Gramener augments human intelligence by extracting insights from heterogeneous data sources and converting them into memorable stories for decision making

Recent reports have highlighted the alarming rate at which species are being categorised as endangered. India has high-profile cases of endangered species like the Bengal tiger, Asiatic lion or the red panda. This environmental crisis requires cutting-edge solutions that can track and help combat the loss of biodiversity.

New-age technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning have the potential to find solutions to problems such as these.

Data science company Gramener could probably help in this regard.

This Singapore- and US-based firm has created a deep learning AI application that, for example, can track salmon and fish populations over time in order to detect changes in the habits and decline of the salmon species — making what used to be a labour-intensive effort into an automated tool.

“Our purpose is to augment human intelligence by extracting insights from heterogeneous data sources and converting them into memorable stories for decision making,” Gramener Co-founder S. Anand tells e27. “We help organisations and clients analyse data and consume insights. We build custom Big Data analytics and visualisations on our platform and bring expertise to data, design and business.”

Gramener was founded in 2010 by Anand (CEO), Naveen Gattu (COO), Mayank Kapur ( CDO) and Ganes Kesari (SVP– Analytics & AI Labs).

“Data generation and analytics are not sufficient for making decisions. Automated insights and narrative stories not only help you consume data easily and consistently, but also help cross the analytics chasm. Humans don’t  understand data or models innately. Design principles derived from an understanding of human perception help visualise these and absorb their implications subliminally,” Anand observes.

Also Read: Is data science still among the sexiest jobs of the 21st century?

In addition to helping organisations and government agencies to address pressing environmental issues, Gramener’s products are also used by companies across various other sectors for various purposes, including:

Financial services: Offers a suite of data visualisation and analytics solutions for retail banks, corporate banks, investment banks, asset management, insurance and regulatory bodies.

The Gramener team

Retail and consumer goods: Offers retailers, malls, consumer goods and product companies visual analytics for in-store insights, product and channel performance, as well as optimizing supply chain performance.

Healthcare: Helps pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, clinics and healthcare providers visualise sales performance, improve the service operations, and communicate better with customers and channels.

Agriculture: Helps agricultural, commodity and food organisations analyse and visualise data on their purchases, identify factors driving productivity, and forecast prices for improved inventory management.

Marketing: Helps marketing teams understand customer behaviour, uses this to segment customers based on their actions, and recommends product, pricing, or promotions for each closely defined segment

HR: Offers solutions for corporates to improve their talent recruitment, performance improvement and attrition defense – using text analysis, Machine Learning, data visualisation and narratives.

Media: Partners with various media organisations for digital content and data journalism, data-driven market research, communication through infographics and consumer insights via advanced analytics and visualisation (In the Assembly elections in India in 2018, the company worked with a leading TV news channel for election analytics).

“A leading print media organisation approached us for a solution that could automatically tag the three million images it hosts with the people (faces), objects and texts present in the images. We worked with them, and now it has a scalable web service that lets users upload images and accurately recognise people, objects and texts in the images within seconds,” he shares.

The company has also worked with ‘Microsoft AI for Earth’ and ‘Nisqually River Foundation’ to automate identification of fish species. Gramener’s solution processed the video feed from the cameras, extracted images, and classified the type of fish based on a pre-trained neutral algorithm. The interface allows  biologists and non-technical users to interact with ease.

“Our products are deployed in critical business functions in Fortune 500 enterprises, government and non-profit organisations across the world to solve complex business problems and enable business users towards data-driven leadership,” shares Anand, himself a data scientist and a Gold Medalist from IIM Bangalore.

Anand reads three key trends in the market — data visualisation, cognitive research and business-driven analytics. “Data visualisation is no longer in the realm of pure numbers. Text analysis is relatively mature and is being applied routinely to various problems. Even a pure text corpus like The Mahabharata (Hindu mythology) can be visualised. Images, audio and video are rapidly becoming analysable and visual sable.

Secondly, cognitive research. What we know of the human eye and brain is increasingly making its way into practical visualisations. For example, most men can name only 11 colours (women can name about 15), but can differentiate between over a million colours when placed next to each other. So, while a heatmap that places regions adjacently can be coloured with millions of shades, a bubble chart should have 11 colours at most. Such rules of thumb and now baked into the software people build for data visualization these days.

Thirdly, business-driven analytics. Analytics is shifting more towards business users or consumer driven, this has been the evolution,” he explains.

But data science business is a challenging industry. Visual analytics requires a combination of statistics, programming and design. Finding good people with one of these talents is hard. The combination is near impossible.

“Another challenge is the longer sales cycle. Almost every person on the business side understands the value of analytics instantly. Once we hit the next stage of sales closure, however, there is the learning curve around how to classify Analytics (software? service? consulting?) and how to price it (by number of users? reports? templates? rows of data?). We spend a fair bit of time educating our enterprise customers and evolving our commercial models,” he adds.

Although bootstrapped, Gramener has been operationally profitable from the third year of its inception. “We have proven ourselves in the enterprise market with various customer accolades, analyst recommendations. We have devised value driven engagements models, GTM strategies scalable with partners and stickiness with our clients.”

Gramener is now looking to raise growth capital, and is having conversation with a few chosen partners, who can “enable our growth plans and be part of our growth story”.

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

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Source: E27

While there are a lot of potential benefits from blockchain, the industry’s branding is a real anchor to growth

The stratospheric rise of Bitcoin and accompanying cryptocurrencies like Ethereum has certainly helped garner a significant amount of attention for blockchain, the technology that underpins such mediums.

Blockchain – an open source, peer-to-peer, and distributed ledger which is virtually unhackable and theoretically has the power to do away with intermediary bodies like central banks and regulatory agencies – is predicted to have a profound impact on the way ordinary humans go about their everyday lives. Applications of the technology range from fintech to agriculture with even the media and music businesses predicted to benefit.

Futurists are excited about a world of blockchain as it could iron out many of the trust deficiencies we have with the internet and other legacy institutions. But why are we not seeing a more rapid dissemination of the tech and why are consumers growing increasingly wary of companies building products on the blockchain?

Cryptocurrency gold rush

The introduction of initial coin offerings (ICOs) — the process where companies choose to crowdfund upcoming projects by issuing their own tokens on the blockchain — was meant to democratize access to potential riches. No longer would hungry venture capitalists have their pick of a slice in up-and-coming companies; members of the public could buy tokens and see the value of their investments rise over time.

This utopian vision fit in directly with the wider ideals of blockchain: to facilitate the growth of a true peer-to-peer economy and cut out intermediaries who often had access to more opportunities than others.

Unfortunately, the absence of a robust regulatory mechanism has contributed to the dampening attitudes around both cryptocurrencies and ICOs.

Scams are rife. Japanese cryptocurrency exchanges have constantly been targeted by hackers, with a recent heist causing about $60 million worth of losses. A Finnish bitcoin millionaire lost $35 million to scammers in Thailand and a brief search on the topic will reveal dozens more. It’s a similar story with ICOs with many just vanishing into thin air after duping small-scale investors of their hard-earned cash.

Such events have prompted a wave of criticism from some of the world’s most renowned academics in business and trade. Nouriel Roubini, professor of business at New York University and former economist at the World Bank, likens Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies to the ‘mother of all bubbles’.

Also Read: Three startup resolutions I made that did not work out the way I expected

Governments have followed suit. China completely prohibits the trade of cryptocurrencies and others, like South Korea, restrict it to a high degree. The United States has preferred to take a ‘wait-and-see’ approach, with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) examining an approach to view tokens in the same lens as securities.

Are blockchain projects dying a slow death?

Despite a dampening outlook, it’s clear that blockchain is here to stay. Companies looking to circumvent traditional methods of funding need to learn how to distinguish their ICO projects in order to build trust and credibility with the public.

Any company can cobble together a landing page for their ICO and spend some money driving traffic towards it. But does that engender trust? A carefully orchestrated public relations campaign requires a lot more effort and rapport but it brings legitimacy to the table, a trait that new companies woefully lack.

The fact of the matter is that the current climate around blockchain automatically conjures up images of manipulative hackers and sordid cybercriminals. That’s not the fault of well-intentioned founders, who might be sitting on an idea that could radically transform the way humanity functions. Unfortunately, unless they adopt the right approach this idea could very well end up castigated to the annals of history.

Planning for a better future

A hurried approach towards ICO planning and marketing reeks of a short-term approach. If founders don’t actively try to bring clarity to their vision and elucidate the problem they’re trying to solve, then it’s impractical to expect the public to warm up. After all, almost everyone thinking about investing in an ICO is carefully monitoring the space and is aware of the rampant scams that exist. Why should they trust you, a complete stranger

That’s where brand building comes into the equation. Earned media is infinitely stronger than simple advertising; that’s because consumers have a certain degree of trust and affinity with the newspapers or publications they choose to read. A nuanced description of a forthcoming ICO can do much more in inculcating positive brand image than a fancy landing page outlining the background of the founding team.

A well-defined communications strategy is the bedrock of any young company looking to break out by launching their own ICO. That’s why it’s referred to as ‘earned’ media; by earning the trust of a publication you’ve automatically earned the trust of its readership. Yes, this is difficult and requires time. Be prepared for tough questions about your business plan and why you’re confident about the product. Why should people invest in you when things could fall by the wayside?

Also Read: 15 more awesome startups that will be apart of TOP100 APAC 2019

But nothing worth having comes easy. To set yourself up for long-term success it’s important to break through all the noise and invest the time and money that it will take to position yourself as different to the crowd.

Credibility and trust may be intangible metrics, but they are invaluable in ensuring the long-term viability of your company. That’s the foundation you should aim to build upon.

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Source: E27