Long ago neuromarketing was limited to multinational companies with high budgets. But today any business irrespective of size and budget is capable of using human brain waves to increase the profit.
Neuromarketing is also called consumer neuroscience. This helps in understanding the consumers’ behavior by reducing the uncertainties. Neuromarketing studies the human brains to manipulate their behavior. It was earlier considered as a frontier science but from the past few years it has reinforced the market with the capacity to boost the consumer base.
Even after knowing its potential and some ground-breaking results, there lies numerous questions in the minds of people like, Is it worthy? How to implement it effectively? What are all the tools required? The solution lies in understanding the technology and knowing its utility even in the future.
Neuromarketing sways the human brain by understanding the process behind it. It is now a buzzword as every business uses this science to influence consumers’ choice and understand their preferences.
How to hook new customers by applying Neuromarketing?
Attract Customers using Neuromarketing
To promote a product or service just have content that taps the emotions of the customers’ so that your content goes viral. According to ‘Buzzsumostudy’ 100 million and more content is driven by the emotions of people. It is observed that people tend to share more when they get emotionally connected with the content.
If you want to grab the attention of the consumers then it is advisable to place some important information or ads on the left side of the page. This is because a study says that consumers tend to read the webpages in the ‘E’ or ‘F’ manner.
Did you know that humans gravitate toward fear or danger. For example, if you put in the sales may end soon, Out of stock, limited offers and so on. It is driving your customers for an immediate action.
The Corporates can also concentrate on improving the webpage design, colour and other features which attracts the consumers to visit the site and also go through it.
Neuromarketing is a science to understand the psychology of consumers’ buying activities and preferences. This consumer analysis can be made using Brain scanning and psychological tracking.
The two foremost tools for scanning the brain are fMRI and EEG.
Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging measures the changes happening in the brain’s blood flow to examine the consumers’ behavior.
Electroencephalogram is the only technique which measures the brain activities directly at the speed of cognition. The fMRI technique is expensive to use.
Psychological tracking is a cost-effective tool, this measures eye movement and other activities.
Eye tracking is associated with visual attention along with the emotional response of the customers.
Facial tracking includes various aspects like heart rate, respiration rate and the skin conductivity.
Biometrics will measure the customers’ engagement with positive or negative responses.
Facial coding is used to measure facial expressions like fear, anger, happiness, surprise and so on.
Paypal – Itused brain waves to understand that customers’ relied more on speed than safety and security. For this, Paypal implemented an effective ad campaign.
It is observed that customers’ brains work on various factors. Once a researcher’s team tested by serving Pepsi and coca-cola with fMRI technique. The response from the customers’ was plain and harmonious. On the other hand when they recognized the brand the brain started responding with various emotions and expressions.
Another team of researchers served the customers’ with three different wines with different price tags. Though the taste of the wines were the same but because of the different prices, the customers’ started thinking differently. The researchers could observe two different calculations before and after the prices were displayed. This experiment was again based on the fMRI tool.
Creating good web design will lead to quality improvement and trustworthiness. This was observed when customers were asked to rate a webpage on the quality and trustworthiness. Irrespective of time taken by different customers’ maximum of them were driven by good web design. The creative design will attract the customers and also increases the confidence within the customers’
Everyone of us likes to listen to stories, doesn’t it? The London University compared the audio and video for a combination of movies/ books and the result was only 15% of people showed the internet in the video part and there was shockingly more votes for audio/podcast. By listening to the audio the emotions of the customers’ rose.
Yahoo – Yahoo wisely used neuromarketing technique that is EEG. It showed happy faces in enjoying mode in a 60 seconds TV Commercial. This was a ad campaign to stimulate audience across the world. The neuro test was successful as emotions and different thoughts attracted more audience into search engine.
Hyundai – This company too used EEG technique of neuroscience to examine its designs. Hyundai allowed audiences to get to know about their car prototypes. By this the company understood the choices of audiences and changed some external design according to audience preferences.
Conclusion
Neuromarketing is a fast flourishing technology to rocket our profits by analysing the brain’s response to various factors. It gives insights into consumers’ brains based on their preference and choices. Neuromarketing is a scientific dimension to the marketing and advertising part.
FAQs
How useful is Neuromarketing to understand consumer Insights?
Neuromarketing helps to understand consumer’s emotions, behavior and cognitive states. This technology complements traditional marketing.
What are the applications of Neuromarketing?
The common applications are Branding, Advertising, product testing, packaging, Point of sale and many more.
What are the techniques used in neuromarketing?
Techniques used in Neuromarketing are:
Eye tracking
EEG or fMRI
Facial coding
Mind tricks
Sensory marketing.
When was Neuromarketing introduced?
The research in this field started back in the 1990s. Gerald Zaltman is the first person to begin the experiments associated with neuromarketing.
The technology that helps identify or give a match confirmation of a person by their face is known as facial recognition. Facial recognition technology is mainly used to identify people in videos, photos, or mostly now in real-time.
Facial recognition technology is functioning in many industry verticals. It mainly ranges from the health systems to the retail of the defence as well as the government. Moreover, the police departments are using this technology for the identification of several suspected criminals. But sometimes, there is the possibility of false matches, which is a significant issue for its implementation.
Facial Recognition is that process that enables the users to identify and verify a person using their respective faces. It works on the facial details of a person by analyzing, capturing, and comparing with the facial pattern. The face detection software is well-doing technology that enables the identification of faces in pictures and videos.
List of Top Facial Recognition Companies
Here is the list of the top 15 facial recognition systems companies to look for.
Affectiva
Affectiva | Top facial recognition companies
Affectiva is an MIT Media lab being defined and created for the Emotion AI category of humans. The Artificial Intelligence of Affectiva, which is designed with Human perception and deals with human emotions. Its efficient technology mainly detects human emotions, activities, complex cognitive states, the objects people use, and interactions.
Affectiva is mainly built on speech science, real-world data, and deep learning. The in-cabin Artificial Intelligence feature allows the Fleet managers and car manufacturers to make the next-generation mobility. This technology enables the sensing and adapts some of the most complex human emotions and states for more safety.
About Affectiva facial recognition company
InsightFace
InsightFace | Top facial recognition companies
InsightFace is one of the most accurate facial recognition technology which the python library is supporting. It already holds nearly 7500 stars to its name. InsightFace uses RetinaFace as its face detection and SubCenter-ArcFace as its face recognition technology.
Their use is that they are the latest and most accurate, added to InsightFace’s goodwill simultaneously. Some reports also suggest that in 2021, InsightFace’s repository is quite active.
True-face
Trueface | Top facial recognition companies
Trueface is a California-based company that was found in 2014. It provides the services with quality speed. The partners of this company are leaders in the industry in retail, security, and hospitality. It is ranked in the top 20 companies globally for a reasonable match speed of the face templates.
True-face is that Artificial Intelligence works on the camera data by turning it into actionable information of the customers. This AI-based technology works by camera streams. It is because to make the businesses make take many instant decisions meant on identical patterns.
HyperVerge
Hyperverge | Top facial recognition companies
HyperVerge is a company which provides deep learning technology product which Provides image verification solutions. It is established in the year 2014 in Bangalore, India. HyperVerge uses cases in the telecom, defence application, energy, and financial services.
Credit scoring and data verification are few among the varied services which HyperVerge is providing. It also has its geospatial platform, which helps identifies objects through satellites or other map data.
Kairos is that Artificial Intelligence company that mainly opens businesses to work on face recognition. It is primarily done either by cloud API or a Kairos host. It is there on their respective servers for security, privacy, and absolute control of data.
Kairos allows many features like identification of face, verification of face, detection of age, and multi-face detection. Verification and detection of gender and face detection is a great advantage that adds more features. It is always easy to integrate face analysis in any web application in Kairos’s APIs and SDKs.
Caracom
Caracom | Top facial recognition companies
Caracom is a software company that mainly deals with security-focused finishes. And their job is uniformly rooted in the business of construction and industries. It has an exclusive card which is Cara ID having a facial recognition feature to recognize and for the authentication of a person.
Caracom’s software can be used and can have integrity with many of the current systems present. The feature was added to replace the old ID cards and be superlative in this modern world. This software can also be connected with authentication by an identification number or fingerprint. Other than that location and SMS can also be used for identification.
Ever AI
Ever AI | Top facial recognition companies
Powered with Artificial Intelligence, Ever AI provides its facial recognition technology solutions to enterprises. Ever AI was established in the year 2013 in San Francisco, United States.
Law enforcement and banking are few among many industry verticals in which Ever AI has their use cases. Age and Gender identification and face detection are some of the solutions and services provided by Ever AI.
AnyVision is a Visual Artificial Intelligence platform company that is a leading company in the World. It provides the world a safer place with visual Intelligence. The computer vision company is being driven by AI, which helps many people access experiences, services, and spaces with many conveniences.
Any vision company is creating intense research and an impactful technology platform for a safer world. AnyVision aims for a more connected and intuitive place. It is because their solutions are mainly built to function on any camera.
Deep Vision AI
Deep Vision | Top facial recognition companies
Deep Vision AI is the Artificial Intelligence-powered Facial Recognition technology of 2021, which provides SaaS. It also has its self-hosted versions, which they are providing. They mainly work for enterprises as it has no pricing information.
Apart from facial recognition technology, they also provide solutions for age and gender detection. They are working relentlessly to enhance their other services, such as emotion detection and landmark recognition.
Some other features like computer vision as well as sound identification are also present. Sensory provide solutions to the consumers with convenience for natural language on voice control. It has a feature for access with intuitive and straightforward voice control that requires private data.
Slyce
Slyce | Top facial recognition companies
Slyce provides its retailers with visual search and recognition using image options. Slyce allows the feature of camera search for the brands and companies in many diversified companies.
Some of those companies are Tommy Hilfiger, Home Depot, Aldi, or KLM. It integrates with the 3D real-time and real-world product, which recognizes scanning technologies with barcode and catalog.
Face++
Face++ | Top facial recognition companies
Face++ is a Facial Recognition company platform that drives with a computerized vision. It allows a user to thoroughly read, understand and examine the application for a better world around. It gives privileges to many businesses with much ease.
Face++ adds a feature that includes deep-learning based image analysis recognition technologies in their application. All this with simple and impactful APIs and SDKs. Face++ company raised a massive amount of US$750 million only to develop the facial recognition feature.
Congnitec
Cognitec | Top facial recognition companies
Cognitec is a Germany-based facial recognition company that was established in the year 2002. Cognitec uses Artificial Intelligence for the improvement of its existing technology. They deal across the globe providing hardware and biometric transplant software solutions.
They are efficient engineers and highly qualified tech developers for providing quality service. Photo analysis and border control are some of the products which are including in their facial recognition technology.
VisionLabs deals with computer-driven vision technology to provide solutions for facial recognition. It is situated in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and was established in 2012. VisionLabs mainly deal with the transportation and banking sector to provide them with solutions.
VisionLabs’ products include facial identification and verification, which is accomplished by their facial recognition system and a biometric data engine. Augmented and Virtual Reality is one of its most accurate features after the facial recognition system.
Redrock Biometrics
Redrock Biometrics | Top facial recognition companies
A South San Francisco, California-based company is known as Redrock Biometrics. This Artificial Intelligence run company has the palm scanned authentication software platform. This software is widely known as Palm ID.
California palm scanning-based authentication companies have the privilege of a camera-equipped device to scan and read the scanning-based. It even works under less amount of light. This company converts the image on the palm into a new and unique signature that cannot be forged.
Conclusion
Facial Recognition Systems are the next generation thing that will have a significant impact in the modern age. The level of Artificial Intelligence used today is nothing compared to the technology that will come in the next generation. So for that purpose, we also need to keep ourselves updated about software companies working efficiently to bring the revolution on this turf.
FAQs
What are the top Facial Recognition Companies to look for in 2021?
List of Top Facial Recognition Companies to look for in 2021 are:
Affectiva
InsightFace
True-face
HyperVerge
Kairos
Caracom
Ever AI
AnyVision
Deep Vision AI
Sensory
Slyce
Face++
Congnitec
VisionLabs
Redrock Biometrics
What is facial recognition?
Facial recognition is a way of identifying an individual’s identity using their face. It is used to identify people in photos, videos, or in real-time.
What are the industries using facial recognition?
Facial recognition is currently being used to make the world safer and smarter. Facial recognition is used in several industries like:
AI is a broad word that refers to a variety of electronic systems. When someone talks about AI, they could be talking about anything from neural network-powered face recognition to machine learning that predicts the ideal phrase to use in an email subject line. With a slew of innovative startups entering the space, India’s AI ecosystem is exploding.
In the last four years, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have experienced a massive increase in funding and invention. Industry, medical, apparel, agribusiness, estate development, speech services, and other industries are now using them. India is currently a country with a solid ecosystem that allows AI startup professionals and entrepreneurs to kick-start their enterprises, thanks to the phenomenal expansion of the AI field.
Revenues From the AI Software Market Worldwide From 2018 to 2025
In 2021, global spending on cognitive systems and AI services was $57.6 billion. Between 2022 and 2030, AI adoption by organizations to be at a CAGR of 38.1% globally.
To improve AI, IoT, data analytics, information security, data science, and robotics, the Indian government upped its investment in Digital India to $477 million. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced in the 2019 Union Budget that the country would provide manufacturing training programs in technologies such as AI, Big Data, and robotics to 10 million Indian youngsters.
AI-enabled companies have enhanced every part of life, from medical to agribusiness, boosting the rise of AI companies in India. Let’s take a look at the 10 Indian AI Startups that are dominating the market.
Avaamo Technologies Private Limited is a private company founded on June 25, 2014, but not publicly traded. Its headquarters is in Bangalore, Karnataka. It has INR 1,00,000 in authorized share capital and INR 1,00,000 in total paid-up capital. Avaamo is a cloud service that automates the lifetime of Communicative AI. It is a deep-learning software firm focused on speech recognition to solve specific, increased enterprise problems. Avaamo is developing core AI technologies in areas such as neural networks, speech synthesis, and deep learning to make interactive computing for the industry a reality.
Qure.ai was established in 2016 by Pooja Rao and Prashant Warier. The company aims to make healthcare more accessible and affordable by using Ai. Qure.ai uses Machine Learning or convolutional neural networks to construct programs that detect illness patterns from medical photos. The Machine Learning algorithms developed by Qure.ai are delivered as code and used with any X-ray, CT scan, or MRI machine. This aid in the classification of radiography pictures as healthy or unhealthy, the diagnosis of disease, and the identification of defects that could otherwise go unnoticed. The revenue yield for Qure.ai in 2021 was $3.6 million.
Wysa
Wysa | Indian Startups Leading AI Race
Touchkin eServices, Aggarwal’s startup, created Wysa 2016, an AI-powered mental health app. Touchkin eServices has offices in Bangalore, Boston, and London. Wysa is primarily for individuals who simply want to express themselves. The founder claims that the majority of Wysa users are there to better their sleeping, anxiousness, or relations. According to Aggarwal, Wysa isn’t meant to be a substitute, but rather an extra tool with which a user can interact on a routine basis. The revenue yield for Wysa in 2021 was $4.56 million.
Yellow.ai
Yellow.ai | Indian Startups Leading AI Race
Yellow.ai is a conversational AI solution that helps businesses automate customer encounters, created by Raghu Ravintala, Jaya Kishore Gollareddy, and Rashid Khan in 2016. Sephora, Bharat Petroleum, and FoodPanda are just a few of Yellow.ai’s clients. By implementing a multichannel chatbot in 100+ languages, businesses can now self-serve 80% of inquiries and boost CSAT by 20%. Yellow.ai and Microsoft teamed up earlier this year to modernize their speech automation service using Azure AI Speech Services and Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools.
Intello Labs has created technological services that analyze and evaluate the grade of vegetables and fruits using AI capabilities such as computer vision and machine learning. It was founded by Devendra Chandani, Nishant Mishra, Milan Sharma and Himani Shah in 2016. It has many big names as its clients: Reliance Fresh, Dole, and Ocean Spray. The company claims that their technology reduces the amount of food loss by digitalizing the quality control process of fruits and vegetables. It is to create an efficient production line, making it less wasteful. Intello Labs’ yearly yield in 2021 was $18 million.
CropIn
Cropin | Indian Startups Leading AI Race
CropIn is a prominent AI and data-driven agri-tech company that uses machine learning to give SaaS solutions to agricultural producers. It was founded in 2010 by Krishna Kumar in Karnataka to solve the problems local farmers face, such as non-availability of finance, climatic vagaries, soil degradation, pest infestation and diseases, operational inefficiencies, and no predictability of yield. The revenue yield for CropIn in 2021 was $27 million.
Bash.ai
Bash.ai | Indian Startups Leading AI Race
BASH.ai is an interactive chatbot that uses Machine Learning Models to help employees work more efficiently. It was founded in 2017 by Barkha Sharma and Tanay Dixit in New Delhi-NCR. It uses a rule-based AI-powered bot to imitate cognitive activities relevant to the HR function, leading to greater workplace efficiency. Simply put, a regulation bot can assist employees in obtaining information efficiently through a conversational interface. It allows the HR department to concentrate on crucial responsibilities rather than repeating jobs and general requests.
Myelin Foundry
Myelin Foundry | Indian Startups Leading AI Race
Myelin Foundry develops Artificial Intelligence algorithms on video, voice, and sensor data for edge devices. It was founded in 2019 by Aditi Olemann, Ganesh Suryanarayanan, and Gopichand Katragadda in Bengaluru, Karnataka. Myelin Foundry’s deep tech solution transforms sensory interactions and industry outcomes using Machine Learning techniques on sensor data, speech, and video collected from edge devices. It also provides super HD zero-buffering broadcasting over any channel, reducing time and expense to market even more. The revenue yield for Myelin Foundry in 2021 was approx. $1 million.
Niki is a Bangalore, Karnataka-based artificial intelligence business. Sachin Jaiswal, Keshav Prawasi, Shishir Modi, and Nitin Babel, all IIT Kharagpur alumni, formed the company in May 2015. Niki is a chatbot driven by artificial intelligence that serves as an intelligent personal assistant. Niki provides customers with a chat-based natural language user interface where they may engage with Niki in their language using natural language processing and machine learning. Niki learns how Indian consumers communicate, deciphers the words in the perspective of services and products they want to buy, and makes appropriate recommendations. It was once only accessible as a mobile app on the Android platform. The business has now extended to include the Facebook Messenger and Apple iOS platforms. The revenue yield for Nikki.ai in 2021 was approx. $25 million.
SigTuple
SigTuple | Indian Startups Leading AI Race
SigTuple uses cutting-edge machine-learning algorithms to create intelligent medical diagnosis solutions. It was founded in 2015 by Apurv Anand, Bharath Cheluvaraju, Rohit Pandey, and Tathagato Dastidar in Bengaluru, Karnataka. The business is developing Manthana, an AI system that will aid in the analysis of visual medical data. SigTuple can now function on five main high-volume screening procedures in the healthcare sector: peripheral blood smears analysis, urine microscopy, semen, fundus, and OCT scans, and chest x-rays, due to Manthana.
Conclusion
In India, artificial intelligence has a bright future. By 2035, AI can add $957 billion to the Indian economy, or 15% of its current gross value. Power, retail, manufacturing, medical, education, and agribusiness can all benefit from AI. These startups have changed the Indian Market and created many new job opportunities for Indian youngsters.
FAQs
Is AI a good career in India?
Artificial Intelligence salaries in India are significantly higher than the national average for most AI job categories.
Is AI in demand in India?
Yes, top nano degree programs in deep learning and data engineering demonstrate the country’s growing interest in AI and data.
What are the advantages of AI?
AI allows previously complicated activities to finish without incurring huge costs. AI is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with no delay. AI improves the talents of people with varied abilities.
Which country is leading the AI race?
The United States is leading the AI race, followed by China and the European Union.
Which are the Startups leading the AI Race in India?
Food companies are adjusting their ways of creating and advertising their products to keep up with the trends. Food industries are influenced by technological improvements either directly or indirectly. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having an impact on food production and processing, making it easier and faster for businesses to create products.
PepsiCo is a wonderful example. PepsiCo is a clever AI user who understands the value of machine learning and the application of new technology. It is a well-known food and beverage company that is responsible for a number of well-known brands, including Pepsi, Miranda, Tropicana, Lays, Kurkure, and Mountain Dew. PepsiCo’s global net revenue was over 70.37 billion dollars in 2020. PepsiCo has attempted everything from utilising Snack Delivery Robots to recruiting robots.
Pepsi, as one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, is constantly at the cutting edge of technology, investing substantially in artificial intelligence technologies to increase practically every aspect of its operations. Fortunately, it has the sufficient capital and expertise to put in place the tech required to make things go effortlessly.
Shameer Mirza, senior research and development engineer at PepsiCo, understood that artificial intelligence might be used in a variety of ways to improve manufacturing process management. Mirza then created a machine learning technique that could be combined with a visual system to estimate the mass of treated potatoes. The corporation was able to save a significant amount of money because it no longer had to pay $300,000 per line (they had 35 in the United States alone) for measuring equipment. Mirza’s solutions rely solely on a camera and a computer vision model, and are basically nothing more than extra sample points obtained at no cost.
Machine learning is helping the manufacturing unit of Frito-Lay, a PepsiCo subsidiary. One prototype uses lasers to impact chips, then listens to the sounds they make to detect texturing. To digitize the performance analysis for Frito-chip Lay’s production plants, software evaluates audio and estimates chip texture.
PepsiCo has initiated a global training program on innovative machine learning and artificial intelligence for its internal marketing associates, in order to expand their team’s ability to use such innovations to start bringing perspectives that will improve their production plants.
AI is rapidly being used by businesses for manufacturing processes and data collection. Consumer research is one of the most important avenues here. In the past, such studies relied on data from survey data, which isn’t necessarily credible.
Thankfully, artificial intelligence (AI) is assisting academics in carefully sorting through information, identifying trends, and noting relevant insights. We can evaluate consumer insights deeply and quickly using a mixture of qualitative and quantitative analytics, artificial intelligence, and social networks. As a result, patterns and trends emerge, allowing for thorough market research into critical consumer insights.
Tastewise, an AI tool, is used by PepsiCo to identify and anticipate food trends. Tastewise, which was founded by former Google Chief Marketing Officer Alon Chen, employs artificial intelligence to analyse massive volumes of culinary data available online. Tastewise promises that its platform has analysed more than 95 million menu items, 226 billion recipe interactions, and 22.5 billion social media posts, among so many other things, for companies such as Nestle and General Mills. PepsiCo gains a better sense of what customers are interested in as a result of these insights. PepsiCo adopted seaweed as a flavoring for savoury snacks as a result of the findings given by this algorithm—input that might not have come up in survey data.
Pep Worx, PepsiCo’s in-house big data and analytics platform, assists the firm and its partner companies in identifying valuable consumers by area, allowing for better product array and merchandising decisions. Stock choices, product positioning, and advertising techniques can all be aided by the system.
According to Supermarket News, PepsiCo used Pep Worx to identify 24 million households from a dataset of 110 million US households to plug into unexpressed demand for its Quaker Overnight Oats, single-serve cups of dry oats soaked overnight in milk or yoghurt in the fridge to get a nutritious, cold breakfast cereal by the early hours.
These victories mark the end of PepsiCo’s long journey to big data, which included decades of analysis and experiments before arriving at Pep Worx. Its first application of big data was to gain a better understanding of its one billion customers and to simplify its supply chain across its 200+ countries of operation. This information was largely in the form of compact documents before being released via Pep Worx.
Many experts believe that AI is the future of advertising and PepsiCo understands it fully. From ad design to targeting specific to ad buying, AI is revolutionising what is possible in terms of advertising. One of the most difficult tasks for advertisers is to ensure that the correct audience is targeted. AI may scan a variety of data sources to assess the likelihood of a user completing a given action, resulting in more successful and proactive marketing. To reach potential customers and expand the sales process, AI can develop look-alike communities based on previous efforts.
Machine intelligence in branding aids advertising agencies in making better use of buzzwords to quickly target buyers. The AI marketing approach and solutions enable digital marketers to reach consumers more effectively and increase income.
PepsiCo – Robot Vera To Interview Candidates
The organisation conducts phone interviews with job applicants and answers their questions about offered positions using the Robot Vera technique developed by a Russian corporation. The robot interviewer can examine 1,500 job applications in nine hours, compared to nine weeks for human recruiters. PepsiCo has designed Robot Vera to make calls to job seekers using powerful speech recognition technology, diverting its hiring crew to other tasks.
It uses Vera to assess candidates for occupations like forklift delivery drivers and industry employees, as well as to hire salespeople. The system can examine CVs on job sites continuously and call candidates who meet the criteria, conducting up to 10,000 calls at once.
Conclusion
Artificial Intelligence, according to PepsiCo and many other corporations, is the key to surviving in an oversaturated market. PepsiCo employs machine learning for a variety of purposes, including production and the recruiting of new employees. The number of food and beverage companies utilising artificial intelligence for everything from supply chain planning to customer transparency is growing, as is the number of supply chain management applications. And PepsiCo is well aware that Artificial Intelligence is the way of the future.
FAQs
What technology does PepsiCo use?
PepsiCo employs AI and machine learning in a variety of ways across the company.
Who are PepsiCo competitors?
Some among the PepsiCo’s top competitors are:
Keurig Dr. Pepper
Danone
Nestle
Britvic
Red Bull
Mondelez International
Monster Beverage
Why is PepsiCo so successful?
The company’s success stems from its ability to keep on top of new trends and lifestyles, providing customers with the flavours and comforts they demand.
In this growing modern world, technology has taken a huge leap. And in today’s world AI (Artificial Intelligence) is the new face of modern technology. In terms of Computer Science, AI or Artificial Intelligence refers to human-like Intelligence exhibited in a computer.
Now after years of being devoted and researching science-fiction, today AI is a part of our daily lives. And the advancement in AI technology has made our lives more functional and comfortable than before. AI is completing our words as we type them, providing us directions in the form of tutorials and other functions in other ways too.
Facebook, one of the largest social media platforms by Mark Zuckerberg, has now announced the same. Quoting that, for the improvement in the experience of shopping across its various ventures, a new way has been made for the existing and future businesses to set up a single online store for customers to access on Facebook.
The company has already characterized all the new products powered by AI. Also, the machine learning system has a surge in its vision for an all-in-one AI assistant that can search, categorize, and can stimulate products. While at the same time it can personalize its recommendations to the individual persons as per their choice preferences.
Before digging deep into the matter, let’s understand what are the key AI features Facebook is using to improve its shopping experience. So they are:
1. To automae the Marketing 2. Making Small Scale Business Possible 3. Product Recognition 4. Identifying many unseen objects and other attributes 5. Stepping Footprints for the Next Age Shopping.
Now let’s discuss them one by one.
Facebook – AI To Automate Marketing
Many E-Commerce businesses just as Facebook Marketplace depend on Artificial Intelligence. They depend on automating a host to stimulate the job being behind the stage. It starts from learning choice preferences and body types to look into and understand the possible factors that may influence the buyer. It may also influence the purchase decision of an individual or a group of purchasers.
McKinsey and Company known as a trusted advisor and counsellor to many of the world’s most influential businesses and institutions estimate that Amazon, which recently used AI to handle that what the shopper inquiries. And this in return generated 35% from its product recommendation engine.
Facebook – AI Making Small Scale Business Possible
Facebook marketplace
“We are seeing a lot of small businesses making their presence for the first time on this online platform, (as a result of the ongoing pandemic) whom we never saw before,” said Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during an online Livestream event conducted. He also disclosed that small-scale businesses around the globe used the platform’s services.
“This can help to endure some of the loss made due to this pandemic to their lost businesses. Facebook is distinctively positioned to be a winner for small-scale businesses. It is helping them to grow and create a healthy environment for their successful business.”
Facebook remarked that its AI shopping systems segments detect and make classification of images to know of that. They also make a decision, where the products should appear and deliver shopping suggestions.
One of the systems that Artificial Intelligence uses is known as GrokNet. It was trained on seven sets of data. It contains images of the products that many as in millions of users post, purchase, and sell in a bulk or dozens of categories.
Facebook – AI for Identifying many unseen objects and other attributes
To help the buyers or the respective shoppers find accurately what they are searching for, the product recognition systems must shine at recognizing specific product characteristics. They are also known as attributes. But there lie thousands of other possibilities. Each one of them can be applied to a range of other categories. For example, a person can have blue jeans, blue shirts, blue pants, or even a blue car.
Mainly, several state-of-the-art classification models have taken the superintendent approach. But the thing is that, with near-infinite possibilities, this is not much ascendable.
Facebook – AI Stepping Footprints for the Next Age Shopping
Today, Artificial Intelligence shopping is walking its infant steps. From machines to photos of different products are still just collections of pixels. Just like “full sleeves”, others are more objective like “casual wear” Or “cold weather”. So basically training these AI models which can flexibly make the use of the precise and right information provided in each situation. Because each situation requires solving scientific and engineering challenges.
With each year Artificial Technology systems are being built smarter. Due to this training, they are finely tuned to understand all the shopping-related photos and text with the state of the art being exact.
And on a good note, there’s a long way to go for such futuristic innovations. Personalized shopping is very difficult as everyone’s choice preferences are becoming distinctive and are constantly evolving with time. So they need to keep on building on their fundamental Artificial Intelligence. This may also include enhancement for even deeper AI understanding for not only just products and fashion. But also dynamic context and vivid knowledge of relationships should be kept in mind with the items. Thus making us one more step closer to the next age of shopping.
Hence, there are advantages as well as disadvantages of Facebook’s AI on shopping that the buyers or the sellers will face. They are:
1. Requirement for selling through the Facebook marketplace. 2. Allotment of selling Fee 3. Unable to include extra additional or enhanced features 4. Excluding buyers, purchasers, or customers who are not on Facebook
Conclusion
Although these are the advantageous aspects that Facebook AI is having for Next-generation shopping. Yet it is also easy to forecast the disadvantages that will come along with it. But as this system came into force due to the pandemic going on, it’s not certain how it will perform in the future once the pandemic is lifted. So now all the small-scale businesses should incur some profits from the losses they endured.
So it’s a major plan set up by Facebook for the coming age. But the generation will decide its operation. Keeping in view its pros and cons, it’s the upcoming generation who’ll take charge of its fluent operation.
But whatever it may bring tomorrow, it surely had its impact now bringing success to many. Successful results say that not only in Facebook but everywhere else Artificial Intelligence is the new face for the rising tomorrow. Hence it’s a great initiative led by Facebook to help many small-scale businesses come out of their losses to start freshly. However, disadvantages may show up at any possible time. Hence, Time is the only condition evident of the fact that what will be the new aspect of Artificial Intelligence.
FAQs
How AI is transforming the way people shop?
AI system automatically scans through the product catalog and identify the exact product and makes it more convenient to give better shopping experience to the customers.
Does Facebook use AI for advertising?
Facebookuses AI to advertise the relevant content to users through text, photos and videos.
How is AI used in marketing?
AI tools use data and customer profiles and find best way to communicate with customers. They communicate though relevant tailored messages at the right time without any intervention from marketing team members.
Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by SignalX.
With a vision to build a global counterparty verification platform catering to risk intelligence requirements across industries, Govind Balachandran, Zakir Wahab, and Piyush Arora founded SignalX. SignalX is an intuitive AI-powered Risk Intelligence platform that runs comprehensive risk assessment & credibility verification on any given target – individual or a corporate entity, in just 48 hours. In just 3 years, SignalX has served over 200+ risk and compliance professionals across various domains.
StartupTalky had an Exclusive Interaction with Govind Balachandran, Co-Founder & CEO of SignalX to get insights on the Startup Journey of SignalX. Also to know the business model of SignalX, its funding status, How SignalX started, its future plans & more.
SignalX is an intuitive AI-powered Risk Intelligence platform that runs comprehensive risk assessment & credibility verification on any given target – individual or a corporate entity, in just 48 hours. It provides detailed financial, legal, compliance, and reputational analyses on potential clients, vendors, business partners, investment targets, and all counterparties and third parties. SignalX enables businesses to build trust and transact faster. The platform is used by Risk, Audit, Valuation, Compliance, and Forensics teams across industries.
The long-term vision of SignalX is to build a global counterparty verification platform catering to risk intelligence requirements across industries.
“We want to evolve and be recognized as a trusted RegTech and Compliance brand across the globe.” says Mr. Govind Balachandran, Co-Founder & CEO, SignalX
SignalX – Industry Details
In a broader sense, SignalX operates in the domain of credibility verification and risk tech technologies which cuts across Regtech, Fintech, LegalTech, ComplianceTech, GRC, and more. There have been massive investments by the Big4, Compliance Firms, and Law Firms into forensic technologies. GRC as a domain is expected to be at 60B USD over the next 5 years. The team at SignalX is hoping to play a meaningful role in this space.
Govind Balachandran (CEO), Zakir Wahab (CFO), and Piyush Arora (CTO) are the founding team of SignalX. Govind looks after the sales, marketing, and delivery ops of the business. Zakir looks into finance, compliance, hiring, and other ops. Piyush looks into product and engineering.
“We have been working together for many years now. It was a no-brainer decision to start together. We met each other through our previous ventures” Govind added.
Govind Balachandran | Co-Founder & CEO, SignalX
Govind Balachandran, Co-Founder, and CEO of SignalX
Govind Balachandran has over 7 years of experience in marketing and product development. At SignalX, his prime focus is on growth and New Business acquisition. Previously, he was the Director at Nebulae Software. He also co-founded Kaddy Analytics, a cloud-based analytics platform for stakeholders in the education system. Govind has devised enterprise solutions for forensic and fraud analytics, Edtech, and HRTech verticals and has worked with various Series A and Seed-Stage startups, playing a key role in their growth and product development. Govind holds a Bachelor of Technology (Honors) in Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Economics from IIT Hyderabad.
Zakir Wahab | Co-founder & CFO, SignalX
Zakir Wahab is a serial entrepreneur & a co-founder/CFO at SignalX. He is an alumnus of Andhra University, is an early-stage investor, and brings immense experience across the fields of finance, strategy & e-governance.
Piyush Arora | Co-founder & CTO, SignalX
Piyush Arora heads the technology team at SignalX. As co-founder & CTO, he also looks after product growth & engineering. Piyush is an alumnus of IIT Hyderabad and previously worked at Qualcomm.
SignalX Team
How SignalX Started?
It started out wanting to build a simple tool that can help in assessing the credibility of counterparties. The team had known first hand, the challenges faced by risk and forensic teams and their expectations from technology. SignalX has been focused on this objective from day 1 and over time, through many iterations, today it is one of the most comprehensive risk intelligence platforms with analytics that helps you make risk decisions faster and accurately.
SignalX – Product/Services
SignalX runs its proprietary machine learning algorithms to gather data through sources that are publicly available like datasets managed by government agencies, regulators, media journals, and other third parties. Its algorithms assure reduced false positives and ensure the efficacy and accuracy of an extensive research process. SignalX also generates and shares reports with clients in just 2 days, which gives them the edge of speed for the next steps and reduces the extremely tiresome and tedious process of diligence.
SignalX – Name Meaning & Logo
The core value proposition of SignalX is to offer risk signals pertaining to any target whose name is given to the platform – an individual or an entity. Hence the name SignalX.
SignalX Logo
SignalX – Business Model and Revenue Model
SignalX offers multiple pricing options. Its pay-as-you-go model is quite popular. However, most of its users prefer a subscription service.
SignalX – Startup Launch
“We’ve been creating content on our blogs from day 1. Inbound has been a strong channel for us.Customer referrals are another channel that continues to bring us leads. We have had a strong focus on customer service and retention from the very beginning” says Govind.
SignalX has a strong focus on organic traffic. Some of the content the team created about a year back is performing better month on month. The company is continuously driving improvements to these assets. The brand is a key element for SignalX going forward. A risk intelligence platform must be comprehensive, thorough, auditable, and credible. These are some of the values that the customers expect from the company. To develop its PR channel, SignalX has signed up with SSPR.
Having bootstrapped the firm for the first two years, it was required to develop cash flows from month one. Being a new firm in the market, it is very tough to build trust and credibility. Being bootstrapped also makes one conscious of not undercutting the pricing such that it’s not profitable to operate. Early on, the team had to deal with situations where they had to develop trust with clients to get them to give SignalX business. Today SignalX has worked with over 200+ compliance and risk teams. So, it’s much easier to represent itself in front of newer clients.
The pricing strategy was one of the items that took quite a bit of iteration. The iterations are also difficult since it creates discrepancies between newer and older customers. However, since SignalX has been able to deliver strong value, it has been able to work with the customers in updating the pricing.
SignalX – Marketing Strategy
SignalX is heavy on Organic and Referrals. Email marketing is something it incorporates a lot. The company has received some of the best throughputs from the long-form content it created on its blogs a while back. “We’re still driving continuous improvements on this front” Govind added.
SignalX – Growth
SignalX has served over 200+ risk and compliance professionals across various domains. Its solution has made a mark in Section 29A (IBC) due diligence requirements in the Insolvency & Bankruptcy domain. Its product is also used by the forensic teams at some of the Big4’s.
The company’s goal is to build a global counterparty risk intelligence solution that can cater to requirements from across industries, law enforcement, governments, and more. It is adding newer use cases to the platform every quarter. SignalX recently launched Supplier and Partner Risk Intelligence modules to help supply chain or distribution heavy businesses to assess legal, financial, reputational, and compliance risks associated with counterparties.
SignalX – Funding and Investors
Being bootstrapped since its inception in 2018, SignalX received seed funding from 3Lines VC, 9Unicorns, and Hyderabad Angels for $750k in September 2020.
SignalX’s competitors include RDC, Bloomberg, Dun & Bradstreet, Exiger, DueDil, DDIQ, and others.
Tools used by SignalX to run startup
Few tools which SignalX uses to run the startup are – Hubspot, ActiveCampaign, Jira, Hootsuite, etc.
SignalX – Awards and Achievements
SignalX got recognized by the Government of Telangana
Winners of EmergeX, Microsoft in the domain of Emerging Technologies
SignalX – Future Plans
SignalX will continue to add more use cases to its platform to cater to a wider set of requirements. The team will be strengthening the ML to bring best-in-class technology for risk professionals. SignalX will also be expanding its database coverage across borders and also forensic analytics to improve fraud and risk signal detections. “We have some exciting features coming up that look at how we fundamentally address credibility verification and manage the risk process.” says Govind Balachandran, Co-Founder& EO of SignalX.
SignalX – FAQs
What is SignalX?
SignalX is an intuitive AI-powered Risk Intelligence platform that runs comprehensive risk assessment & credibility verification on any given target – individual or a corporate entity, in just 48 hours.
Who are the founders of SignalX?
Govind Balachandran (CEO), Zakir Wahab (CFO), and Piyush Arora (CTO) are the founding team of SignalX.
How much funding has SignalX raised?
SignalX received seed funding from 3Lines VC, 9Unicorns, and Hyderabad Angels for $750k in September 2020.
Is SignalX Indian Company?
Yes. SignalX is an Indian company headquartered in Hyderabad, India.
Who are SignalX’s competitors?
SignalX’s competitors include RDC, Bloomberg, Dun & Bradstreet, Exiger, DueDil, DDIQ, and others.
How does SignalX source data for analysis?
SignalX sources its data from datasets managed by government agencies, regulators, publicly available media, and various other third-party datasets. SignalX runs its proprietary machine learning algorithms to reduce false positives and infer meaning. SignalX does not look into any data points that are not made publicly available by the target company or by other parties either through the media or in their regulatory filings.
With batteries contributing to 40%+ cost in modern EVs, there is anxiety around their longevity and performance (charging time, safety, etc) that require more than just local safety protection. ION Energyis an Advanced Electronics & Software supplier for EVs & ESS. It is focused on building technology that will improve the life and performance of lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and energy storage systems.
ION Energy is accelerating Earth’s transition to an all-electric planet. With a cutting-edge battery management system, advanced analytics software, and artificial intelligence-powered platform, ION is enabling electric vehicle and energy storage space providers the power of data to make faster and smarter decisions.
Read this article to know about ION Energy, funding, CEO, founders, turnover, products, business & revenue model, investors, awards, challenges, and growth.
July 2, 2021 – ION Energy raises a total of $3.6 million in pre-Series A funding round led by retail giants Amazon, followed by angel investors YourNest Venture Capital, Riso Capitol, Venture Catalysts, and others. The funding round was initiated by the eCommerce behemoth’s Climate Pledge Fund, which is set aside by Amazon to support promising sustainability initiatives of startups.
About ION Energy and How it Works
ION Energy has pioneered a disruptive battery intelligence platform – Edison Analytics, that is designed to improve performance and extend the life of Lithium-ion batteries. Edison leverages battery data, software analytics, and AI to remotely monitor, predict, and improve battery life. Battery pack manufacturers, OEMs, and electric mobility fleet operators around the world use ION’s platform to optimize their battery management systems (BMS) and build world-class batteries.
Edison Analytics Features
Both the Founders Akhil and Alex are ardent believers of the first principle thinking and aim to build for the futureand plan to shepherd the gradual and seemingly inevitable shift from fossil fuels to electric energy, more importantly in a developing yet booming economy like India. They emphasize the importance of educating and mobilizing the masses about the new alternatives of energy to change the prospect of EV as a niche concept to a mainstream.
ION Energy – Target Market Size
Battery storage may be the biggest disruption to the energy sector: Globally, the advanced energy storage market is forecast to grow from an annual installation size of 6GW in 2017 to over 40GW by 2022. In some markets, the improved performance and decreasing costs of batteries are already seeing them displace natural gas from the energy mix.
The company’s success in international markets have enabled them to sell 25,000 BMS that have been used with 100MWh of batteries last year. ION’s battery technology platform is leveraged by 60+ companies in 12 countries like India, France, Germany, Austria, Poland, North America, South Africa, UK, etc. to optimize their battery management systems (BMS) and build world-class batteries.
Despite Akhil’s graduation degree in Finance, he was interested in energy and software, since he was much younger. While he was managing the growth strategy at Haptik as its CPO in 2015, Akhil became intrigued by the launch of the Tesla Model S. The interest piqued further when his father was about to sell his Skoda Superb car and he had suggested converting it into an electric model.
While doing some research, ION energy Founder Akhil realized that replacing an internal combustion engine with an electric engine would cost him more than half of the car’s cost, i.e. a car which is in the range of INR 50 lakhs would require a battery amounting to INR. 1 Crore! Given the challenge of the exorbitant battery cost (the most expensive component in an EV), Akhil recognized that there was a pressing need to make the batteries affordable and accessible so that it lasts longer, performs better, and eventually, significantly reduces the cost of the vehicle.
Identifying the gap that no other company in India was catering to this space, ION energytook birth in 2016 in Mumbai. By the next year, ION Energy acquired Freeman SAS, an almost decade-old French company building Battery Management Systems, to boost its core competency. This led to Alex Collet transitioning from his role as a Founder of Freeman SAS to ION Energy’s Co-Founder and marked the international foray of ION Energy with an office in France.
ION Energy – Product/Services
ION Energy is an advanced battery management and intelligence platform. A BMS consists of a microcontroller and a bunch of sensors on the hardware so the technology involved is interfacing with this microcontroller through all these sensors and then interfacing this BMS with the battery pack. The core functions that a BMS performs include – data acquisition, protection, storage, and communication.
Battery Management System Hardware
In terms of the software used, there are various algorithms that run inside the microcontroller which is used to compute certain parameters of the battery such as the state of charge, state of health, range, etc.
The BMS that’s present in the battery pack has substantial information stored inside it and then there is the cloud that is powerful enough to compute, assess, and analyze. The startup is currently building a telematics unit that can transmit this information via the internet, but in its absence, it is using ION Lens, a telematics gateway unit.
ION Lens collects information from the BMS through Bluetooth over your phone and uses the phone’s internet connection to transmit information to the cloud in real-time. There is also a PC utility tool called CANView which runs on your laptop through a wired medium to the BMS called CAN. It connects, then your laptop sends info to the cloud in real-time, through the PC.
The intelligence layer on top of this is Edison Analytics. This is where the data is analyzed on the cloud. The insights are based on the data and the initial calculations that are being done by the BMS placed along with the battery pack locally, without the cloud.
Get Real Time Alerts with Edison analytics
Edison Analytics is designed to improve performance and extend the life of Lithium-ion batteries. Edison leverages battery data, software analytics and AI to remotely monitor, predict and improve battery life.
Advanced battery management and intelligence platform, ION is focused on building technologies that improve the life and performance of lithium-ion batteries used inside of electric vehicles and energy storage systems. ION also leverages advanced electronics and software that accelerates the effort of engineering teams.
In 2018, after acquiring an 8-year-old French Battery Management System (BMS) developer – Freemens SAS, ION came out of stealth mode and unveiled its first product UDYR, an easily swappable battery for electric scooters and started commercializing its flagship BMS platform. UDYR’s battery management would allow it to enhance performance and increase battery life by up to 200 percent.
Electric vehicles are expensive, primarily because of the lithium-ion batteries that power them. The cost of a battery amounts to 40% of the total vehicle cost. While the upside of using lithium-ion batteries is their high energy density, relatively low self-discharge, and low maintenance, on the other hand, they have a limited life. On average, the estimated life of a lithium-ion battery is up to 3 years or 500-700 charge cycles, after which, they need to be replaced.
This helped them pivot to improve performance and extend the life of lithium-ion batteries that are used inside EVs and ESS with its flagship BMS. ION’s unique advantage is its intelligent ecosystem – BMS + Edison Analytics, that blends advanced electronics, machine learning software, artificial intelligence, and data science with deep domain expertise in energy storage.
ION Energy o-founder Akhil Aryan explains, “The key differentiator – our battery intelligence platform Edison Analytics, uses real-time simulations and visualizations designed to extend battery life by up to 40% and reduce the overall ownership cost, thus boosting ROI.
ION Energy was founded by Akhil Aryan and Alexandre Collet in 2016.
ION Energy founders
Akhil Aryan – Akhil Aryan is the Co-Founder and CEO of ION Energy, one of the world’s most advanced battery management and intelligence platform. Akhil has been recognized as one of the Young Achievers of 2020 in the coveted ‘30 Under 30’ Forbes Asia (Industry, Manufacturing, and Energy), and Forbes India (Technology) list, and he has also been featured in Entrepreneur India’s ‘35 under 35’ list. Akhil’s objective is to identify missions and build an environment that helps unlock the full potential of his team.
One of the most unique things about Akhil is his versatility and ability to get on steep learning curves to understand markets and evaluate business opportunities. ION is a great example of how he converted his childhood fascination into a business, without an engineering degree. He graduated from the University of Mumbai with a degree in financial markets, but Akhil always says that his laptop is his gateway into the world’s largest repository of knowledge and degrees should not be held as assets that create entitlement.
In his last company – Haptik, one of the world’s largest conversational AI platforms – Akhil led the product team from the start, managed user acquisition and conversion, helping it skyrocket from 100k to 1.5 million users. In 2016, Haptik raised $12M and was on track to become one of India’s largest AI companies (acquired by Jio for $100M). Akhil was instrumental in building a complex Natural Language Processing engine to power the enterprise’s Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence efforts from the ground up.
ION Energy Team
Alexandre Collet – Alexandre Collet is the Co-founder and CTO at ION Energy, a company that is dedicated to reducing carbon footprints and building sustainable cutting-edge technology for lithium-ion batteries with a focus on electric mobility. Alexandre is chiefly responsible for designing and streamlining the technological innovation and product development at ION. A highly proficient engineer, he completed his masters in Power Electronics and Embedded Systems from the University of Grenoble, France.
Alexandre had a plethora of professional experience before his current electric endeavor at ION energy. In 2011, he founded Freemens SAS, an industry leader in battery management systems, that was acquired by ION Energy in 2018. Freemens SAS was powered into existence on his groundbreaking inventions and scientific research in power electronics architecture, lithium-ion cell aging factors, and state identification at the University of Grenoble, France.
ION Energy Team
Inside the company, ION Energy’s CEO Akhil’s role goes beyond the usual responsibilities of product, technology development, and business expansion. As a big believer of first principle thinking, his focus is on turning the green warrior narrative into a business opportunity and exploring ways to reduce the planet’s dependence on fossil fuels.
ION Energy Co-founder Alexandre seeks to concentrate on the software side of things with an increased focus on developing and scaling Edison Analytics, the world’s first and finest AI-powered state of the art battery data analytics software for all Battery Management Systems. He wants to make ION a household name and the face of advanced battery management and operating systems to unleash an electrical revolution in the world.
While Akhil is known as a software entrepreneur, he have always been innately curious about the nature of electrons. It never ceases to fascinate him that adding or removing even a single electron changes the properties of the nucleus of the atom, and hence the overall object! Such altered atoms that have gained or lost electron(s) are called IONs. This is how IONs form the basis of energy itself. The overpowering nature of IONs led to the name of as ION Energy.
ION Energy Logo
“I strongly believe that building, maintaining and optimizing the Energy Ecosystem is the greatest opportunity of our generation. Not only from a financial unit economics point of view, but also environmental impact. As a founder I will ensure that ION Energy remains at the forefront of this movement”, says ION Energy Co-founder Akhil Aryan.
ION Energy – Business Model
ION’s full-stack approach blends advanced electronics, IoT, analytics, and AI with deep domain expertise in energy storage. ION’s platform leverages a two-way communication gateway that enables businesses to:
Identify factors that are contributing to abnormal degradation of the battery’s health and the magnitude of contribution
Take appropriate actions like configuration changes over the air, drive profile changes, or environment changes to continuously improve the life and performance of the battery.
Optimize costs and acquire better ROI through all stages of the battery life cycle.
This is deeply integrated with a license to Edison Analytics, its battery intelligence platform that is offered as a SaaSproduct. With this core differentiator, ION is overturning the unexceptional rigid, one-time configuration approach adopted by other electronics suppliers.
ION Energy – Revenue Model
The company earns its revenue by following three business models:
The first one is the BMS sale where a bunch of companies buy its battery management system.
The second is the BMS platform license which means companies can use the platform to accelerate their BMS development by two-three years and save million dollars expenses.
Thirdly, the subscription to the startup’s software analytics platform which the companies use for diagnostics and warranty validation.
Akhil Aryan – “Being a startup, we’ve always made it a point to be transparent with our customers. Our communication with our customers has built trust in our company and our platform. At ION, good news can always wait, but if anything goes wrong, we communicate at the earliest and work on correcting our mistakes. At ION, it’s our mission to do whatever we can to make our customers successful. That’s why our first 10 customers are still our strongest customers today and brought many more clients to our company”.
ION Energy – Startup Challenges
It’s so difficult to capture all the challenges one faces in the early days of a startup. It’s almost always at the intersection of Market, Product, Team & Traction. For the team of ION Energy, the challenges were mostly around timing their product with market maturity and ensuring they’re investing both in product and customers that can help them create short term revenues but also those that have the long term potential for market penetration.
“Initially when we began operations, one of the biggest challenges we faced was grooming technical talent in-house. There weren’t many engineers who had expertise in the EV sector and the number of engineers who had knowledge in AI and analytics was low as well”, recalls ION Energy co-founder Alexandre Collet.
When a new market starts shaping up, the talent pool is not mature and so it’s difficult to make significant progress on technology unless there is senior leadership in-house grooming talent. Thus, the company had to train them from the ground up and provide knowledge as well within the sector.
This helped in creating the core team that today also helps train any new engineer that is hired by the firm. Founders hope that in the future, there will be more experts in the EV sector in particular with colleges like Savitribai Phule Pune University (SPPU), College of Engineering – Pune and the Cummins College of Engineering for Women and institutes like IITs beginning courses specifically to EVs.
Explaining the concept to investors at a time when there was low awareness of the need and the technology, inadequate infrastructure, lack of push for electric vehicle adoption and localization of technology by regulatory authorities in the country are some other challenges faced by the company.
ION is India’s largest BMS company with 30%+ market share in the 2/3W space, 10 Crores in revenue and offices in India & France.
The company has customers like Exicom Tele-Systems Ltd., IBS, Tork Motors, Wamtechnik, Electro-Mechanique Industries (RGM), Swincar, TYVA Energie, and Yotta Solar.
ION Energy – Funding and Investors
The initial ION Energy funding came from Akhil (Co-Founder). There are also some seed investors that include Astarc Ventures, Advik hi-Tech and executives from Salesforce, Tesla, Haptik, Nippo Batteries, and Dentsu Aegis. The funds have helped ION Energy in product development and bring the technology closer to mass manufacturing.
The latest fund, as disclosed by ION Energy, is led by eCommerce behemoth, Amazon via the Climate Pledge Fund, worth $2 billion that the firm set aside to support sustainability initiatives of the startups around the world. Along with Amazon, the other companies that joined the round were YourNest Venture Capital, Riso Capitol, Venture Catalysts, and more, which helped ION Energy to raise around $3.6 million in its pre-Series A funding round.
ION Energy – Advisors and Mentors
ION Energy is a part of Shell’s E4 Programme and is mentored by Sushil Jiwarajka, Chairman of OMC Power and founder of Nippo Batteries.
ION Energy was founded in 2016, and within a year of its inception, ION Energy acquired an 8-year-old French Battery Management System (BMS) developer – Freemens SAS, in a first of its kind cross-border acquisition.
ION Energy – Recognition and Achievements
Akhil has been recognized as one of the Young Achievers of 2020 in the coveted ‘30 Under 30’ Forbes Asia (Industry, Manufacturing, and Energy), and Forbes India (Technology) list, and he has also been featured in Entrepreneur India’s ‘35 under 35’ list.
ION Energy – Future Plans
The next 5 years are going to be pivotal, not only for ION Energy but also for our planet and the human species. If the company manages to make the e-mobility transition holistically, it will go down in history as one of the largest positive recourse that humanity has made. The move away from fossil fuels will define the generations to come. ION Energy has a major role to play in this transition and they take this responsibility seriously.
Over the 5 year horizon, the company sees itself managing 10% of all Li-Ion batteries deployed in the country. To make this a reality, they will scale to 100 engineers by 2021 and leverage India’s strength in electronics and software to overcome the lack of lithium resources.
“We aim to Deliver to the Key Customers with 10x Reliability in – Product + Technology. In the next 18 months, we envision quadrupling the impact and delivering 10x by 2021 to 1GWh under management and $20M in revenue“, says Akhil while talking about future plans.
The pandemic has changed the face of all systems that existed. The world is now divided into two parts – Pre and Post Covid. It highlighted many aspects of everyday activities that can be changed for the better. This pandemic is going to result in entire societies being transformed in the years ahead.
The Banking sector is not untouched by the pandemic. Although it was fully functional even when most services closed, it still underwent immense crisis during the pandemic. The banking sector, just like any other industry, has to implement newer methods into its system to stand the test of time.
The Banking sector prides itself on the digital functionality that it has built over the years. But Covid challenge their beliefs and established the fact they need more digitization.
In India, e-wallets and online money managing software gain pace but they are popular only in urban areas. In most rural areas, people still need to go to banks for basic deposits and withdrawals.
The world is moving towards voice-based artificial intelligence, personal smart assistants, built into our homes and mobiles. Therefore, the design of banks to fit in this world requires rethinking banking from the ground up.
Bank much start looking for new product launch opportunities, as well as generate newer offerings toward an advisory and protection focus. Advanced analytics helps them in identifying relevant ideas for growth, but it should be combined with an alteration of digital sales journeys and marketing.
Newer Models for Risk Management
Banks obtain their credit risk modelling from traditional credit bureaus that are both historical and static on the other hand new models are already established to assess small businesses in various contexts, for example, the supply chains that they serve along with the communities that they belong to. So, the risk management model for banks will change over time to be a relevant creditor to small businesses, that are rapidly increasing.
More user-friendly Experience
The banks have an image of being unpleasant and excessively difficult. They have to work towards changing in order to serve society. Private banks are providing more options to customers where agents will be on hand to guide them through transactions on their own devices, and the space will be renewed to more casual seating areas for important conversations. Changing the style and interior of branches also supports social distancing.
AI will be a crucial change as banks move forward from using these not only to monitor transactions but also to assist customers via “conversational banking”. Banks will be combining human and digital channels to help the customers which will be quick and cost-effective. As the love for instant messages grows and demand for 24/7 banking services picks pace, conversational banking involving AI chatbots enables banks to engage in a personalized manner.
Conclusion
We all are a part of the post-Covid world now and both consumers and creators in every sector understand that changes have to be made. Banking will evolve and become more user-friendly and they realize they depend on the society that they serve and not the other way around. Since users have more options to handle money now, banks have to pick up the pace to implement these changes into their systems.
FAQ
How are banks using augmented reality?
Banks are employing AR apps that help customers to find the nearest banks and ATMs.
Is Digital banking the future?
Yes, Covid 19 has also given a rise to Digital banking as it has eliminated the need for consumers to physically visit a bank branch.
What will bank branches look like in 10 years?
According to the experts, Bank branches will have fewer staff and will deploy more powerful ATM machines.
RHA Technologies is India’s unique IT consulting and technology partner to SMEs, and startups. RHA Technologies provides empathetic and synergistic technology solutions and services to help organizations to realize and strengthen their innovation, differentiation, valuation, and market offering by designing, developing, and implementing successful digital transformation and adoption journey.
RHA Technologies built deep tech SaaS products and platforms by combining technical and vertical domain expertise to help businesses accelerate and leverage both core and disruptive technologies like analytics and cloud (SMAC), blockchain, AI/ML, IoT, to deliver end to end smart solutions and services to businesses across industries.
StartupTalky interviewed Mr. Arun Meena (Founder & CEO of RHA Technologies), a stalwart from the field of deep expertise in the tech services industry.
1. Do give us an insight into the backdrop of a startup – like its operations, business model, revenue model & growth hacks. Also, highlight these metrics about RHA Technologies
An HBR study showed that companies that are equipped with both business and technical skills are disproportionately more likely to introduce new-to-the market innovations than firms that have only one of these skills. Thus, Tech Co-founder is one of the most critical and difficult elements to integrate in the founding structure of Start-ups. They provide a unique set of commitment, experience, vision, relationship, and skills inputs that cannot be trusted or expected from a CTO. Many of the technology competitive issues that non-tech founders struggle with, become springboards with the presence of a trusted and qualified tech co-founder. The result is better valuation, easier funding, and faster business success. RHA Technologies brings this advantage to all start-ups and SMEs.
RHA Technologies thus for the first time in India enables the unique trust dependent outsourced tech co-founder offering for Start-ups and SMEs. In addition, the organisation also offers the traditional model of outsourced product development to MNCs and start-ups.
Our technology consulting, digital transformation, and technology services and solutions for the founders of start-ups and SMEs are rooted in empathy and synergy. This enables the client organisations to realize and strengthen their innovation, differentiation, valuation, and market offering and is the unique edge provided by RHA Technologies.
Our customer centricity and domain expertise enabled us to secure an MNC client along with two start-ups as outsourced tech cofounder / CTO in the first 3 months itself. The organisation has since created rapid momentum despite the pandemic. The initial small team of passionate technologists, has within a year, transformed itself in to seventy strong professionals with expertise across wide spectrum of technologies. The organizational value system has enabled a larger client base and more importantly further strengthened our customer centricity in our phase of rapid expansion.
RHA Technologies Logo
2. We would love to know about the financial numbers of RHA Technologies including revenue, YoY growth, profit, valuation, funding, net worth etc.,
Let’s Build Together! Defines how we at RHA Technologies approach business, clients, employees, and partners.
Our financial numbers is something, which we can’t disclose, but our overall numbers are very healthy. Our goal is to remain sustainable without any dependency on any external funding. For the coming year, we see a good overall YoY growth without hampering our profits.
3. How does RHA Technologies help organizations in implementing a successful digital transformation and adoption journey?
Innovate, Transform, Accelerate, process of RHA Technologies helps create a holistic agile IT strategy that optimizes the client’s business through technology and digital transformation. Digital transformation is more than implementing technology in the organisation. We use solutions around AI/ML, Cloud, IoT, Mobile, Automation, Data, and Blockchain to transform organizations across processes, business models, customer experience, and products and services. RHA Technologies team’s experience with multiple organisations including MNC clients in Education, Real Estate, BFSI, Media & Entertainment, Social Media and new age businesses, brings an unparalleled expertise to client founders.
We help our clients realize the potential of digital transformation as both a business growth enabler and a means to save costs. Our digital transformation process thus helps clients in a) access to a broader market b) improve customer services c) improve supply chain efficiencies and d) reduce time or cost intensive manual work.
Clients are able to work with SMAC (Social, mobile, analytics, and cloud) and IoT to ensure constant innovation for market edge. Digital transformation provides them insights about every area of their business be it cost, best customers, seasonality, bundling, discounts, wasted discounts, supplier efficiency, supplier quality/cost, logistics costs, etc. which accelerates innovations in services / products and thus revenues and profitability.
4. What changes you witnessed in the industry in the pre & post Covid era. What trends did you observe? What does the future like? In addition, advice to the start-ups in the field of analytics/blockchain/AI/ML/IoT will be much appreciated.
I launched RHA Technologies during the pandemic in May 2020; and the client response and organisation growth has kept pace with my expectations for the first year of operations. For us it was about fulfilling an acute market need, and the pandemic despite its widespread impact on the human morale and economy, did no deter us from our mission.
Many clients observed a slowdown in their business. However, what is noteworthy is their focus on the future. They have seen the acceleration of digital forces globally and the success of digitally nimble in quickly recovering business growth at the expense of others. Thus, clients are committing strongly to digital transformation albeit with focus on practicality, value for money along with return on investment, and tangible business benefits in the short and medium term.
The key areas of digital transformation that are firmly in the radar of clients are:
Big Data, Advanced Analytics, and Decision Intelligence – According to Gartner by 2023, more than 33% of large organizations will have analysts practicing decision intelligence, including decision modelling.
Block chain beyond crypto – we have started seeing real use cases for block chain technology beyond payments in supply chain, contract management, medical records, claim processing, property records, etc. Block chain has a lot of potential to redefine business processes across industries.
Robotic Process Automation – Robotic Process Automation is the process creating software ‘robots’ that can execute the repetitive day-to-day tasks and help organisations decrease costs and free employees’ valuable time.
IoT – Internet of Things has been growing in relevance and usage in the past decade and continues to be one of the hottest digital transformation trends.
Conversational AI – one of the most visible forms of AI and ML experience is in the form of Conversational AI. Conversational artificial intelligence is designed to understand, process, and respond to human voice while delivering an increasingly natural experience-managing context and sentiment.
5. What marketing strategies did you employ? How does it target the right segment of customers? Does RHA Technologies have any partnerships in place?
For us at RHA Technologies marketing has been about creating the positive word of mouth where new clients feel confident in collaborating us. Therefore, our people and their value system of “Let’s Build Together” has been the biggest element of marketing. In addition, we have leveraged market communication to communicate our offerings and domain expertise. Contrary to conventional practice, we have not been aggressive on social media in this phase
This strategy has given us the market respect and clients that has enabled us to rapidly expand our business and the talent base.
6. With the growing technological advancement, how do you keep up with the pace? A piece of advice on this matter will be much appreciated.
Keeping pace with technological advancement around us is a major element of our competency where we help clients compete with the best. Our mantra for this has been to hire talent that has an innate curiosity, desire to continually learn and upgrade, along with the work ethic to act on the learnings.
7. Who do you see as the major competitor of RHA Technologies? How do you look to stand out from them with the relative market share you own? Do highlight the USP of the company.
We are in a Blue Ocean with our Tech Co-founder offering and therefore we ourselves are our biggest competitors. For our traditional model of outsourced product development business, the competition is widespread. It is our value system and the attitude of “Let’s Build Together” that gives us the edge. We work alongside our clients as trusted advisors to deliver value at every stage.
We provide seamless technology solutions and services to help organizations innovate and realize their business goals. Clients become more innovative, competitive, and differentiated by leveraging our digital transformation and adoption journey.
8. Right People. Right Place’ – What are the career perspectives at RHA Technologies for freshers? What is the company’s hiring process and culture?
Talent is the core of our value proposition, and we hire people who have innate curiosity, desire to continually learn and upgrade along with the work ethic to act on the learnings.
We have a lot opening for both freshers and people with experiences. Now a days technology are getting redundant in a shorter timeframe therefore when we hire people our focus is hire people with good analytical skills and willingness to learn.
9. Where do you see RHA Technologies in the next 5 years? Any business expansion plans.
Five years is a long time in this digital age. In line with our Let’s Build Together! approach we will strive to develop into a family of clients, employees, and partners that have grown together. This is the approach that has helped us to grow to a team of 70 from the founding set in a year’s time with corresponding number of clients. We will continue to build on this momentum for the future towards being an industry benchmark for collaborative, innovative, value driven organisation.
Invest19.com is disrupting the stock market with its AI-powered stock tech platform. Invest19 Technologies is a fintech company serving in the technology sector and leverages the power of emerging technologies like machine learning, data science, Artificial Intelligence, to simplify, automate, and enhance the user experience – from customers to businesses.
Invest19.com is building an innovative platform capable of providing next-generation, scalable and low-latency tools and technology solutions to individuals and businesses in meeting the swiftly evolving needs of today’s fast-growing industry.
StartupTalky interviewed Mr. Kaushlendra Singh Sengar, Founder & CEO of Invest19.com to know how the startup is planning to disrupt the stock market industry by leveraging emerging technologies. Read all about the USP, Features, Revenue Model of Invest19.com, its marketing strategies, future plans and more in this post ahead!
1.What USP Invest19.com provides over its competitors?
Invest19.com is an Investment ecosystem providing multi broker choices to scale capital market into small towns by build next generation stock market industry on cloud where in market participants like exchanges, depositories, stock brokers, market experts can come together and provide seamless investment experience to create new breed of smart investors.
invest19 founder – Kaushlendra Singh
2.Over 30% of market share in the discount brokerage industry is held by top players like Zerodha, Angel Broking, 5paisa, Upstox among many. How do you plan to set yourself apart and grab the investors trust?
Invest19.com is supporting stock brokers by providing next generation cloud infrastructure to scale their broking business by increasing their reach up to small town users, disrupting human centric technology is providing better user experience, which leads to high user retention ratio and better revenue. Invest19.com is building business beyond technology by referring new users to stock brokers.
3. How is Invest19.com ahead in its technology implementation? What emerging technologies are you disrupting to enhance the user experience from customers to businesses?
There is a lack of financial literacy in India and complexities of available trading platforms are the biggest entry barriers for novice investors. We at Invest19.com is trying to fix these challenges with the help of latest blend of technologies, which is highly scalable, can handle millions of orders per second, simplifying investment experience by using human centric user interface and experience, making system more intelligent by mixing human brain with Artificial intelligence and data science and proving one touch investment platform.
With this we are able to provide an investment platform where in a layman can also investment with confidence and grow their wealth.
4. Found this intriguing- “Become an Investor @ Cost of Burger” How do you plan on executing this? What revenue model mechanism are you adopting?
We believe that like 2 decades ago computer education became mandatory for everyone from schooling, in the same way we should also make investment education mandatory from schools this is the right time when one should learn the art of savings and power of investment. If we want to build a new breed of future smart investors we should start working from roots.
That’s why we have built this product name “become an Investor @ cost of burger” this signifies that students can become investors by compromising from a piece of a burger and their pocket money is sufficient enough to start the investment journey.
We, along with SEBI registered market experts have created a special poll of high potential listed companies with good fundamentals and future business projections with low stock prices. Our specially designed artificial intelligent system will help users to build a low risk and high growth portfolio.
We have all three business model, B2B, B2C and SaaS along with monetization Strategies like Financial Literacy, Gamification, Referral Reward, Sponsorship & Space Selling, Freemium Model, Transactional Fee, Membership Selling, Licensing Fee.
5. How are you planning to make yourself known in the investment world? What marketing and user acquisition strategies are you employing?
BuildingInvestment ecosystem for millennials, offering multiple BFSI service provider and investment assets class choices, simplified investment experience with affordable tailor made investment ideas by mixing human brains with artificial intelligence and cash back on brokerages.
As we are on beta stage, so we do understand that there is high chance of app performance issue. That’s why we have started a physital model a mix of digital and human touch to spread financial literacy and create trust among small town users and to trained users about platform features. Human touch approach is bridging the gap wherever there is a bug or app performance issue. This is cost effective for the early stage startup because here you pay only on business conversion.
6. What exactly is Execution Partner Opportunity for Stock Brokers? How does it work?
Invest19.com is an investment ecosystem where in any regulated stock brokers can get registered as an execution partner by doing some necessary paper work with the respective exchanges and can become a next generation tech broker, here broker will get everything which is required to run and expand the business, starting from user acquisition, investment ideas services, trading features, customer support, portfolio tracker and many more.
This way a regional broker can become national stock broker and can acquire user from pan India with no time and marketing budget. This is reducing market cost, sales cost, tech and server cost, operation cost, research team cost and many more.
7. Launching a company amidst the start of pandemic must’ve bought its own opportunities and challenges. How is Invest19.com coping with it?
Invest19.com was hardly 2 months old when lockdown started in March 2020. Initially it was quite challenging for us, as no one was prepared for that and business dynamics completely changed after lockdown.
As product was into development stage that time. So we missed the chance to grab the user growth opportunity. But we saw this pandemic as an opportunity and people have realized the importance of savings in this hard time.
It’s being more than a year we are working from home, seeing the changed business dynamics in covid-19. We focused on building the paperless 100% online investment ecosystem, which can convert the offline brokers into online as due to lockdown their sales people are not able to go out for business development or demat account opening.
To reduce risk due to Covid uncertainty we focused on:
Fund raising and investments: In parallel with Product development, I have started pitching investors to meet out working capital requirements of the company. As product was into development stage so we were completely dependent on the investors’ fund. I have followed a sustainable business, wherein all the resources, particularly monetary resources and funds, need to be used consciously. Managing cash flow and conserving resources for a few months post resumption of normal operations is a key to sustainability.
Incorporated short cycle planning: Instead of looking at long-term plans three months, six months, and one-year plans should be ready. In the current scenario, making up for the lag due to lockdown and preparing the organisation to cope up with the situation needs to be focused upon.
We are also doing Effective and regular monitoring: The need for mentoring is going to be the highest in given times, as team is working from home and lots of coordination is required to deliver the project on time.
We have created Strong communication channel: During the Covid times, it is essential that the channel of communication is effectively and efficiently maintained. Being open and available to the concerns of all stakeholders, including customers and investors, becomes extremely important to maintain their association with the business.
8. It’d be great if you could highlight some of your achievements
We received our first success in July 2020, when we got the exchange approval of our platform to go live in one go without any observation. In the history of stock market, we are the first platform who got go live approval in one go.
Second success came by August end when we did beta launch of this platform.
9. Where do you see Invest19.com in the next 5 years in comparison to your competitors? Any business expansion/partnership/funding plans?
In next 5 years Invest19.com will become the world’s largest investment ecosystem, with more than 45 stock exchanges and all the possible investment asset class you can think of. We are doing partnerships with banks, stock brokers, NBFC’s, insurance companies, AMCs, Fintech platforms, financial platforms, etc. and also raising funds to speed up our product launches, soon will do the funding announcements.
Conclusion
Startups are always a step ahead in disrupting the emerging technologies, be it any field. Invest19.com being one among is aiming to be the world’s largest investment ecosystem by 2026 by leveraging artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science. Launching the company amidst the start of pandemic bought its own opportunities and challenges to the team, but Invest19.com paved its way over the beat launch in August 2020 and is looking for a main launch in 4 months i.e., July-August 2021.
Yash Gupta
