WWW.THEENTERPRISEWORLD.COM | APAC EDITION | JANUARY 2021
LAVELLE NETWORKS Connecting Better for the
Brighter Future The
ELITE TECH COMPANIES
to watch in 2021
We don’t sell on network features, but rather on application experience.
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SHYAMAL KUMAR Founder & CEO, Lavelle Networks
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Although the period of human life and evolution is very old, some important physical and scientific discoveries made in the last century have contributed to the development of human beings. Human life is very mysterious. In it, science has to be called a step of revolution. Many skills and techniques were used to makes that science easier to use. Technology has developed in almost every field to make human life convenient. Technology can be called the task of science. The insistence on how all scientific rules and approaches can be applied in various technical ways means that we understand it as progress. With minimal use of physical exertion, today we have been able to perform all the tasks we need with the help of technology. Technology is responsible for all industrial development. The process of making goods is accelerating. Human efforts are declining in the industry due to large machines and technical driving capacity. Computers and operating machines make huge tasks possible in a matter of seconds. In this special issue of The Enterprise World magazine, The Elite Tech Companies to Watch in 2021, we bring to you the stories of enterprises that have transmogrified the business sectors with their cutting edge and highly innovative technology offerings. Featuring for the cover story is Lavelle Networks. Lavelle Networks is one of the top names in the network landscape that is accelerating the digital revolution around the world. Within 5 years, their flagship product line “ScaleAOn” has become the choice of leading Indian enterprises using SDN technologies. Shyamal Kumar, Karthik Madhava, and Vishal Khare came together to drive this innovative journey, along with a committed team of engineers who wrote the first lines of code and are still building the company. In our special editorial feature ‘HOW TECHNOLOGY GAVE A SUPERIOR EDGE TO THE BUSINESS’, read out how technology has transformed our lives and made us dependent on it. It's never late, think and decide how much to be dependent on technology. SecureVel is a leader in providing “niche” solutions that solve real security issues for enterprises maintaining the highest industry standards and providing solutions that are unique and tailor-made to their client's needs. They have an arsenal of experts who work round the clock to reduce complexity and speed up security. Read out about TagBox. A platform helping organizations solve site operations and supply chain problems like Product Quality and Compliance, End to End Traceability, and Operational Efficiency. TagBox has customers spread across F&B, Pharmaceuticals, and Hi T tech/industrial, Logistics, and Discreet Manufacturing segments. There is a lot more inside! Happy Reading!!
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This list is NOT a ranking. The companies on listed in magazine serve different aspects of the market, making ranking them in any order except revenue impossible and unfair. We try to bring a perfect platform for business organization to showcase their valued products/ services. Copyrights © The Enterprise World | 2019. All Rights Reserved. The images and content included in this magazine should not be copied, transferred or reproduced in any form or by any means, electronics, mechanical, photocopying, recording, otherwise, without proper permission from The Enterprise World. The Enterprise World solely owns all the reprint rights.
Leaders in Spotlight This issue of The Enterprise World Magazine, The Elite Tech Companies to Watch in 2021 features, Featuring for the cover story is Lavelle Networks. Lavelle Networks is one of the top names in the network landscape that is accelerating the digital revolution around the world. Within 5 years, their flagship product line “ScaleAOn” has become the choice of leading Indian enterprises using SDN technologies. Shyamal Kumar, Karthik Madhava, and Vishal Khare came together to drive this innovative journey, along with a committed team of engineers who wrote the first lines of code and are still building the company. SecureVel is a leader in providing “niche” solutions that solves real security issues for enterprises maintaining highest industry standards and providing solutions that are unique and tailor-made to their client’s needs. They have an arsenal of experts who work round the clock to reduce complexity and speedup security.
TagBox is helping organizations solve site operations and supply chain problems like Product Quality and Compliance, End to End Traceability, and Operational Efficiency. TagBox has customers spread across F&B, Pharmaceuticals, Hi-tech/industrial, Logistics, and Discreet Manufacturing segments. TagBox’s BoxLens platform is being used by these organizations to improve the visibility of their Products, Staff, Assets, Processes, and the Environment in which all of these are operating in unison. Codelattice is a team of 200+ passionate technocrats spanning eight countries. They are a digital solution provider established in 2009. They develop cool software for complex business problems with bleeding-edge technology. The company has had phenomenal growth in the past 10 years, growing from one office to eight countries worldwide. Read out an interview with Mr. Vijith Sivadasan, MD, and Co-founder at Codelattice, and know more about the company.
Agilisium is a Big Data and Analytics company with a clear focus on helping organizations take the “Data-to-Insights-Leap.” To that end, Agilisium has invested in all stages of the data journey: Data Architecture Consulting, Data Integration, Data Storage, Data Governance, and Data Analytics. Our talent pool comprises 70+ certified experts in AWS & GCP Data Analytics services, and we have successfully migrated 15+ PB workloads onto the cloud. Under the 360 degrees futuristic vision of Mr. Raj Babu, CEO, the team Agilisium is transmogrifying businesses with the top notched offering. Shiftco, one of the leading logistics solutions company in India is making hard and smart efforts to provide their clients top notched services and empower them. In a talk with Mr Gopi Nair, CEO at the company, we discussed the current industry scenario and how Shiftco is transogryfing its clients businesses.
Table of
Contents
08 16 20 22 26 34 30 38 42
Lavelle Networks Connecting Better for the Brighter Future
SecureVel The leading name in the cybersecurity industry
Technology How Technology Gave A Superior Edge To The Business
Agilisium Consulting Helping customers take the Data to Insights leap
Codelattice Catapult to the Next Digital Dimension
Shiftco Simplifying your logistics needs with a personal approach
Get Inspired The Story of Marc Benioff
TagBox Solutions Revolutionizing businesses with digital innovations
Manufacturing 4 Ways That 5G Is Already Transforming The Manufacturing Productivity
Cover Story
LAVELLE NETWORKS
Connecting Better for the Brighter Future
08 / January 2021
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In this digital era, the data centres are increasing at tremendous speed. The networks in the data centres cannot deal with workflows like a cloud where tenants come and go, the network breaks down, and it costs a lot of money to keep the hardware. SDN, software-defined networking is the best solution that can cater to the network needs of businesses. An SDN solution makes enterprise networking agile, responsive and effectively support the demands of today’s productivity needs. Bangalore, India based company Lavelle Networks is one of the top names in the network landscape that is accelerating the digital revolution around the world. Within a span of 5 years, their flagship product line “ScaleAOn” has become the choice of leading Indian enterprises using SDN technologies. Shyamal Kumar, Karthik Madhava, and Vishal Khare came together to drive this innovative journey, along with a committed team of engineers who wrote the first lines of code 10 / January 2021
and are still building the company. The company began in 2015, in a café on Lavelle Road, Bangalore, and thus the name Lavelle Networks. With a business presence in India, Singapore, Middle East, and North America, Lavelle Networks have developed quickly to turn into a trusted network partner for clients rushing towards the cloud and advanced digital change. Today, Lavelle Networks is the fastest-growing software-defined networking startup in Asia, with more than 75 enterprise customers, and over 10,000 places of businesses connected across multiple regions of the world. The company’s vision is to provide the best network experience to its customers across all their cloud applications. Early Days
Getting the first 5 customers in 2016 triggered the growth of Lavelle Networks. Every technology business is fuelled by a growing customer base as its fulcrum of success. Shyamal says, “We are always laser-focused on acquiring more and more customers, and increasing product usage every day. Once we had signed up the first five customers and broke into our first revenue quarter, there was no looking back.” Charting the new paths of success
Like every business, Lavelle Networks also faced some challenges while its inception. Without sitting back relaxed thinking about the problems, the team thought of solutions that helped them to be what they are today, the market leader in the network landscape! Building a great team was the first challenge they faced, as that’s the foundation of a company’s success. It took them a couple of years to bring all the right talent, skill, and committed folks into the leadership of the company. The other
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challenge was to convince customers that they have a long term vision for the market and their future, since they are building core IT infrastructure products, and customers want to believe that the Lavelle team is there for the long haul.
The biggest change is in sheer product usage and customer adoption. Lavelle networks have grown 300% year on year, in terms of revenue, market share, product instances, and several customers. Team Lavelle says, “Starting from scratch, we broke into a market dominated by large incumbent players, and created a 30% market share in terms of deployed software instances. While there are several business metrics like EBIDTA that have improved, we have always believed that if we focus on several
The core is your people and the processes around people, if they are not alright; it is hard to be successful.
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n the wake of the pandemic, an enterprise’s agility to adjust rapidly to market pressures and changing client needs is now a fundamental business requirement . Today, each organization is hoping to improve its efficiency to survive in the market. One approach to accomplish this objective is by adopting innovations that can assist your employees to collaborate, communicate, and work better.
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customers and usage per customer – all other metrics and graphs will automatically be alright.” The biggest reason for Lavelle Network’s success is they believe in making decisions that are good for the long run, rather than the near term. While near-term execution is of paramount importance, they drive all their strategy by making decisions that are in the long-term interest of their valuable customers, team, and investors. This is also the reason the company invests a lot of time and resources in their leadership, sustaining a culture of teamwork, and a transparent decision-making process. Ultimately it is this inner core of your company that drives your success in the market. It’s a little bit like working out in the gym – there are muscles everyone can see and appreciate (like your revenue and profits), but they know well that until the core of our body is strong, all the other success is short lived. It’s the same thing with a company. The company’s rollout of the first 1000+ network on its ScaleAOn
platform in 2017 is a key memory that is special. With a team of fewer than 30 people they delivered on a massive project, considering the technology was brand new. This was India’s 2nd largest fashion retail chain at that time. Putting innovation on the table Lavelle Networks focuses on networking software delivered from the cloud as-a-service, with a focus on network performance, security, and management. The company’s solutions are different from others in the market because they focus on the performance of the application, rather than on just network metrics. The company develops a verticalized approach to applications like Microsoft Office 365, or SAP, or other major cloud platforms. Customers care only about applications – not about compute, network, or storage directly. So they take the approach that customer’s love – which is how Lavelle’s network platform can make your applications faster and safer. The company has hardware, software, and a mature suite of network services for customers including bandwidth aggregation, cloud-based network monitoring centres, and a network helpdesk.
We don't sell on network features, but rather on application experience.
12 / January 2021
Lavelle Networks decide the next steps always keeping customers in their mind. For them, growing existing customers is a key priority, and then finding more customers is an equivalent priority. So the team Lavelle stays close
to market inflection points like hybrid cloud usage, BYOD, SASE and build that into our agile and evolving roadmap. “We also believe that the challenges faced by our customer's in-network access are what we should focus on, instead of looking at solutions that we might be excited to build but might not be the pressing problems for our customers.” Shyamal commented. Mr. Shyamal Kumar - A leader with a revolutionary innovative vision Since 2000 when he started working, Shyamal has built networking platforms for the internet. He says, “My initial work at a California based start-up got me hooked into this adrenalinfuelled world of innovation, passion and David-vs-Goliath battles in the market.” Since then he has been part of 5 start-ups, building great networking products for data centres, campus branches, security, cloud, and the worldwide Internet. He had written some of the initial code to create the world's first interoperable MPLS network between Cisco and Juniper for AT&T. Shyamal has had a fascinating ringside view of the phenomenal growth of the Internet, and the impact it has had on businesses worldwide. Taking new software products to market is something he has done over and over again, and that’s what he is passionate about. Shyamal says, “Investing in my growth as a leader has been the most rewarding part of this journey. I have felt at each stage, that only by becoming a better leader have I been able to make progress in my entrepreneurial pursuit. On the
Shyamal Kumar www.theenterpriseworld.com / 13
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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. – Mahatma Gandhi technology front, I am most proud of building the Juniper MX terabit traffic engine, one of the world’s first wireless broadband systems using WiMAX, and the first-ever virtual network services engine at Inkra Networks.” The happening work culture at Lavelle People at Lavelle Networks focus a lot on the day to day values and culture in their workplace. Information in the company is freely provided and available for faster decision making. The company has extremely flexible working hours and a leave policy that takes care of every conceivable personal need that might arise. Lavelle Networks promoted a distributed workforce even before COVID-19, so their complete workflow is cloud-based, and on digital platforms. Shyamal says, “We strive to ensure that operational execution is fast and precise, and people are not left with no guidance, information, or support. The biggest strength of our team is that everyone can reach out to the leadership at any time, and know that their point of view will be heard. Anyone can influence a strategic decision in our company if they have the right input, irrespective of their position in the team structure. 14 / January 2021
“As a networking company – we are most inspired by the fast pace of the telecommunication revolution in India. Barely a decade back was we still in 2G networks, with sparse Internet access. The extreme pace at which our mobile networks have grown is something that always inspires us.” He added.
everyone is going through a survival phase, and be sensitive to the fact the business metrics need to be secondary, and ensuring we make it through this universally trying times is the primary metric.
Shyamal’s take on market after COVID-19
Constant vigilance is a need. Today we live in a red ocean market in all areas of business solutions. The barrier to creating technology is lowered because of the cloud, internet, and mobile. So one needs to be vigilant of competition, and the disruption someone else is working on.
The need we anticipated back in 2017 is now a roaring market opportunity, with almost every major enterprise not only migrating to one cloud but at the same time using multiple clouds. In the wake of COVID-19 and business continuity, it has become imperative to use digital platforms that are available from more than one cloud for resilience, availability, and performance. Our work in this area has become even more strategically important to the digital transformation of our customers. A business is only as successful as the customers it serves. Focusing on what our customers need to be successful is now more important than ever. The next thing is to be as cloud-ready and digital-first as possible, any company that still has manual workflows is going to find it hard to move ahead. Pay extra attention to your people as
About Constant vigilance and a rat-race in the market
We believe that each of us has the potential to be unique in this world, and our impact is also designed to be unique. Following a path where our potential is creating a maximum impact on other people's lives in the world is the best way to deal with it. Compete with your potential, not with others. Because you have been gifted by God, which is great for your life story. The more you flow in your gifts, the easier it is to ignore the rat race. For example – I don’t sweat about the valuation of competitors, I only focus on the best company that I can create with the potential of technology leadership that I am blessed with. – signs off Shyamal.
| Business Story
SecureVel THE LEADING NAME IN THE CYBERSECURITY INDUSTRY
S
ince the major shift of transactions, marketplace and work to the online mode, the internet has become the place for the companies and start-ups to showcase their products and services. As the internet has become the office and the marketplace for most of the companies and start-ups, the risk involved around the around the company, their servers, etc. is ever increasing as there are a lot of personnel who would not stop posing a potential threat to the company for their data, patents and other important information. Also, as the major work is being done 16 / January 2021
online, there is a greater need for an efficient, robust and effective solution provider when it comes to data security and other technological processes. In comes the pioneer in providing safety and security solutions, SecureVel that provides best-inclass and highly efficient cybersecurity solutions. SecureVel has maintained their high delivery and service standards making sure that their clients are highly satisfied and their data and other important information, etc. is completely safe. SecureVel has revolutionized the cybersecurity domain with their
products/services and are one of the most sought-after and leading names in this industry. Their cybersecurity solutions are not only efficient and feasible but they also provide other unique products/services that stands them out from the rest of the companies in this domain. The Company SecureVel is a leader in providing “niche” solutions that solves real security issues for enterprises maintaining highest industry standards and providing solutions that are unique and tailor-made to
their client’s needs. They have an arsenal of experts who work round the clock to reduce complexity and speedup security. Not only they are experts in the field bringing in their experience and providing a highly satisfying user safety but SecureVel also brings innovative solutions which simplify and protect your conventional and new generation connected devices. SecureVel has always believed in being one step ahead of the generation and making sure that their products/services are of the highest standards and packed with the latest in technology development. They strongly feel Automation with intelligence “AI” is a key of future success and their solutions are enabled with AI and Machine learning. Products/services offered PhishSecure is a Phishing Assessment and Security Awareness User Trainings. PhishSecure Security Awareness Training provides an added layer of security by testing and educating employees about the latest threat trends. PhishSecure’s unique tools and methodology helps you reduce the number of successful phishing attacks and malware infections. Some of the highlights of PhishSecure are; • Simple and User-Friendly PhishSecure is a simple and userfriendly solution for driving phishing simulations and online trainings. Launching phishing simulations is made easy through pre-existing phishing templates and
KHUSHAMAD NAZIR, FOUNDER & CEO
connectors for authoritative identity repositories. • Extensive Reports PhishSecure provides Phishing Campaign and training completion reports, which can be downloaded in Excel and PDF formats. These reports are updated in real time and snapshots are available on the Mobile Application as well. • Trend Monitoring PhishSecure provides clients detailed reports for current as well as past campaign for Trend Monitoring. The trends can be
monitored across designations, departments as well as locations. Trend monitoring allows you to compare your employee’s performance. • Analytics PhishSecure does the heavy lifting of analyzing the results of Phishing Simulation campaigns. The analytics engine helps clients make informed decisions on prioritizing training and remediation efforts to improve the organization’s security. In addition to this, SecureVel also offers Online Brand Production that www.theenterpriseworld.com / 17
| Business Story
assures brand reputation protection, detects any suspicious domains registration, data exposure, possible confidential information leakage and credential theft, identifies security threats of websites and apps, if any and reports if any email ID’s have been misused or compromised due to data breaches. Khushamad breaks it down for us as he explains how a company that may be building several products or various brands which are being marketed across a website may be prone to domain infringement where the hacker may attempt to register a lookalike domain and then try to highjack the users and their valuable information. This is where the company’s Online Brand Production offering comes to play and eliminates any such threats. The features and distinguishing factor about SecureVel • Access to Real time security risk level of individual, Department and Organisation in Dashboard. • Turn your users from weakest to strongest link in organisation. • Customized Dashboards for CXO’s. • Fully Automated Unlimited Scheduled Campaigns. • Simulated phishing attacks, thousands of templates with unlimited usage, and industry specific phishing templates. • Enterprise reporting and scoring showing stats and graphs for phishing results to management.
18 / January 2021
REAL TIME SECURITY SecureVel brings innovative solutions which simplify and protect your conventional and new generation connected devices and support your IT Security solutions. BUILD AWARENESS SecureVel has a team of experts who work round the clock to reduce complexity and speedup security. Turn your users from weakest to strongest link in the organization. SIMULATED PHISHING ATTACKS SecureVel offers phishing simulation solution that can quickly identify users vulnerable to phishing attacks by launching your own targeted internal phishing campaigns. Apart from the features of SecureVel which separates them from the rest of the companies in the same domain, they have an upper hand in the market with their impeccable products/services and the long-standing name with the reputation they have accumulated over the past years they have an arsenal of experts with next generation security technologies to provide premium support. They provide one neck for all enterprise security needs. They are not only providing higher levels of cybersecurity but also ssimplifying security so the clients understand it in the best possible way. “We carry out phishing simulations and provide a report of the number of vulnerable users that have fallen prey to the simulations and based on that, we educate users through
different methods such as videos, training materials, or even training sessions. We believe technology alone cannot protect you but you need your employees to be better equipped as well,” adds Khushamad Nazir, Founder & CEO of SecureVel Solutions. SecureVel’s Expertise and Partners/Associations • Next Gen Firewalls. • Data Leakage Prevention. • Data Leakage Prevention. • Email Security (Cloud & Onpremise). • Nips/Vulnerability Assessment/PT tools. • SIEM. • Privileged Identity Management. • Web Application Firewalls. • Datacenter Servers (Physical/Virtual Security). • Cybersecurity Analytics & Trainings. • Server Load Balance/ADC's. • DDOS. • Endpoint Antivirus NAC & Encryption. • Bandwidth Management. • Advanced Persistent Threats. • Mobile Security &Wi-fi Security. Partners/Associations • CISCO • McAfee • Forcepoint • Barracuda • Netskope • Cyberark • Symantec • Microsoft • ForeScout • Trend Micro • Fortinet • RSA Security.
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| Technology
W
ith the advancements in the science and technology, the world is moving at a much faster pace than usual. Many new technologies are developed, that prove to be beneficial to the businesses and otherwise. Giving a way to the traditional and conventional ways of the business, the use of current technology has helped the businesses grow at a faster rate. Latest technologies always give the business a better outlook. If we see the graph of this, it has been in such a way since the past. With the invention of light bulbs, there was an increase in the productivity. With the invention of the telephone, the communication increased, that gave a way to better public relations. Since then, the technologies have only upgraded and aided the business growth. There are many More advantages of technology in business Increases the communication What is important to run a business, is communication because communication as the core of a business with the customers and the vendors. The latest technology have helped the entrepreneurs to communicate properly with its customers. With the establishment of a website, it becomes easy for business to reach out to many people. Also the information on the website gives the general idea about the business, which can widen the customer approach to the business. Increase in the efficiency For a business to grow, it is important that the all the parts of the business run smoothly, may it be the marketing, the graphics or the sales. The use of technology to 20 / January 2021
HOW TECHNOLOGY GAVE A SUPERIOR EDGE TO THE BUSINESS run these operations has resulted in efficient business results. With the technology, the businesses can keep a record of the cash flow, the inventory and also keeps the records of the sales. This helps in utilizing the manpower in other tasks, otherwise engaged in managing these tasks. Security The world we live in today has a cut-throat competition in almost everything. If such is the case, it is important for the newly established businesses, and other businesses to secure their assets. Technology thus helps in doing so, with data security. One can put passwords to the important files and keep the data from breaching and getting leaked to other websites. Many new technologies are
developed, that prove to be beneficial to the businesses and otherwise Customer Relationship Management With the development of certain applications, businesses are now able to maintain customer relationship management in check. Through these applications, one can easily increase their customer base, reach out to a number of people and convert them to potential customers. By increasing the customer base, these applications also make sure you have a constant contact with them. This way, the technology in business helps in gaining customers. The Use of Artificial Intelligence The development of Artificial
Intelligence has boosted industrial growth. With the use of AI, the industries are using the manpower in more innovative tasks, leading to greater growth. The Automobile industry, the Health Care industry are now putting in more money in the Research and Development, because of the advantages of it. Diminishing Business Models Conventionally, you were said to be a business mind, if you were able to buy something for a dollar and sell it for more than that. But with the advancements in the technology, the business graph is growing exponentially. This has left no space to follow the conventions and the traditions, what the business seeks now are experimentations in the conventional methods. If the business idea is strong enough, and one has the potential to drive it
further, it can’t fail, with what the reach of the marketing tools spread across almost every social media platform. An increase in the production With the exponential growth in businesses with the use of technology, it naturally has helped the businesses to increase their production. The use of technology for production not only increases the production in much less time, but it also increases the precision of the production, as opposed to the human work. Improving Customer Care Service A business works not only when you launch the product or the service in the market, but you also have to make sure, what is your target customer, and consider his
feedback for better results. Technology helps in doing this, by gathering the customer data, by introducing the cookies and some other online surveys. You can also simplify the payment procedure for the customers by giving them an option of online payment, or even cash on delivery, if your company engages in delivery services. With the customer database, you can use the medium of emails to notify the customers about new upcoming deals that they can avail.In this way, the technology is giving businesses a superior edge, helping them run efficiently, reaching out to a large number of people with the help of different marketing tools, and giving way for innovations by cutting manpower. These are the advantages of technology in business.
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| In a talk with..
Agilisium Consulting Helping customers take the Data to Insights leap
D
ata is important in today’s world. And, about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data is being generated every day. Therefore, it has become very important to analyze the growing data. And big data analytics are very important because it helps in making smart decisions, it provides hidden patterns, correlations, and other insights.
With today’s technology, it is possible to analyze every piece of data and get an answer almost immediately. Big data analytics helps in gaining insights and making strategic decisions. After the situation like a rollercoaster ride in 2020, businesses are striving hard to be relevant in the market. And to do so there is the only way, adopting ‘Technology’. To cater to the data needs of businesses, Agilisium Consulting offering cutting edge and advanced big data and analytics solutions. Under the 360 degrees futuristic vision of Mr. Raj Babu, CEO, the team Agilisium is transmogrifying 22 / January 2021
businesses with the top notched offering. In a conversation with Mr. Raj Babu, we discussed the current industry scenario and how Agilisium is transforming businesses. • Brief us about the company. Agilisium is a Big Data and Analytics company with a clear focus on helping organizations take the “Data-to-Insights-Leap.” To that end, Agilisium has invested in all stages of the data journey: Data Architecture Consulting, Data Integration, Data Storage, Data Governance, and Data Analytics. Our talent pool comprises 70+ certified experts in AWS & GCP Data Analytics services, and we have successfully migrated 15+ PB workloads onto the cloud. We are an AWS Advanced Consulting Partner with Redshift, EMR, DevOps & QuickSight competencies. We have a hyperfocused team of Cloud Data Analytics experts skilled in the Google Cloud Platform and have
partnered with many more organizations to offer the best. Be it Media and Entertainment, Lifesciences, High Tech, or Retail; our experts have wide-ranging yet in-depth domain experience and have delivered transformative, purpose-made data analytics solutions, both simple and complex. In addition to data strategy and consulting, big data analytics, and managed services, our crack team of innovators work with cutting edge Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to build solutions to the unique problems facing enterprises in the age of big data. With advanced Design Thinking capabilities, a thriving Partner Ecosystem, and top-notch industry certifications, Agilisium is inherently vested in our clients’ success. • What were the initial challenges you faced? Our initial challenges were to distinguish ourselves from the
Raj Babu, CEO
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| In a talk with..
Nothing worthwhile is ever achieved without deep thought and hard work. – JRD Tata
competition and define a value proposition. We also must ensure our solutions help businesses to take the data to insight leap. So, it is our commitment to staying relevant to every business we associate with and resonate with their goals. • Which was that point that triggered the growth of the company? Just like us (human beings), every business is unique. At Agilisium, we believe the very existence of the concept “one size fits all” is invalid. Therefore, we didn't only deliver solutions but also went a step ahead and added a human touch by listening to our clients, staying relevant to their needs, and delivering tailor-made solutions. Also, the partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS) was one of the most critical decisions that took Agilisium to the next level. Since then, our partnership has been the North Star of Agilisium. • How have the company graphs changed since the foundation? 24 / January 2021
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Can you share a few statistics? Founded in 2014, we have grown at an average rate of 70% YoY in both revenue and headcounts • What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing success? There are two reasons behind our long-standing success: 1. Empathy towards the customers and being obsessed with their success. 2. AWS partnership focus and obsession. • What are the products/services the company focuses on? How are your services different from those in the market? We currently focus on Data Analytics, Cloud Computing, and AWS Partnership. The transparency we maintain with our clients has allowed us to stay relevant and be obsessed with their success. Because each one of our solutions is tailored to meet the end needs of the client.
• How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your products/services? Our short-term goal is to establish ourselves as a data analytics solution provider. In the long run, we would like to establish ourselves as a solution and product company. • According to you, how has the Covid-19 changed the ways of business processes, and how one should adopt these changes? Simply put, “Remote workforce is the global workforce.” COVID-19 is a box of diamonds for us as it has opened more opportunities for remote working. Also, it is a paradigm shift for the businesses that are embracing remote work themselves, and automation is quintessential. When you have devised a well-thought-out structure, discipline, tools, and a process plan, you have a framework that ensures all your operations are efficiency-driven.
• Can you please brief us about your professional experience? I’m passionate about customer success and has a solid experience in customer-facing business such as Media, Retail, Consumer Goods & Electronics for the last 20+ years. My area of interest & expertise includes Digital Business, BI, Big Data, and Consumer Analytics. I’m a straight shooter and popular among customers for my honest feedback on technology adoption and outcomes. • What are the key achievements of your entrepreneurial journey? Learning is something that keeps you alive. The mode of learning differs from person to person. While I was an employee, I learned how to execute a time-stipulated task efficiently. When I took a turn and became an entrepreneur, I had to get my hands dirty on various departments to take my next steps meticulously. So, learning is one big achievement. Apart from that, my entrepreneurial journey has introduced me to many people who have the entrepreneurial drive. Also, the vision of Agilisium is broad, and to achieve it, you need a support system. I call them family, and it is nurtured by a group of like-minded individuals who help us get a step closer to our vision. • How do you look after your employees? What makes your team unique? I would like to start with your second question first. I believe that the character is destiny. Therefore, at Agilisium, we demand employees be brutally honest with our clientele and never compromise on character and values. The
employees can be trained for skills, but not for character. So, we continuously indulge in enhancing their skills through training and ensure they’re a step ahead in their career. Similarly, we cultivate social responsibility. As humans, we’re operating in an ecosystem and not in a vacuum. The ecosystem is the very reason for our existence. Hence, we encourage our teams to be socially responsible. • Is there any special experience with your clients you would like to highlight? Though we’re into Data Analytics and Cloud, we’re an IT services firm at core. One of our clients witnessed our commitment and obsession towards customer success and decided to continue our relationship beyond the scope of our expertise. In other words, the client’s initial requirement was to help them with the Data Analytics part, and they continued to take our relationship beyond the horizon to develop a product. We took up the challenge, which is not our sweet spot, and delivered the project successfully because of the trust they vested in us. • Please share your thoughts on what businesses should do to be relevant in the market race after the COVID19 outbreak. 1. Identify your USPs 2. Make your customers feel important 3. Make your customers understand the importance of your solutions to their business 4. Communicate your USPs to your audience effectively 5. Deliver tailored solutions to your
customers’ business needs • Whose business story do you find the most inspiring? 1. Zoho - To establish as a product company across the world from India 2. Carnegie – Philanthropy 3. Elon Musk’s tenacious risktaking and innovation • Constant vigilance - a need or a strategy? Please share your views. Any species on the face of the earth needs to evolve themselves to stay relevant to the time they’re living in. That’s how we humans also fit in society. Likewise, it is applicable for businesses too. Ultimately, businesses exist to solve people’s problems. Therefore, businesses must go through continuous evolution to stay relevant and satisfy their customer needs. So, constant vigilance for staying relevant is a need for sure. • It’s a rat-race out there. How do you cope with that? It’s good to be in a rat race if it is healthy. The very reason for businesses to exist is to address and serve the customers better. When there is healthy competition, the beneficiary is the customer. To cope with the competition, it is important for your business to find a niche, identify the pain points, and address them with your solution. Simply put, narrow down your customers and offer highly focused solutions.
www.theenterpriseworld.com / 25
Vijith Sivadasan, MD & Co-founder
26 / January 2021
Codelattice Catapult to the Next Digital Dimension
W
ith a wisely built product portfolio, quality services, and a team-oriented environment, Codelattice is ready to leapfrog in the post-pandemic world. Technology has been a profound catalyst in the process of comprehensive development and innovators like Codelattice have a role to play. With their Intellectual Properties and frameworks combined with a decade of experience led expertise, Codelattice provides a unique business advantage.
In a conversation with Mr. Vijith Sivadasan, MD, and Co-founder at Codelattice, we discussed the current industry scenario. Vijith is a calculated risk-taker and has led the company to pre-build several Intellectual Properties and building blocks to reduce client’s time to market.
elevate, and accelerate their endeavors. Guided by more than a decade of experience, Codelattice offers customizable digital solutions, off-shelf software products, and bespoke IT Services. We provide the imperative digital edge by partnering with industry pioneers such as Google Cloud, GoDaddy & Amazon Web Services. What were the initial challenges you faced? Finding the right talent when you are new to the scene is a major challenge. The reputation of a company is an important criterion for job seekers and it posed a challenge for us as a startup initially. Our mentoring and technical edge helped us to acquire and retain the right talent. Which was that point that
triggered the growth of the company? Since the inception in 2009, we worked with several Fortune 500 companies as a premium digital partner for their marketing needs. We started developing homegrown solutions and products in 2014. It took about four years for us to develop and gain momentum. Since 2018, we have steered the company on a different trajectory. Now our focus is to generate revenue from our intellectual properties. This is helping us to grow and generate more revenue compared to the service-based approach. When you follow a service-based approach, you can generate revenue only from time and material. However, now we can generate revenue from licensing our products and solutions. Can you give us an overview of the journey so far?
Brief us about the company: Codelattice is a team of 200+ passionate technocrats spanning eight countries. We are a digital solution provider established in 2009. We develop cool software for complex business problems with bleeding-edge technology. The company has had phenomenal growth in the past 10 years, growing from one office to eight countries worldwide. We help our clients activate, www.theenterpriseworld.com / 27
| In a talk with..
What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing success?
and employees to capture, categorize and reimburse their business expenses.
We always work on bleeding edge technology. We always stay relevant for our customers by being part of their journey. Our prebuilt solutions have brought us considerable business in the recent past.
How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your products/solutions?
Codelattice was a concept. What made it a success was the people who worked with us - our clients, partners, and employees. We are a company with openness to learning, experimenting, and building. The first-ever client of Codelattice is still working with us. We consider this as a time-tested testimony of our relationship with our clients. What are the products/solutions the company focuses on? We launched “Lattice” verve of solutions that can be customized as per specific business requirements. This includes Review Aggregation Engine, API-led Ecommerce Engine, Car Recommendation Engine, Learning Management System & AI Chatbot & Conversational Commerce. Also, partnering with industry majors like Google Cloud & AWS contributes an additional stream of steady revenue. Collate is an easy setup employee intranet portal. It helps the companies to stay organized when they are using a multitude of apps and files. It has inbuilt features like leave management, timesheet, and performance evaluation. XpensePro helps business owners 28 / January 2021
We built several solutions and products, pursuing the joy of innovating and the fulfillment of excelling. We intend to continue refining and enhancing our work and would be looking for avenues for the development of customercentric solutions in the future as well. We are hoping to transform our offerings from bespoke IT services to customizable digital solutions & off-the-shelf software products. We want to be known for the simplicity and usability of our products. According to you, how has the Covid-19 changed the ways of business processes, and how one should adopt these changes? Since the inception of Codelattice, we have a collaborative work environment, work from home options, and stay-at-home employees. So Covid did not have much impact on that front. Also, we see a surge in demand for digitization. Unlike recession, the customers are ready to spend on digitization. The pandemic has accelerated the business’s transition into its digital future. The uncertainty of these unprecedented times demands measures that go beyond short-term spot fixes Can you please brief us about your professional experience? I have always aspired to run my own business since childhood. As early as college, I was on the
lookout to lead small businesses. After securing a degree in engineering, I joined Infosys at the age of 21. Being an entrepreneurial employee, I worked at Codelattice as and when I could. I worked with global majors like GE Healthcare, AON, Northwestern Mutual in various capacities across the globe for over a decade. Since 2018, I have been focusing full-time on Codelattice. What are the key achievements of your entrepreneurial journey? We had a successful exit from one of the startups we founded in Eastern Europe. I am nurturing several companies globally, helping them grow and manage exits. I became a full-time executive at Codelattice in 2018. Since then, Codelattice has been driven from a service-centric approach to a solution-driven one. The new approach has caused the company to grow by more than 30% in the last financial year. We accelerated the growth in Europe by establishing Codelattice Europe BV’, the business process outsourcing subsidiary of Codelattice India. We also established Codelattice Labs Pvt Ltd. to focus on the R & D initiatives of the company and to bridge the gap between industry and academia by setting up mini incubation centers in Colleges. Recently, we introduced inclusive hiring as a norm in the company to bring in more people with disabilities (PWDs). We had three such hires in the last year. How do you look after your
employees? What makes your team unique? Human beings innately need control over things that matter to them. At Codelattice, we try to take care of these needs of our team. We let our employees decide their location of work, work hours, project timelines, etc. When you give control to the team, they know they are valued and trusted. Every company has a pattern that leads to a culture. A pattern is something that repeatedly happens because of our repeated actions. I believe we have laid the foundation for several good practices like - a pattern of learning, mutual trust & caring. Our culture of learning, energy, and enthusiasm makes us unique. Please share your thoughts on what businesses should do to be relevant in the market race after the COVID-19 outbreak. The Internet is one of the world’s most powerful equalizers, capable of propelling new ideas and people, forward. Businesses should leverage areas where technology can have an impact. Most of the companies get comfortable doing what they have always done, making only incremental changes. This incrementalism leads to irrelevance over time. Stay agile, stay innovative, stay focused Whose business story do you find the most inspiring? Richard Brandson - a serial entrepreneur, an adventurer & an explorer. Constant vigilance- a need or a strategy? Please share your views. Constant vigilance is a strategy. I
Overwhelming Client Experience
We have been a customer of Codelattice for multiple years and are very pleased with their delivery. Having the ability to offer a very high level of customer service is crucial to ResNet World’s success. Codelattice supports ResNet World in this regard by providing quality work in a timely manner and one that stands the test of time. We would strongly recommend Vijith and his team at Codelattice to any company looking for strong technical ability that comes attached with a very high level of customer service. ~ Shane Mansell Director of Operations – ResNet World, Berlin, Germany
feel that the best and foolproof strategy is to have a standard operating pattern. Vigilance should be baked into it. If we dissect the success stories of any company or an individual we will be able to find that more than 85% of their success is contributed by a standard operating pattern in the company or their life. And the rest comes from revolutionary ideas. It’s a rat-race out there. How do you cope with that?
competing. Instead, always try to co-exist and co-create. To expand your business, try to expand the market and avenues. If the pie is large enough and if you get even a thin slice of it, it is still significant. What’s your favorite quote?
If you improve by 1% every day, you can be 100% better in 100 days.
I don’t believe in comparing and www.theenterpriseworld.com / 29
| Get Inspired
MARC BENIOFF Experience is the only treasure
30 / January 2021
| Get Inspired
YOU NEED TO GET TO THE FUTURE, AHEAD OF YOUR CUSTOMERS, AND BE READY TO GREET THEM WHEN THEY ARRIVE. MARC BENIOFF, FOUNDER & CEO, SALESFORCE
32 / January 2021
California earning a Bachelor in Science degree in Business Administration in 1986. He had a knack for computers right from the start and he used to work in a jewellery store to save up for a computer, from which he was fired later on because he used the wrong soap to clean the floor. He sold his first computer application for $75 in high school. He founded Liberty Software company, which dealt in creating and selling games for Atari-8 and other popular video game consoles of the time. By the age of 16, he was already an entrepreneur as his games Escape from Vulcan’s Isle, King Arthur’s Heir, the Nightmare and Crypt of the Undead was published by Epyx Inc. These games earned him a royalty of around $1500 per month which paved the way for his college and the expenses involved. During his college studies, he was highly inspired by Apple founder Steve jobs, did an internship as 'Assembly Language Programmer' for the Macintosh division.
After the above experiences and his fascination and love for software and computers, Marc went ahead and joined Oracle where he worked for around 13 years and that too in various fields ranging from marketing, sales and product development as DON’T BE AFRAID TO GIVE UP well. He in those 13 years of experience in THE GOOD TO GO FOR THE GREAT Oracle not only worked with dedication but also with utmost sincerity and Before Marc started his honesty because of which he was entrepreneurial journey, he had a awarded ‘Rookie of the year’ after lot of experience and 3 years when he was 23. He came qualifications behind him. close to Larry Ellison, founder, executive chairman and CTO of Marc graduated from Burlingame Oracle and became his protégé. High school in 1982, and later he Marc was soon promoted to the attended the University of Southern position of Vice President, making
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him the youngest in the company to ever hold this title. He understood the importance of cloud computing and started to understand the loopholes and shortcoming of the same. He then came up with the idea of Salesforce which would provide software access on the web which was a solid idea as companies at that time would be very benefitted by this. It saved the server cost and other maintenance costs, and with advice from his mentor Steve Jobs, he worked ahead and founded Salesforce.com in 1999. Marc Benioff later bought time magazine, and very few people know that Appstore.com was gifted by him to Steve Jobs his mentor who helped give his ideas and advice and support which lead to Salesforce.com. There are a lot of stories around the world and one should always know and read about them as every story has its own teachings and take away. Thus, one should always understand the mentality and the tricks, and skills of working from them as an experience never go waste and anything can be applied in any field and domain. The only restriction from anyone becoming successful is the individual itself, break free and take risks as success comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
“
The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.
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T
here are stories of men, businessmen and then comes the story of legends who revolutionized the world and the world of business. Little do we pay attention to the personality and the dedication, hard work and the unwavering spirit of these individuals. One should always understand that skills, ideas and opportunities may come and go but the most important step towards success is to never stop learning and trying one's best. There are a lot of businessmen who worked a lot of jobs and gained experience which leads them to start a venture of their own and nothing but their experience helped them beat their competitors and carve out a name for themselves in the world. One should always remember that opportunity does not always present itself but can also come in as a disguise, thus one should always look forward to all the things life gives and do their best without looking down or to the side. The story of Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com and owner of Time magazine. His story involves hard work, dedication and success is always the end product when the above three combines.
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| In a talk with..
Gopi Nair, CEO
Shi co Simplifying your logistics needs with a personal approach
34 / January 2021
I
n the last few years, ecommerce companies have been doing a lot of business. The backbone behind this boost in digital economy is logistic solutions industry. Since e-commerce companies have made inroads into the Internet world, many other sectors have also been contributing to the national economy. Meeting customer demand and providing better service is one of the most important benefits of working with a trustworthy logistics services provider.
Today, businesses need a comprehensive logistics services provider to speed up their operations and growth after pandemic in 2020. In this scenario, Shiftco, one of the leading logistics solutions company in India is making hard and smart efforts to provide their clients top notched services and empower them.
of progress in the operations and various systems. Technology such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and the internet of things are meant to move the foundations of traditional and old-school logistics operations in the country. How have the company graphs changed since the foundation? Can you share a few statistics?
In a talk with Mr Gopi Nair, CEO at the company, we discussed the current industry scenario and how Shiftco is transogryfing its clients businesses. • Brief us about the company. We are a full service logistics solutions company. With each load we move, comes our guarantee of satisfaction. Shiftco’s vast network of partner carriers provides flexibility as well as countless options to help meet our client’s specific shipping needs. Our capabilities also allow us to ship both domestically and internationally. • What were the initial challenges you faced? Cutting transportation costs makes the top of the list as far as the initial challenges we faced in the logistics industry. Some other obvious points make the list as well, but perhaps the most important and at times challenging concern is the need for greater innovations and technology advances while remaining budget-conscious. • Which was that point that triggered the growth of the company? The advent of technology in the logistics industry has spelled loads
• What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing success? The first reason is our concise and clear mission and vision that is essential to make our business successful. The second reason is the culture of our company is inspiring for our employees as well as management. Lastly, one of the reasons behind our company’s long-standing success is that we reach consumers first. We have the best access to customers through our marketing team. • What are the services the company focuses on? How are your services different from those in the market? When it comes to Air freight, sea freight, road freight, warehousing & distribution and other host of services, Shiftco has you covered. Shiftco provides storage solutions for all fulfillment and packing
needs. An established freight forwarder, Shiftco provides quality assured freight services for its fulfillment and packing clients, overseeing entire processes by air, road and sea. • How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your services? Efficient management is the key to success, especially in supply chain management. There are various factors involved in effective logistics management, for example, automation and perfect coordination. But, there is always a scope for improvising the process. At the same time, the planning should aim at maximizing the profits. In the age of automation, technology plays a major role in increasing the efficiency of an organization. Automation has a vital role in the business process optimization. There is valuable software that can be deployed in the logistics process to take a step further in terms of our products and services. • According to you, how has the Covid-19 changed the ways of business processes and how one should adopt these changes? Logistics firms such as ours, which are involved in the movement, storage, and flow of goods, have been directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. As an integral part of value chains, both within and across international borders, logistics firms facilitate trade and commerce and help businesses get their products to customers. Supply chain disruptions to the sector caused by the pandemic could, therefore, impact competitiveness, economic www.theenterpriseworld.com / 35
| In a talk with..
The Driving Force
growth, and job creation. Supply chains are impacted, and leaders must make rapid, highly-informed decisions to protect and support their people and ensure that critical business operations support the immediate and longer term societal needs. • Can you please brief us about your professional experience? I am an organized and detailoriented Logistics Specialist with several years of experience ensuring streamlined operations by carefully managing equipment and materials, shipment schedules and inventory. • What are the key achievements of your entrepreneurial journey? Creating Opportunities and career path to Young generation. Added few Key Global customers with TOP OEM in to business globally 36 / January 2021
to serve with high demand services. Reached in to Fastest Growiong logistics Company in India with quick turn around time. Recognized Most Valuable CEO in India account of Shipping & Logistics Domain. Keep building team with committed quality service level to our key global customers and Overseas Networks. • How do you look after your employees? What makes your team unique? Our employees feel valued and appreciated by our leadership team and they are infinitely more likely to go above and beyond for the company and hold themselves accountable for their part of a project. Most importantly, we make our employees feel happier in their roles. We spare no efforts in connecting with our employees, thus we maintain a strong rapport with our dedicated, long-term team,
this makes our team unique. • Is there any special experience with your clients you would like to highlight? Customer experience is truly challenging. It all begins with understanding what customers need and what they could find value from that has not occurred to them yet. Logistics providers can no longer afford to ignore these requirements. For years, good and bad players were determined by their operational excellence. A Customer First Culture is a foundational component of the customer experience. It is that ingredient that everything else is built upon at Shiftco, and without it, there is no chance of getting it right. Each and every client has been an experience for us and we have been building on the goodwill we have gained from the clients.
Ajith Kumar, Director
• Please share your thoughts on what businesses should do to be relevant in the market race after COVID19 outbreak. Hit by the Covid-19 slump followed by social distancing and a nationwide lockdown, businesses are experiencing major impacts no matter how established they are and are having to re-look at how they manage and operate their business including re-visitation of their business plan. It has become challenging for most businesses to keep their financial wheels turning during the lockdown period due to less revenue churn and the general uncertainty in the global financial environment. Besides, communicating transparently with customers, maintaining healthy relationship with contracted parties, keeping your team engaged and communication to stakeholders would help businesses be relevant in the market race after the pandemic.
M.Manikandan, Vice President
• Whose business story do you find the most inspiring? We shape the world of logistics with a strong determination to connect people and goods through innovative and sustainable logistics solutions. Every day, we go above and beyond to meet the needs of our customers. By anticipating challenges and applying our visionary mindset, we advance global trade and bring communities together. All quality supply chain management company’s business story keeps inspiring me. • Constant vigilance- a need or a strategy? Please share your views. The message is clear. Organizations cannot afford to over-focus on the latest threat trends or attack vectors. Instead, as shown with the rise in the targeting of publicly facing edge services, organizations must adopt a holistic approach to
securing their distributed networked environment that enables them to see and manage their entire distributed network, including all attack vectors, through a single pane of glass. And it requires having a clear understanding of issues from the past and then mending those fences to prepare for the new threats based on them looming just over the horizon. Thus constant vigilance is a need. • It’s a rat-race out there. How do you cope with that? The best way to cope the rat-race out there is to simply follow the most frequented path. To succeed, we must simply work until we die or until an employer or government program affords us a standard of living that enables us to make ends meet without further paid work.
www.theenterpriseworld.com / 37
| In a talk with..
TagBox Solutions Revolutionizing businesses with digital innovations “Changes call for innovation, and innovation leads to progress.” The year 2020 was a roller coaster ride for businesses in almost every sector. The global lockdown caused due to the pandemic has highlighted the need for innovation for businesses to stay relevant in the market. Logistics was one of the most pandemic affected sectors as the manufacturing of goods has paused. The virus gave us us a new
way of living in which precautions like maintaining a physical distance is involved. The show must go on and so following all the norms of unlocking, businesses have started their operations on full scale. TagBox Solutions, a leading innovative tech company, provided a digital solution for enterprises to #Unlock and minimize operations down-time by ensuring Health & Safety of employees, partners and even customers in the supply chain. This solution for real-time social distancing and contact tracing in workplace was the culmination of over 4 years of innovation and onfield experience that TagBox had demonstrated to help organizations create smarter and more reliable sites and supply chains. TagBox’s BoxLens platform provides seamless integration of hardware, software, analytics, and actions to deliver end-to-end visibility into critical site and supply chain parameters. In a conversation with Mr. Adarsh Kumar, Co-founder, and CEO at TagBox, he shared the journey of TagBox and how the company is empowering businesses. • Brief us about the company. TagBox is helping organizations solve site operations and supply chain problems like Product Quality and Compliance, End to End Traceability, and Operational Efficiency. TagBox has customers
38 / January 2021
spread across F&B, Pharmaceuticals, Hi-tech/industrial, Logistics, and Discreet Manufacturing segments. TagBox’s BoxLens platform is being used by these organizations to improve the visibility of their Products, Staff, Assets, Processes, and the Environment in which all of these are operating in unison. Some examples of benefits that TagBox delivers to organizations: • Improvement in temperature compliance for cold chains • Reduction in spoilage of perishables and fragile goods damage • Enable food/pharma safety via end-to-end traceability • Reduction in site and logistics delays • Improvement in asset inventory management and utilization • Increase in staff safety and productivity • Higher visibility of supply chain assets like pallets, bins, and boxes. • What were the initial challenges you faced? TagBox’s product integrates the Internet of Things (IoT), Machine Learning (ML), and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Initial challenges were around: • Identifying use cases that will have high enough ROI to justify the total cost of the solution • Articulating the benefits that this integrated solution would bring to
our clients. • Working capital availability, given a hardware CAPEX heavy business • Creating a team across hardware, software, analytics, and operations skillset • Which was that point that triggered the growth of the company? Our first trigger point came in 2018 when we were able to convince a
couple of our initial customers for large-scale POCs which then converted to deals. This became a great proof point for our technology and value proposition. References from these customers helped us grow faster. The second trigger point was Series A investment from TVS Motors. The TVSM brand helped us gain visibility and enhanced trust from
prospects. • How have the company graphs changed since the foundation? Can you share a few statistics? We have grown steadily for the last 3 years. In 2020, despite Covid’s impact, our revenue has grown ~3X. This sends a signal that Indian organizations want to get digitized to achieve higher quality, traceability, and operational www.theenterpriseworld.com / 39
‘
You have to dream before your dreams can come true.
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Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam
40 / January 2021
efficiency. We are excited about this opportunity and confident that we have more than 4 years of on-field digitization experience with over 35 customers backing us up. • What is the reason behind your company’s long-standing success? There is no single reason. It is a culmination of various factors: • Company culture of customer centricity • Extremely agile product development • ‘Get things done’ mindset • Founding team with cumulative 60+ years of corporate and start-up experience across IoT, ML, AI, business development, and operations. • What are the products/services the company focuses on? How are your services different from those in the market? TagBox’s BoxLens platform is a one-stop-shop solution that provides: • IoT based Real-time Sensing to monitor the presence, proximity, temperature, humidity, shock, light, energy, and location • Out-of-the-box integration with clients’ ERP • ML-driven proprietary Early Warning Signal models for product or asset health risk prediction • AI-driven Actions to help resolve real-time or systemic supply chain & operations problems. Unlike other IoT providers, we provide an integrated solution that includes hardware, software, analytics, and AI, which makes it a very seamless experience for our customers. TagBox provides a completely wireless hardware setup
and a fully configurable software platform. We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach, we contextualize and customize the solution to meet the client’s requirements. We focus on insights and recommendations, rather than just looking at data gathering. • How do you decide to take the company a step further in terms of your products/services? Our customer success team is constantly listening to clients and bringing back real problems from the field for which our solutions could be relevant. This is used as input for our product roadmaps every year. • According to you, how has the Covid-19 changed the ways of business processes, and how one should adopt these changes? During Covid-19, businesses that had already adopted digital as their way of life were the most successful. We believe Covid-19 will further accelerate this trend and many new organizations are going to jump on the digital bandwagon. • Unmatched Leadership ♦ Adarsh Kumar, Co-Founder and CEO Adarsh is a global analytics leader, with over 15 years of experience in providing Advanced Analytics solutions in the areas of Supply Chain and Banking to Fortune 500 companies. Before starting TagBox, he was a part of the senior leadership team at Mu Sigma, managing a multi-million dollar portfolio for analytics service delivery. A MICA alumnus, Adarsh is passionate about the usage of Machine Learning and AI for solving real-life business problems.
♦ Saumitra Singh, Co-Founder and CPO Saumitra is Hardware Product Design Leader, with over 15 years of experience in designing solutions from semiconductor ICs to IoT systems. Before Tagbox, Saumitra was VP of Engineering at Innorel and Power Management Design expert at Cosmic Circuits, some of the most pioneering Indian startups in the hardware space. He has 9 US patents and is a graduate from IIT Bombay. ♦ Sameer Singh, VP, Engineering Sameer is a Product Engineering Leader, with over 11 years of experience in LTE/WiFi Front Ends and communication protocols. Before Tagbox, Sameer worked in Lead Engineer roles with MNCs like Texas Instruments and Cadence. He has authored 2 IEEE papers and is a graduate of IIT Madras. The key achievements • Very early market validation and seed funding • Building a tough business that combines hardware, software, and analytics into a single product • Series A investment from TVS Group • Various awards over the past 4 years. Ex. Nasscom Emerge50 2019, CII Startupreneur 2020, Elevate 100 Karnataka 2018 • Won the prestigious Qualcomm Design in India Challenge in 2017 After rigorous due diligence, selected in various startup accelerators like SAP Startup Studio, NUMA, and Flipkart Leap.
www.theenterpriseworld.com / 41
| Manufacturing
4 ways that
is already transforming the
manufacturing productivity 42 / January 2021
5
G networks that transform transportation, communication, and entertainment may still be years away. The next-generation 5G networks are making communication between servers and devices much faster as it is 100 times faster than the 4G network. In addition, the combination of practicality, speed, and potential cost savings are some of the factors that are encouraging factory operators to test with 5G. The results have been positive, proposing that the technology should be widely used in factories prior to being used in smart phones and other consumer products. Ways in Which 5G is Transforming the Manufacturing Just imagine a future where smart robots are employed to assemble products from multiple manufacturing lines and are also physically reconfiguring themselves on the factory sight. In addition, the security drones are handling tedious tasks ranging from checking for intruders to validating employee parking. The factory inspections are performing remotely and the autonomous vehicles are transporting parts all across the nation and not only between buildings.
promising opportunity to strengthen both digitization and connectivity within the four walls of factories and beyond them at every stage along the entire value chain. Listed below are four ways that show strong potential for improving factory productivity: Augmented Reality (AR) Factory workers are not unfamiliar to perform complex control and maintenance tasks, frequently guided by standard operating procedures (SOPs) in videos, paper manuals, videos, or in some cases even AR. However, instructions streamed over 4G networks can be undependable owing to bandwidth constraints, and miss the mark to deliver the required levels of quality devoid of stuttering. On the other hand, 5G promises shutterfree AR that can guide people at every stage and also promises the streaming of high-quality instructions on the shop floor. This will enable shop-floor workers to carry out advanced tasks without waiting for incurring costly machine or specialist engineers. This will help in building worker skills more effectively, safely, and quickly than ever before.
These were impossible just a few years ago, where all these dreams were held in reserve for the realms of science fiction. However, the arrival of 5G connectivity coupled with advances in cloud computing and artificial intelligence (AI) have made these dreams increasingly attainable for manufacturing organizations.
Cloud Control of Machines Factory automation has relied on PLCs or programmable logic controllers for decades. These PLCs were physically installed on the machines they controlled and then wired into computer networks to guarantee reliable and precise control under extreme conditions. The PLC could be controlled wirelessly in real-time if the 5G consistently meets its performance promises at a fraction of the existing cost.
Today, 5G is appearing to be a
Perceptive AI Eyes on the
Factory Sight In modern factories, cameras are already common to manage security and monitor processes. However, their use often requires the worker to monitor video feeds as it is limited to focused applications. 5G will allow the streaming of live video analytics and data in real-time to the cloud. For instance, a security camera could identify if there is an imminent danger or threat, see a disturbance, and also alerting a worker or dispatch a drone to investigate. The same security camera could alternatively provide a more effective mechanism to monitor process deviations and measure cycle times. Shop Floor IoT The addition of sensors to numerous machines means that the factories are creating more data than ever before. Wi-Fi networks can rapidly get congested as the transmission through wired networks is expensive to scale. 5G can support high connection solidity with tens of thousands of endpoints, thus truly empowering the use of industrial data at scale. Although, these technologies are all still at an initial stage of testing, the pilots embarked on to date are encouraging. One of the most intriguing effects of 5G technology would be on humans who work alongside. Far from creating a world of human-free factories, lights-out, industrial 5G appears more likely to allow individuals to move away from tasks that have formerly been considered dangerous, dull, and dirty. Instead, the focus of people will shift towards capturing the value made possible that 4G could not seamlessly and reliably support at scale. www.theenterpriseworld.com / 43
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