Riding the wave of automation
Common
Place | machine learning, artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision making
and platforms to service consumers
BigBasket
has created in-house warehouse and supply chain technology; Practo took four
years to build strong backend
Four businesses of different moorings got together to talk about “What is next
in Tech” on the third day of the BengaluruITE.biz organised by the Karnataka
government. The founders of Axiom Research Labs, BigBasket, Capital Float and
Practo spoke about how a technology is built around the business problem. They
said that machine learning, artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision
making and platforms to service consumers will become more commonplace.
The
machines will bring about a standardisation in quality and impacting the job
scene, forcing jobseekers to work harder to identify business opportunities.
Consider
the example of BigBasket, which handles perishables. The company created its
own in-house warehouse and supply chain technology to understand how
perishables get consumed in the country. “Today, our systems can tell you what
is stocked, what is coming in and what is moving out, and where. All 25 cities
that we have expanded to work on the same processes; there is no way that the
system can fail,” says Hari Menon, co-founder of BigBasket.
Agreeing
with Hari is Shashank N D, the founder of Practo. He says, “We spent the first
four years building software. It was only in 2013 that we started expanding in
the market.”
Shashank
adds that it was important to solve the problem of how people connected with
their local doctors. “We are in four geographies now. But it all goes back to
one thing that we got right, which was understanding how doctors worked with
patients, before we started scaling up. The backend technology has to be
strong,” he says.
There
are about fifteen states in India that have done a good job in creating an
ecosystem that supports tech.
The
founders of these four companies say that technology allows companies to make
intelligent decisions while servicing their customers. “We have an algorithm
that decides if the SMB can be sanctioned a loan in under a day. We don’t let
people decide the loan sanctioning process. Our technology understands aspects
like bank statements and credit cycles of a business before lending to a
party,” says Gaurav
Hinduja,
co-founder of Capital Float.
The
challenge, though, is to use technology to win customers on a consistent basis.
Big Basket, for instance, has thousands of trucks across the 25 cities in which
it operates, and is also trying to increase the average number of orders per
customer from 2.2 to 4 a month. Courtesy: YourStory.com
Tech
boom
Universities
should work harder to prepare their students for building automated platforms
Machine
learning, artificial intelligence, algorithmic decision making and platforms
will become more commonplace, thanks to smartphones
Things
will be automated, bringing about a standardisation in quality and impacting
the job scene, forcing jobseekers to work harder to identify business
opportunities
Source | Daily News Analysis | 6 December 2016
Regards
Pralhad
Jadhav
Senior
Manager @ Library
Khaitan & Co
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