

As a result of visionary leadership, in recent years, Sherpa.ai has been creating AI-based algorithms, products, and solutions. The markets, industries, and clients to which the company could focus Sherpa’s solutions are practically all, so it has carried out a strategic analysis to assess which solutions would have a better balance between the implementation effort and the scientific and/or economic impact it could have.

Once the analysis has been made, the team at Sherpa decided to focus the company’s efforts on four business lines, which it sees with a great future within the field of AI. First is Conversational AI, which is one of Sherpa.ai’s core knowledge, and which the company sees a projection of enormous growth, due to the “Voicify” trend that it sees every day in most of the industries.

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mation allows the identification and exploitation of latent relationships between the various elements present, without the need for users to interact with the system. The AI engine is constantly analyzing all information. Sherpa’s algorithms are able to find patterns that underlie the data and give coherence to the information from different domains, which are theoretically unconnected.

AI & Profiling Its personalized, predictive capabilities are what make Sherpa different from its market competitors. Sherpa analyzes over 100,000 parameters per user per day, in order to formulate and continuously update individual profiles:

Secondly, the recommendation and predictive engines, in which Sherpa.ai is focusing has a lot of developed technology and that customers demand more and more for the concept of “hyper-personalization” of their products.

The third is Content analysis, which is a field with a giant potential and involving areas ranging from fake news to the automatic creation of content.

And finally the fourth is Privacy, which is one of the biggest challenges facing AI, and in which Sherpa.ai is exploring solutions as innovative as Federated Learning. In Federated Learning, the company is already making significant progress, competing with the largest technology companies in the world.

Furthermore, in the current crisis-induced due to pandemic, in 2020, Xabi and his company, had a decisive impact on mitigating the damage caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, by altruistically and very successfully applying the use of Artificial Intelligence to prevent the collapse of ICUs. Given AI’s potential to do good, but also its potential for harm, Xabi, along with the University of Columbia and Rafael Yuste (the neurobiologist and ideologist of Obama’s BRAIN initiative) began an international initiative to regulate both AI and neuroscience. Governments have become part of this initiative, and it is awaiting a presentation at the United Nations.

As notified by Xabi, Rafael is also the creator of

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technology and AI events that have brought the world’s most respected technology influencers to Bilbao to share their insights with future generations of entrepreneurs. Featured guests included Sir Tim Berners-Lee (father of the World Wide Web), Mozilla Chairwoman Mitchell Baker, Apple Co-Founder Steve Wozniak, and former Pepsi and Apple CEO John Sculley.

Beyond all the achievements, innovation is what has led Sherpa.ai to be one of the most valued companies in AI worldwide, as shown by the various prestigious awards obtained in recent years.

Through such encouragement that Sherpa.ai has got over the years, it has been able to develop one of the best technologies worldwide based on four fundamental axes: Predictive Algorithms, AI and Profiling, NLP & Conversational Manager and Federated Learning.

Predictive Algorithms Using advanced predictive Machine Learning algorithms that are based on complex probabilistic and computational models, Sherpa is able to learn and codify complex functions that allow it to infer and anticipate relevant information for users at any given time. The company is uniquely able to understand its users across many domains of life, not just when it comes to news or traffic or shopping lists like other personal assistants.

Having knowledge of different domains of infor-

NLP & Conversational Manager Unparalleled Linguistic Intelligence Sherpa incorporates five levels of linguistic analysis to eliminate any possibility of misinterpretation - morphological, syntactic, semantic, pragmatic, and functional. Its sophisticated natural language technology mimics human understanding to dismiss impossible or unlikely matches.

Built-in Natural Language Capabilities Packed with over 300,000 concepts and 5,000 syntactic and semantic rules, Sherpa’s thoroughly tested core system provides the basis for a reliable and comprehensive approach to human-computer interaction.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) The natural language processing expert system is best described by this internal R&D paper excerpt: “Natural language processing expert system: the system integrates five levels of linguistically-motivated processing to arrive at an unambiguous representation of the user’s intent. Sherpa’s technology is able to represent the meaning expressed through language in a conceptual, language-independent way, at an abstract level that is separate from any specific language. The engine is able to arrive at the correct analysis of ambiguous inputs by applying constraints during the analysis process that rule out all but the intended meaning, eliminating unlikely or impossible interpretations. A language-independent conceptual representation is referred to as an Interlingua. As a consequence, the time required to add a new language to Sherpa’s set of supported languages is exponentially reduced. The core Sherpa system includes over 300,000 concepts and 5,000 syntactical and semantic rules, as well as the large dictionaries required to support these concepts.”

Federated Learning According to Xabi, Sherpa.ai Federated Learning is an opensource framework for Machine Learning that is dedicated to data privacy protection. It has been developed to facilitate open research and experimentation in Federated Learning, a machine learning paradigm aimed at learning models from decentralized data (e.g., data located on users’ smartphones) and ensuring data privacy. This is achieved by training the model locally in each node (e.g., on each smartphone), sharing the model-updated parameters (not the data), and securely aggregating the updated parameters to build a better model.

This technology could be disruptive in cases where it is compulsory to ensure data privacy.

Sherpa.ai is focused on democratizing Federated Learning by providing methodologies, pipelines, and evaluation techniques specifically designed for Federated Learning. The company’s Federated Learning SDK enables developers to simulate Federated Learning scenarios with models, algorithms, and data provided by the framework, as well as their own data.

According to Xabi, Sherpa.ai´s mission is “To augment and accelerate human potential through the application of personal AI to individuals,” and it runs on the vision of “Virtual assistants will become our conscience.”

Furthermore, to enrich its innovative resources, the company has formed some most significant partnerships with Columbia University, the European Union, the University of Granada, Samsung, Volkswagen, Lenovo, Huawei, and Santander Bank.

A Visionary Innovator Leading Business Advances Xabi Uribe-Etxebarria is a serial entrepreneur, innovator, and community activist in the field of Artificial Intelligence. As an entrepreneur, he has created world-class AI companies and has envisioned future enterprises. As an innovator, he has developed a portfolio of impressive, patented Artificial Intelligence technologies. As a community activist, he has devoted his time and talents to causes both local and global.

Born in Bilbao in 1981, Uribe-Etxebarria earned an MSc in Industrial and Organizational Engineering and Technical Industrial Engineering (specializing in Electronic Engineering). He was studying for a Ph.D. in Natural Language Processing when he decided instead to build his first company, based on his academic research. He complemented his education with further studies at leading schools, including the MIT Sloan School of Management, Harvard Business School, Deusto Business School, and TEC Monterrey.

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