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The non-techie who built an AI Startup | Preksha Kaparwan (Alphaa AI / Super AI)
92 Plays4 years ago
"If you focus on the challenges that life and society throw at you, you'll miss out on the places you were meant to go." This powerful philosophy from Preksha Kaparwan, Co-founder & CMO of Alphaa AI / Super AI, encapsulates her incredible journey of resilience, from a professional chef to a leader in the competitive AI technology sector.
Preksha Kaparwan is the Co-founder and CMO of Alphaa AI, which has evolved into Super AI, a company building private Large Language Models for enterprise clients like Procter & Gamble, MiQ, and Accenture. Her ventures have attracted strong investor interest, with both Alphaa AI Inc. and Super AI securing substantial funding. Her earlier Indian entity, Alphaa Ai Data Private Limited, reported notable revenue growth in FY24, more than doubling compared to the previous year. A self-taught coder, she built her first commercial website in just a week and has co-nurtured a thriving community of thousands of citizen data scientists.
Key Insights from the Conversation:
- An unconventional career path, like Preksha's from a chef to a tech CMO, can provide unique industry insights and drive innovation.
- Proactively acquiring new skills, such as learning to code on demand, is crucial for entrepreneurs identifying and solving real-world problems.
- "Building in public" by transparently sharing development progress can be a powerful marketing and talent attraction strategy.
- Developing proprietary technology, like Super AI's native Large Language Model, can be a key differentiator, especially for enterprise data security and customization.
- Resilience is paramount: navigating burnout, financial hardships, and tough decisions like pandemic-era layoffs are part of the entrepreneurial journey.
- A strong co-founder relationship is vital for navigating multiple ventures and technological pivots over many years.
- Focusing on making complex technology accessible to non-technical users (e.g., "training-less" systems, empowering "citizen data scientists") can unlock significant market opportunities.
Chapters:
- [0:00:55] From Flying Jets to a Chef's Kitchen: Preksha's Early Dreams
- [0:12:19] Excelling in Hotel Management & Becoming a Sous Chef at Imperial
- [0:20:10] The Grueling Life of a Chef & The Difficult Decision to Quit
- [0:24:48] Journey into Tech: Meeting Saurabh & First Stint in Sales
- [0:28:37] "I Need to Build This": Learning to Code in a Month
- [0:30:27] Founding Realbox: Building a Real-Time Data Analytics Platform
- [0:37:31] The Pivot to Voice & AI: Early Experiments with Alexa & Google Home
- [0:43:26] Birth of Alphaa AI: Dynamic NLP for Business Intelligence
- [0:46:33] The Art of B2B SaaS Marketing: Founder-Led & Value-Driven
- [0:51:19] Becoming a LinkedIn Influencer: Sharing the Journey Authentically
- [0:57:35] The Future: From Excel Add-Ins to Prescriptive AI
Hashtags for YouTube Description:
#PrekshaKaparwan #AlphaaAI #SuperAI #AIstartup #TechEntrepreneur #WomenInTech #FounderJourney #StartupIndia #MakeInIndia #DataAnalytics #EnterpriseAI #LLM #ConversationalAI #Bootstrapping #VentureCapital #LinkedInMarketing #BuildingInPublic #CareerPivot #StartupMotivation #IndianStartups #SaaS #Entrepreneurship #ArtificialIntelligence #BigData
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Transcript
Introduction to Beyond Campus Podcast
00:00:00
Speaker
Akshay, did you always knew what you wanted to do when you passed away to the MBA? I was all over the place. Sort of, what about you? Confused about your career choices? Wondering what steps to take next?
00:00:18
Speaker
In this podcast, called Beyond Campus, Saurabh Garg, founder of C4E and Akshay Dutt, founder of Unnati, are on a mission to crack open the career success code for the youth. So, let's turn the dream into reality.
Phreaksha Kaparban's Career Journey
00:00:39
Speaker
Hi, I am Phreaksha Kaparban and I am a CMO and co-founder of Alpha AI.
00:00:45
Speaker
She was the first person in the profession to do this. She was the first person in the profession to do this. She was the first person in the profession to do this. A child of Joshi Maat had dreams of flying a jet but ended up becoming a chef and heading a kitchen. Post that, she became a struggling salesperson and finally bloomed as a marketing wizard and a tech entrepreneur. Her tale depicts the story of the never settling attitude of the modern Indian woman.
00:01:14
Speaker
and she's an inspiration to lakhs of followers on LinkedIn. Here's the story of Pichya Kaparwal, CMO and co-founder of Alpha AI.
00:01:31
Speaker
Now that you look back, catch the others. It is so hot over here. All the time, I just keep thinking, it would have been so amazing.
00:01:46
Speaker
I am so used to seeing all that amazing mountains in Joshi. Most of the times of the year, you will see snow-capped mountains. You would take quills at night. It was such an amazing time because we were in a joint family. It was a huge family of almost 70 members.
00:02:10
Speaker
So different households. It's a town and it's a major connecting town for all the, you know, tracking places and they are pilgrimage beyond that area. So all these attractions
00:02:38
Speaker
the tourist attraction, this is the only base that you have to come to. So any tourist route going beyond, you have heard of Ollie? Ollie, yeah, I have. Yeah, Ollie is a major attraction for winter games, actually winter fish games. These are like sort of qualifier games for Olympics. So what happens is
00:02:57
Speaker
Jhoshipad is sort of a town where everyone has to come and stay at the base to make the journey forward from there. If you travel continually, or if you travel to Barish or Landslider, then you do this beautiful place. And what was your family doing? You said you had 70 member joint family.
00:03:25
Speaker
Yeah. So, was it like into the tourism? Like, I assume tourism would be major source of revenue for that town. Yes, that's right. Tourism, hospitality, shops, but my family majorly, like most, my grandmother, my cousins, my dad, his cousins, my uncles, my, you know, my cousins, they all got into education.
00:03:58
Speaker
So this is the main occupation of my family at least. So my father, however, he joined army once he graduated. So he joined army and that's how we stepped out. Me and my brother, my mother, we stepped out and we started going to the bases with my father.
Challenges as a Female Chef
00:04:25
Speaker
Arunachal, Pradesh, Nagaland, Bhutan, you know, Kaffi, Achaasa, Turistiza, Bachman, Niklais. So, what is unique about being an army kid? And I know, yeah, army kids give me community. They look down upon us, the civilian kids and all that. Well, you know, what makes an army kid special or what do you think is the advantage of being an army kid?
00:04:48
Speaker
The advantage is that you get a lot of perks as a kid. And the disadvantage is that you have to be really disciplined. Because your father will always be the strictest person you would know. My father was very strict. He would want us to wake up at 5 in the morning and study till 11 at night. And he was like, you're an 8-pig girl, so you can't do that.
00:05:14
Speaker
Most of the army fathers are very strict and they pay special attention to female child. They should be independent, educated, they should be strong. So you are the younger one? I am the younger one actually, but not pampered though. I was mysterious like anything and I would run off in jungles. I would run off in jungles.
00:05:37
Speaker
But it has shaped me to be who I am. I think as an army girl, you will always find everyone to be very strong and independent and up for taking challenges. What was your childhood dream?
00:06:08
Speaker
So I wanted to be a doctor and I wanted to be a dancer at some point. But then I think around 9th, 10th, I wanted to become an astronaut. So my father liked him and said, you will have to be a really great study teacher.
00:06:31
Speaker
How will you become minister or not? Then he's like, you'll have to study for years and earn your PhD and then you can get into research and then probably you can become something like that.
00:06:43
Speaker
I was like, what are you going to do? I'm going to check out the check out to be a pilot. You have to just get a license. After graduation, you get to the CDC and it's like a CPL, sorry. It's a very costly 11, 12 lakh at that point. I don't know how to do that.
00:07:06
Speaker
I decided that he can become an Air Force pilot. At that time, for girls, you have to do your 12th and then graduate and then do another course to be an Air Force pilot. So, I decided
Transition to Tech and Co-founding Alpha AI
00:07:21
Speaker
to go to the pilot.
00:07:28
Speaker
I like learning but studying with discipline was not my thing and homework and projects. I just can't do that.
00:07:49
Speaker
So my parents would like to participate in this. So I would like to go to school. I would like to go to graduate school. I would like to go to school. So I would like to go to school as a profession, which will allow me to fly.
00:08:04
Speaker
And I still don't have to do graduation. And can you believe I was in Chandigarh? Chandigarh is known for its education. And the kind of community I was in, everyone is doing well, engineers and doctors. And I'm like, I'm going to do this.
00:08:21
Speaker
They were disappointed, but they were like, what are you talking about? So they decided to work 12-3 hours, join a friend, friend, and go to an air hostel. So my father was like, what are you talking about? You can read that. But you know, let me give you a suggestion. So this was like tense conversation.
00:08:49
Speaker
If you do a hotel management, you can still become an air hostess. It's not too much study, then you still have a degree as well.
00:09:04
Speaker
My father said, you know, you can take any subject, take art, then go ahead. I hated history. So I was like, I was very good at maths and science. So I was like, what are you doing?
00:09:30
Speaker
I studied like I cleared my 12 marks besides hey so parents he hopes of you and they were like and they always like you know try to push this on your parents kill any IIT
00:09:50
Speaker
So you have to get through the best college, otherwise you do engineering. Where I gave my AIAI exam, I got good college. It was a good college.
00:10:14
Speaker
or around say you will have good education. I was like, no. I don't know why I have to be in a house.
00:10:35
Speaker
I came to Delhi and I started doing that.
00:10:47
Speaker
of now I was in a different environment altogether not controlled by parents you know exposure was more and hotel management okay let me make this one thing clear it is a lot of studies in fact you also have to study science subjects nutrition subjects and computers
00:11:17
Speaker
This was like a residential course. You were staying on campus. I was staying there. It was a lot of fun. I think most college, only professional colleges have that kind of relationship with the seniors and like the hostelers, they have more so because
00:11:38
Speaker
So I had my godfather who was who was in kitchens. He was also a chef. So I ended up deciding to let the ship. And then, you know, once I get trained in good hotels after that, I'll I'll take a cruise.
00:12:03
Speaker
I was trying to align myself in the same way that I did. So I joined Imperial Hotel. So which year did you finish your attempt? I finished in 2010. And Sita, like campus say you got placed there at Imperial. Campus I got placed. So, I think...
00:12:36
Speaker
So I went to that competition in college, like inter college and like what? Inter college and national. So there was a national thing competition that was being held.
00:12:50
Speaker
It's the only reason I could not attend that one. They used to do this at international level. So the final one had to happen in Santiago, Chile. Was it like a MasterChef?
00:13:11
Speaker
So, I went to Hyderabad National and I had one who was going to participate. I had one against them in other competitions and all. So, for the first time, I was going out of a controlled environment and I was like, why are you doing this? Why are you saying that you are a parent?
00:13:41
Speaker
I can't go. My father was in Bhutan at that point, so he couldn't have accompanied me. So I got scared. I did not go for it. So after that, I joined the hotel. Then you joined Imperial? I joined Imperial. I did that for two and a half years.
00:14:01
Speaker
I was doing Thai Kitchen. Initially, I joined Thai Kitchen, then I was an Italian, then I was handling the multi-cooking restaurant. It was good and they were the most few movies. There were a lot of levels of people like Commie and Commie. What did you find out about it? I think it was the executive chef and the C.D. chef. I think it was the C.D. chef
00:14:27
Speaker
executive chef is like the big boss of that restaurant executive chef is a big boss of not that restaurant in five style hotels only in india this is the concept executive chef is a much of chain hotels no thaya concept actually so there are multiple restaurants within one hotel so executive chef is head of each then there are cdc well they can also have an assistant executive and then there will be a cdc which is chef they could be they will be the head of individual kitchens then there are some chefs which are the
00:15:00
Speaker
COO in a way. Huh, COO in a way. They handle the kitchen. Then they are, actually, we can go about it like this. Like, you know, your CDCs are director. Then you have VPs or business head is the CDS sous chef. And then you have managers, which is junior sous chef. And then you have a CDP, which is chef de party. They are the ones who actually work. They are the ones who actually are on the line kitchen and they work. Then they are commies.
00:15:20
Speaker
They really handle the kitchen.
00:15:28
Speaker
and then there are trainees will help you they will generally be so every CD pea will have 2-3 comments spined to him they will learn from him and then subsequently they will get promoted to their level so I was
00:15:53
Speaker
I joined a junior sushif, I became a sushif and I had a team of 28 people. So I had a CDC who used to let me know it's the big boss of my kitchen. But then most of the work is done by a sushif because they are ordering inventory, they're the party, they are figuring out what to be sold and what how to make packages, those kind of stuff. And my parents got a little anxious cue who she's a girl, she's working in a kitchen, she doesn't have time for herself.
00:16:21
Speaker
So tell me something. Is the kitchen like what you see in these Hollywood movies where that person is shouting orders, that's for table 3 and then going crazy and throwing a plate. Is it like that?
00:16:42
Speaker
It is like that. There are different areas for preparation. Cold and hot, non-vegetarian, vegetarian, different cuisines have different areas and usually very hot and very happening environment. Everything has to be done very fast because tables pay
00:17:02
Speaker
So the person is sitting there who's ordered 10 minutes back thinking, but everything to a large extent is done from scratch. Apart from the chopping and making few sauces that happens in advance, everything else happens at the moment. So if it takes a lot of time, so everyone has to be like really coordinated to do this.
00:17:24
Speaker
So that's what used to happen. And as a sushif, if you are giving, like I had 20 people in my team, if I'm giving someone or even if it's a commie, so I need someone to replace that and whoever replaced it, I have to replace him.
00:17:37
Speaker
That means that I'm doing my work, which is more of a taking order, keeping inventory, deciding what to put in the menu and deciding next year's menu. Apart from that, I'm also cooking some time. I'm also bringing orders some time for that kind of work, which made my parents think.
00:17:58
Speaker
really anxious. How long was that stint? Two and a half years. And what was the big highs of that stint? What do you remember now when you look back at that? It was amazing actually. I was known for my pizza in that restaurant, in the hotel and I wasn't even working in that kitchen. So I had picked few recipes from each kitchen.
00:18:23
Speaker
Like from Thai, I knew something. From Italian, I knew something. From Chinese, I knew something. So everyone would come to me for those one thing. Which was, I think, a good part. And there were three, there were two female chefs in the entire hotel. One was Chef Dina Arora. She's known for Thai cuisine. She's a very popular chef. And one was me. I was like...
00:18:53
Speaker
I think it's difficult because suddenly a young girl is sitting on top of such a big group who has experience of years. They have been cooking for ages. They have become from Kami to CDP for 35 years. They experience age in a year.
00:19:21
Speaker
Initially, it was very difficult because everyone thought that as a girl, she will get favors. You will do the hardest chores always. And as a female, I expected more support from the superior because as it is, it's difficult to be in that environment because there's less monitoring back there.
00:19:43
Speaker
So my team was amazing but initially it was a bit of a challenge. I think it would be for any new girl at that time because now if you see competitively there are a lot of more female chefs who joined Kitchen. At those times they were very few, very few in India.
00:20:00
Speaker
There were three, I think, like Chef Manicha Basim and Marriott. So then, why did you decide to move out? Like, was it parental pressure? It was parental pressure. I had few accidents like Kabhi Kuchalika, Kabhi IFU.
00:20:19
Speaker
I broke a rib, I fell somewhere. So this all happened and my parent got really scared. She's not taking care of herself and she can't keep doing this. And things were also hard because as a female, I had to put more on tables, which is okay. I think for my age and for my experience, I should have done that. So I used to spend anywhere between 18 to 22 hours in my hotel.
00:20:44
Speaker
I was prepared for it. I was like, it's fine. For a couple of people, I'll be in this kind of role and then it will get easier. I'll have a hold of it. And I have heard that India may rest for the difficulty, but once you move outside,
00:21:01
Speaker
It's much easier. So take care, it was just fine. For parents who are like, you know, it will be difficult for you to have a family if you keep a schedule like this up. Sometimes it felt like you had a boyfriend and you had a girl. But I think it's not that hard at some point. At some point, it's not that hard. You just quit. And like one day you were without a job and without anything to do.
00:21:25
Speaker
Yeah, you already started planning your next year, Karungi. Nothing. I just quit. The next year, I just started finding my next year. And I was quite a favorite of the GM and EVP and all. So they were like, why are you going? You are such a bright girl and you will do better. And, you know, we also want more female to be in this area. But I was the first batch that they felt like really felt like nurturing.
Building Alpha AI: Challenges and Evolutions
00:21:52
Speaker
I had a lot of fun the people were very supportive but at some point I think it became from my family side it became a little bit of difficult situation for them as well as me I can have an easier life by to be here but once I left that place I did not have a job everyone in a business
00:22:14
Speaker
the middle class family, they always make a plan and they think that they are going to be able to go to school, which was scary. Because that's how we are raised, right? If we are moving from one job, we want to make sure we have something else to do.
00:22:31
Speaker
But for the first time, my parents were like, even if you don't have a job, it's fine, but you have to leave immediately, come home, you know, be here and then you will find something. I was like, I don't have a job, I'm sitting at home jobless. They're like, when you prepare for study time, you study something else, I don't know what to do, but I'm very clear about it. So, I'm very happy that you're here with your parents.
00:22:55
Speaker
So I came home and I sat there for a bit. And now I was also pissed with my family. Like, I was having fun. But the parents were like, if you pick something, whatever you want to do. So I joined the hotel management institute over there in Chandigarh and decided to teach. I did that for two semesters. I taught F&B service. I taught a few subjects.
00:23:20
Speaker
customer behavior. But teaching is one of the best jobs. If you know your stuff, you get time to prepare, you teach. If you teach well, you will find that the students are always supportive, they are always
00:23:40
Speaker
They are picking you up, they are looking out for you, they are looking out for your help and they try to make your job easier by showing what they really need help with. The teaching was good, it was easy and then it was little too simple at that time. This was 2012-13. How old were you by that time? I was 22, 22 years. I started education little early actually.
00:24:14
Speaker
Where I started, I was teaching. I did that for one year. I had to look out. I was thinking maybe I should do something which is related to hospitality, but maybe towards technology because technology is fighting.
00:24:32
Speaker
You were a Thai prodigy. No, not prodigy.
00:24:38
Speaker
The things that are possible today, I should be a part of it instead, just waiting for something that will happen to us, such as Guchoika and then Guchoika sort of thing. So I was in touch with my now co-founder. So he had just sold off his companies of nine, I think. And after that, he was researching on fusion, but he had created a hospitality product. So I was like,
00:25:01
Speaker
I wanted to join him. He approached me and I was like, yeah, I want to join him because he was selling iPad menus to restaurants. He was also in Chandigarh only. He was not. He was in Delhi. I had met him in my hotel sometimes. So not many businesses were online. The matter was just picking up or there were a few other
00:25:26
Speaker
websites which were looking at these projects outside and trying to figure something out for the hospitality industry. But the industry was not ready for it. I think at that point, 2013
00:25:41
Speaker
The industry was not really ready. In the past 2-3 years we have started to go with subscription based POS and those kind of models. 3-4 years I think. So that was not ready and so I had joined sales team and I was bombing it. Is the bombing the bad part right?
00:26:03
Speaker
I would be bad at it. This was like a bootstrap venture of Thorold? A bootstrap, a new company had like three employees. And what's his background? He's essentially a techie. He's an ex-Microsoft. He comes from
00:26:19
Speaker
deep tech background actually creating data analytics, softwares and solutions for companies like Toyota or Target. This was like, he comes from totally technology focused background. So he used to create, he was creating few things for her priority. At that point, there were a few developers who would work with him and I joined for self. So he and I used to, or at least we tried.
00:26:46
Speaker
You moved to Delhi to do this. He was based in Delhi. I moved to Delhi for this and we took an office in Huskar. They were like concentration of restaurants was very good. I did not sell a single thing.
00:27:04
Speaker
I ended up making good friends. In like a fast side restaurant, they were very good friends I had, I get free food and all, but I could not sell. I knew how restaurant functions, but I did not know much about technology and the demographic was changing, how people would sell now was changing, how restaurants were preparing was changing,
00:27:30
Speaker
procurement happens with changing. The hotels are primitive still to an extent. I realized that I am not familiar with how they are the operations that are happening here. It just became a bit of a flop show for me that I am trying to sell something which I did not know anything about.
00:27:54
Speaker
I was looking like Faltuka Investment. So I somehow I ended up selling to one customer. So I sort of got credit for it. I did not have any clothes here but sort of close it sort of so I got a credit for it.
00:28:31
Speaker
If you can make it, you should sell it up. You can't make it to Managar Piazza. Because he said it's not worth my time. I'm not going to create a website and then do this. So I took a month's time and I started to learn coding. I did not know if libraries were going to work. There are already things out there you can just feel.
00:28:46
Speaker
But now he's like, but now he's like, but now he's like
00:28:58
Speaker
drag and drop and create your apps apps or bios type of website you could have created but then I tried to learn coding I did that for one month and then I just created a nice website for him and I discovered that I was good with design
00:29:15
Speaker
I made a beautiful website. I gave it to him. Money came in. I was like, you were on salary. Like you were getting a salary. I was getting a salary initially for four months. After that, I was like, it just kept on reducing. And then I was at a point when I was like. So that's when it happened. I was like, then I'll get some money because I can't go home. Once I go home, my pencil will be like.
00:29:42
Speaker
We started to learn more about the industry and understand this cannot be a multi-million dollar business with a product.
00:29:56
Speaker
It's a service business and you cannot scale it. And with two people, of course, you can't. So we started to figure out if there is anything else you need to do. And during that time, we sort of created this beacon size. You remember what beacons were. So you can identify location, calculate the distance between them and then identify the area, sort of things.
00:30:20
Speaker
So there are multiple applications. We created something called Cash Lift. We created this app using Beacon or using something as an identifier. You can simply pay from your phone without asking for the bill. So if you're sitting on a table, you can scan the
00:30:50
Speaker
over there and it will give you the order, your bill on your phone. So we had created that but we had no intention of building it more. We created it solely to get some money because there were competitions happening everywhere.
00:31:05
Speaker
where you would go and show something amazing and you will get some prize money. How will we survive? Basically, you used to go and show that.
00:31:26
Speaker
We created something amazing and bought a lot of data. So, we focused on Waztime and then we founded a company called RealBox Data Analytics. So, this was again focused on hospitality industry and we were like, they do not have any BI tools that help them discover insights on their data. Because at that point, for small businesses, the only way to assess their data was Excel.
00:31:54
Speaker
So we are like, yeah, and then we ended up making some clients like PBR, blue holes, VLCC. What was the product exactly like you would take their sales data and make dashboards out of it? It was a full service analytics tool. We will take your data, we'll connect to your database and we will create these dashboards. We used to call them real time dashboards because as the data keeps getting updated, so we used to provide these web apps.
00:32:23
Speaker
How would your dashboard talk to the dashboard of PBR? Some sort of an API integration just get through.
00:32:45
Speaker
There was an integration and we had created a push-based mechanism where whenever the bill is punched, the new information will get pushed. So, a parallel database actually picks parallel engines up. Whenever something gets punched in, it will get pushed because they used to sync it once a day, to fill a real-time new path. So, we were like, if we push it in the data, then we'll be able to analyze it.
00:33:09
Speaker
Then we had an analytics engine on top of it and we had created a universal connector, which can connect to any POS system. India has at least 70-80 POS systems, which are both popular, an equal market, actually.
00:33:30
Speaker
So we had to create a universal connector. That was our very popular thing, which, in fact, a couple of companies later asked to buy in. So Zomato wanted it. Zomato was a very quick movie. So they were like, what do you want to do? Do you want to create a power system? So whenever you have to connect a new pass, you will go and you have to create that particular connection over there. What do you want to do? You have custom coding that you want to create. Correct.
00:33:59
Speaker
What we had created is something you can, it will connect to everything. The matter wanted it, but we felt like we can do, we won't go exclusively the same with Mobyquake and we were feeling that we can do much better.
00:34:16
Speaker
We can create something bigger with it. But Hamara, today we realized that the end model was not that correct. The end product was not that correct. We probably should have kept that universal adapter part. But that's why we appeared full service analytics as a service.
00:34:34
Speaker
available to everyone. We had a few big customers who were giving us most money. And in India, it became very difficult to work with large enterprises, especially for a smaller startup, because we want to please them with everything. And they also want that things should go more than if they have spent money that the
00:35:03
Speaker
other startup, small company at least should be taking care of everything. So it sort of became like that, then they wanted us to make a pause, the end of creating a pause, which was not even our job. So at some point we were like, it is not working out, we need to put these relationships, which we did. And was that difficult? No, it was fine. We already had customers, we were doing fine, we were able to do one karodan first year of operations. So Saishal Rata,
00:35:45
Speaker
I would imagine that restaurants would want insights to increase efficiency and they would be willing to pay for it. Was it too expensive or was it that they didn't value insights? If we thought, but I think value, they would have paid for it. And if there was enough market, we would have created a lighter version. But restaurants do not have that kind of data. Our market was wrong.
00:36:00
Speaker
from a new company perspective.
00:36:11
Speaker
even as a chef, if I think that was my issue, I had a small problem that I have to look at a 400 people property, okay, where I have to imagine every day, this is what I need to cook, this is what I need to order. So if I have to analyze that how many expects are there and how much
00:36:34
Speaker
you know, continental, how much Indian food should be there, it's a very small thing. So for someone like them who are doing it for ages, they had these figures on
Innovations and Future of Alpha AI
00:36:44
Speaker
their finger, unless you are a big chain, which was period, unless you are that big, that your ticketing is so much, same goes for VLC, same goes for juice kind of outlets.
00:36:55
Speaker
if your ticketing is that much only then you will be able to use analytics that well and base your marketing campaigns on that right so for restaurant that was not the good product it was wrong market altogether so
00:37:11
Speaker
After that, we started to understand that we have to focus on enterprises like large companies who have a lot of data and they have teams which is just creating dashboards for them. So, we can be a good option for them to reduce some of the work from the analyst maybe or increase the efficiency.
00:37:33
Speaker
You have to make smarter solutions, smarter engine, which analyzes that large amount of data itself. If you tell them, it will be able to generate new charts.
00:37:52
Speaker
So after that, the challenge was that business user, that's where the voice assistant seemed like a good option to go with.
00:38:08
Speaker
In India, we have to pay attention globally.
00:38:37
Speaker
So, India has developed technology buying here in India. So, there's another unit. So, it is Toyota something, it's another unit which does all the engineering buying for Toyota globally. So, the Indian team was convinced, they liked it, they liked the global head of Toyota. So, he was visiting a Japanese chap. He was visiting India for a few days. We flew down to Bangalore, we liked him. And we went for the final meeting.
00:39:11
Speaker
We kept asking. It did not respond. And like everything that we worked for, like for a couple of months, we have been building this, you know, relationship, but we'll do it. But we just need this meeting. It was, it was impressive. If it would have worked.
00:39:36
Speaker
A couple of months later, I think Alex was on the 17th of November.
00:39:43
Speaker
Then we did a smaller project for them. And then in April it was available in India. And Google Home launched a very superior product in NLP terms if you see.
00:40:02
Speaker
Where Alexa was the earlier version of Alexa and but everyone had seen also the coffee superior term the understanding the intent and deciphered Joe what a copy say he thought it was over for you If you ask something you are bound to get some kind of answer like push no push milk. Uh, so, uh, it was it for me to have a thought on me if it came out we did some internal testing, but we see funky like a rhythm. We are like, you know, try cut a similar zaiga and
00:40:30
Speaker
So, this was the intent. Actually, every experiment had this intent. So, we did that. Now you can ask your Google Home about your sales.
00:40:46
Speaker
And what will happen, you will train few answers. You have to send it for publishing. And then you can create small bots, Google actions. You can create a small actions when you can call up on talk to this and talk to alpha AI. This happened in 2018. We were doing this. We showcased on LinkedIn, people liked it.
00:41:13
Speaker
They're like, this is the future, and this is good and all. And if people want to chat with their data, if business users, they will ask their business intelligence team.
00:41:31
Speaker
I am going for a meeting. I have a meeting with the bosses on 25th. I am going for a meeting. I have a meeting with the bosses on 25th. I am going for a meeting with the bosses on 25th. I am going for a meeting with the bosses on 25th. I am going for a meeting with the bosses on 25th. I am going for a meeting with the bosses on 25th. I am going for a meeting with the bosses on 25th. I am going for a meeting with the bosses on 25th. I am going for a meeting with the bosses on 25th. I am going for a meeting with the bosses on 25th.
00:41:59
Speaker
But this happens quite often. Everyone was so excited. Now we won't have to go back to our teams again and again to build our dashboard. We can simply ask something like this, let's build this further.
00:42:18
Speaker
Asking you're publishing it on Google and then Asking them the training and publishing it on Google was not an option because of kidney barker Okay up here a thousand people company is what you have and you want to give access to even 500 people You can train for 50 questions of each 500 person. Yeah, right so we live you need to figure out some day so that this is
00:42:40
Speaker
analytics is happening dynamically. We also chatted with Abhinav Taneja, who is the COO for Google Home. So we connected over LinkedIn and they saw our product. They are like, what are you doing? But businesses are not there that they're going to use something like this natural language as of now. So and from the long term perspective, it was not on their
00:43:03
Speaker
in their business plan, they're like, we don't want to get into business so soon. There'll be too much time for people to get used to NLP technologies. So that was the reason we created our own mechanism, our own engine, which used to, which now, if you ask a question dynamically, it will go, it will query your database and it will generate an analytics insight for you.
00:43:24
Speaker
it will generate a chart, it will generate insights for you. So that's where we came on the modern alpha AI platform where you can just ask a question, it will go query your database and it will give you a
00:43:41
Speaker
You ask 5 questions, your dashboard is ready. It takes less than 60 seconds. So this is the pain point that we were able to figure out. You don't even have to prepare the data, create aggregated tables. You simply ask question, it will do the rest.
00:44:02
Speaker
So I can see that this is showing San Francisco as
Marketing Strategies and LinkedIn Influence
00:44:08
Speaker
the location. So what did you like start a new company there and
00:44:12
Speaker
Like, you know, did you shut down the previous company and do that? And did you raise funding again? We did not raise again. We had shut down the company. But we had told our investor that we are not doing this anymore. And then we had stopped that function of the company in 2018 itself.
00:44:35
Speaker
Then we were working with Alpha AI, we formed a new company in India and the parent company is in US and SFO, US and UK were our primary market initially.
00:44:48
Speaker
because they were showing good response and we were there for a good amount of time building a good relationship. This was like last year and then India was also picking up so somehow we were in Singapore just before, right before lockdown happened actually and we had come to Mumbai for one of the NASCOM events.
00:45:10
Speaker
But initially we are still targeting US market. US is our primary market actually. UK might take some time to get there. UK is a slower market in comparison to US. But recently India is also picking up. So it seems like a good secondary market to have. But for the SaaS product to be proved, I think US is the way to go. How did you afford to sell internationally when you were bootstrapped? Because I imagine going, staying in the US, traveling,
00:45:38
Speaker
You must be flying within different cities in the US also to meet clients. So how did you manage that? So one thing we have done in this company from very beginning that we try to do most of our meetings online. Since lockdown happened, this one piece was very favorable. Everyone is more open to doing video conferencing now.
00:46:02
Speaker
But otherwise, we have done 90% of our meetings online. So we make it a point that we don't have to go unless we are deploying something. Initially, we had put some money of ours. Initially, for a couple of months, then we ended up getting one customer on board who paid us for the pilot, then few more paid for the pilot. So we are bootstrapped. We are getting by fine.
00:46:28
Speaker
We are planning to race, but probably by end of the year, not immediately. But you are like cashflow positive as of date. What is your suggestion to B2B SaaS companies on marketing? You're essentially like a B2B SaaS company.
00:46:52
Speaker
And I think you're very effective in doing marketing yourself. So what are your lessons that you would like to share on marketing a B2B SaaS product? In Alpha AI, how we market it was very different from how we thought we would and how we did in the past. Alpha, we were able to create an inbound leads engine, very initially. When we started with our first video, we did a couple of videos on LinkedIn, we did a few things on
00:47:21
Speaker
YouTube, we would go to a lot of events, talk about it. So we realized that a lot of founders do not put themselves out when they have to sell. They are the first people saying that, okay, let me explain it to you. I'm going to sell it to you. But when they have to market, they did not do it. They don't
00:47:42
Speaker
see the value their face brings to the product. When people connect with you online, they expect you to give solutions of the problem they are facing and not give a technical description of the product you are making.
00:48:01
Speaker
which was our mistake as well. Most of the people who go talk to people keep talking about, you know, the response time is so good. It's best in the world. The time to action is milliseconds. So they talk about these things. They do not talk about your pain points when you are in front of your boss and you do not have answer to one seeking thing, you have to set up another meeting for next month. That won't happen anymore. You can just ask something and get your answer instantly.
00:48:31
Speaker
So founders, one thing that they talk about their product very technically, the second thing is like they are afraid of putting themselves out and endorsing their product. They sell it, yes. They don't endorse as in, you know, they have a higher vision, right? For us, why we are building alpha, I think that like more people who do not know technology should have access to technology in an easier way. You know, they should not be going through training, they should not be needing another team to make something happen. So it's been a while already.
00:49:00
Speaker
How do business users feel confident? Just say you are uploading on Facebook. Just say you are doing a chat on WhatsApp. So how do I make something that easy for you in the industry that you feel that the business needs to be made? So do you hire a vision or something that people don't share with their network?
00:49:22
Speaker
So you're saying like explainer video types are animated. Those are like not effective. It's better to make videos with your face on it. Yes, I think explainer video, you explain it. You explain what is the higher purpose for it because people will
00:49:40
Speaker
Pick on it. If you could show them the vision that, okay, this is where I want to reach. I am beginning from here. What is different with my video is that I want people to be involved in our decision making. They can give us input here. But he came up with a few things you can keep.
00:50:08
Speaker
But when you ask your customers, only then you will be able to build something that what they need. We will go and ask our friends, family, maybe the industry expert who's not going to buy it. Maybe I can do 10 amazing things with my product.
00:50:26
Speaker
you know, you tell me, this is how you can make it spark more. Someone else tells me, but thing is like, is my customer buying it? No, he's not. I have leads from two years back who have come back. They gave some suggestion. We had healthy discussion. Today they are like, if he came, I'm ready for it. You know, how do we move forward and let's start the process. Let's do a POC. So we have those kind of relationship just because
00:50:55
Speaker
We spoke to the people who had intention to have something like this in their organization. So you're also like a, I could say like a LinkedIn influencer with, I think your current count of followers says about 165,000. So how did, how did that happen? What was your journey to becoming an influencer on LinkedIn?
00:51:23
Speaker
Things of followers. I have had an account since 2013. I had never used it. I think I still have Eggdo post from way back. But then I put this video. When I talked about my first video, I want to connect.
00:51:49
Speaker
you know like this is what we are doing sort of it was not a video of the product or a demo it was a video of just me talking about what we are trying to build and it's you know we're just starting we're just beginning this was when you were building that for the
00:52:12
Speaker
But very early, we could say it's not going anywhere. There was a lot of frustration. And let me start trying to interact with some people. Maybe we'll get some industry connects where we can understand, how do we make this better?
00:52:38
Speaker
you know, talk to some relevant people. So I went ahead and created a video on LinkedIn and that video went viral for some reason. I don't know why. So I had like 1.5 lakh views. I had 2000 likes and some 700, 800 comments.
00:52:58
Speaker
And everyone was supportive and like people from different countries, they are talking about, you know, like startups are hard, you should do this, you should do that. Giving me some kind of motivation. So, Achata, that was the first video, then I created a few more videos and then we started to talk about what we are doing. And then we realized that, you know,
00:53:18
Speaker
People are excited about voice technology. They are excited about NLP. So that was the point of the realisation. We realised that there is a talk-based way where people can ask questions and they can get answers. It should work. So that realisation came because people were reacting to the kind of videos, the kind of demos that we are putting out. I know Google Home has a demo, so based on the reaction to that, you realised that this is like a art product.
00:53:46
Speaker
Based on that interaction will be a good way to go forward. Every week we kept doing some of the other experiments. We kept doing one of the other experiments every week. We also created a comedian
00:54:05
Speaker
on demand. So we have a friend called Apoor Gupta, who is an Indian comedian. And I'm going to talk a little bit about the demand on-demand. I'm going to talk a little bit about jokes and Google jokes. Okay. Okay. So I'm going to train Karki with essay commons and intense create Karki now I'm recording with my darling and whenever you did the video still there, of course, those are going to go video is still there.
00:54:32
Speaker
So when you talk to it, there are jokes about it, there are jokes about it. But when you do the recordings, they will play. And when you plan on it, it seems like you can do it. It was a fun experiment that we did. So we did jokes about it and then we have understood a few ways of interacting on LinkedIn, engaging on LinkedIn, which people sometimes don't do.
00:54:59
Speaker
If you want people to engage with you, you have to go engage with them. You will never get noticed. Once I did a video on Maggie because I wanted to talk to the MD of Maggie.
00:55:12
Speaker
Oh wow. I thought of account-based marketing but I created a video. I read a book, I created a video for many. That also went popular. I think it had 72 shares. So I got a message from the MD and I spoke to them. This is how you create value and I think
00:55:38
Speaker
steadily we are being able to create some value. We have stopped giving some relevant content. We are talking about it. We are engaging other people to talk about what they are doing. We are engaging in other people's content.
00:56:01
Speaker
So I think people give up very soon when they start building this kind of network. And that's why they kind of stay at, you know, but wherever they are. So is the content like social media content now, like a proper operational thing for you, where you plan? Is it off the cuff where you just record and publish the same thing?
00:56:27
Speaker
I would like it to be that way. I would like it to be that way. I would like it to be that way. I would like it to be that way. I would like it to be that way. I would like it to be that way. I would like it to be that way. I would like it to be that way. I would like it to be that way. I would like it to be that way.
00:56:53
Speaker
This is a one-person job right now. No need to exaggerate it just because you think we have it. Even if we can increase our lead generation multi-fold, we can't handle it today. I think I could have grown much better if I would have done general content. But that was not the goal. The goal was to have a niche audience which wants to talk about data and technology and AI and maybe entrepreneurship.
00:57:20
Speaker
So that is the kind of audience I have today. And we talk about things that we feel like, and they are generally related to our product, our interest area, entrepreneurship, technology. It's naivet.
00:57:33
Speaker
So this is where it is. So what all places do you see alpha AI going? As of now, there is one space which you have that anybody who wants to get a dashboard can just use a voice query and get reports. So what next? We have created a sort of extension for MS Excel. So everyone who's using MS Excel, because 90% of leadership is using MS Excel today.
00:58:02
Speaker
If they want to look at any data, you give me this data in Excel. Otherwise, even if you have dashboard, you download that data in Excel and then do your analysis. And Excel has with 17 million users worldwide. We have created an extension which you can just download it on Excel, add it to Excel and you can ask question and it will fetch that data related to that question.
00:58:31
Speaker
and create a pivot and chart over that. I am going to soon put a video out of that, actually. And this is something we want to give to more people. This is not an enterprise solution. It is something so that everyone, not that kind of, but sort of an open product. So anyone can use it because people are so passionate about data. And if you keep restricting them with
00:58:55
Speaker
cost. It's just going to make the growth that much slower for us as well. Like in the longer term vision, what do you see alpha AI moving towards? In the longer term vision, I think AI, you know, could be better. But moving on where AI is today, it's going to get much, much better. Today, we are dependent on few things.
00:59:18
Speaker
on people to explain inside the wise and productive prediction prediction. And today also, if these things are there, but you know, they are largely a templatized, you know, like decision making. So to an extent, I think it won't even take long, it will take maybe five to seven years where Alpha is at a place where you just need to let your intent know it is going to give a prescriptive
00:59:47
Speaker
uh analytics on top of whatever is happening so that it can guide you through your job instead of you trying to figure out you will have a guide then you can choose to take the suggestions or not like it could tell a restaurant owner that tomorrow for tomorrow you should order this inventory yeah yeah
01:00:07
Speaker
that kind of thing. So it was in a simpler way for a restaurant. But in, like, let's say oil refined, we can say kia cha prediction essay. This is the amount you should be prepared for. You know, this is the rate that you can sell it at. The sort of method of how to increase revenue will be the will be job of the machine instead of either trying to figure it out and put in hypothetical number. It will be a more calculated approach using AI.
01:00:38
Speaker
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