Exclusive Interview with Divay Kumar, Co-founder and CEO of O4S

With the high-end software solutions, the manufacturing industry is bringing revolution to the operations like supply chain movement and product management. O4S is a VC-funded enterprise SaaS Startup that is redefining how Supply Chains work for Consumer Brands. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Divay Kumar, Co-founder, and CEO of O4S.

1. Kindly brief us about the company, its specialization, and the services that your company offers.

O4S's unique IoT-based multi-module solutions help organizations gain control over the product movement across the supply chain from the time they leave the manufacturing facility till they reach the end consumer. The company's solutions are deployed on the cloud and easily integrate with the existing infrastructure thereby eliminating the requirement of any further capital expenditure.

O4S state-of-the-art solutions revolve around the concept of Serialization which assigns unique digital identities to every unit being manufactured enabling the organizations to track and trace each product. Moreover, the company's advanced inventory management analytics solutions help organizations take critical business decisions by monitoring physical inventory position, stock movement, aging, and much more critical KPIs.

2. With what mission and objectives, the company was set up? In short, tell us about your journey since the inception of the company?

O4S was incepted with a vision to integrate advanced technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML) for practical applications in Supply Chain Management. The manufacturing industry has a fairly complex supply chain with millions of products moving through various nodes and parties every single day. Moreover, the industry experiences a high dependency on manual operations. Thus, making Automation, Digitization, and Transparency in the Supply Chain a need for the hour to optimize and bring high levels of efficiency.

So far, these initiatives required significant change management and capital investments. O4S is on a mission to disrupt and democratize the use of advanced tech by integrating the Software as a Service (SaaS) Platform while ensuring the lowest investment of money and time, and a high return on investment.

3. Kindly mention some of the major challenges the company has faced till now.

Choosing what to build and when has been one of the major challenges for all teams. Supply Chain is a huge domain, and we have the vision to become the Super SaaS for Supply Chain Automation in the near future. Implying, we're keen to add multiple solutions for the broken parts and gaps that are not currently addressed in the market. The team does intense due diligence before deciding to build a module or feature by estimating its impact and scalability. We have a highly experienced deployments and product team that maintains a strong feedback channel with their customers.

4. Please brief us about the products/services/solutions you provide to your customers and how do they get value out of it

The company's solutions are built on product serialization powered by technologies such as Machine Learning (ML), and the Internet of Things (IoT).

• MARKTM (Manufacturing Automation Reconciliation Kit) is the core product of O4S. It integrates O4S' cloud-based random UID generator with manufacturing industrial printers.
• SupplyticsTM helps businesses track product movement right from when it leaves a manufacturing facility, across Carrying and Forwarding Agents, Distributors, across all channels till it reaches a retailer.
• Gynger is O4S' retailer and influencer engagement platform. This solution primarily helps brands engage retailers and influencers by incentivizing them to maximize sales of original products.

Original4Sure empowers consumers to verify their purchased products by scanning O4S's highly secure UID using their mobile phones through a web/mobile-based application.

5. How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead?

With the product-market fit established, we're aggressively looking to expand across new geographies such as Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Thailand, among others. These countries hold tremendous potential for digitized and automated products. Further, we're also looking to incorporate an office in the USA to partner with companies for compliance traceability across North and South America.

6. What does your technology and business roadmap look like for the rest of the year?

By the end of the first quarter of the calendar year 2022, O4S plans to launch a particular module for predictive analytics and forecasting. Apart from this, it would increase its headcount to above 200. At present, the company has over 100 members, including 60-65 in technology, six in sales, and 20-25 in the operations team.

7. How is IoT evolving today in the industry as a whole? What are the most important trends that you see emerging across the globe?

There has been a lot of discussion around the relevance of IoT in various sectors, and most of the implementation has been proved beneficial to businesses. As industries are moving ahead and discussing the criticality of Industry 4.0, it is most likely that Next-Gen technologies are going to experience higher adoption. IoT, when combined with another emerging tech such as 5G, ML, AI, and cloud computing, can help enhance efficiency, reduce recurring costs, and facilitate beneficial decision-making via real-time business insights. IoT already plays a significant role in the supply chain and improvising warehouse management, inventory control, among others, and is expected to have diverse applications in the next few years

O4S combines new-age technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Internet of Things (IoT) with a company's core supply chain operations to build global networks for enterprises. We invest highly in research and development of the new forms of IoT and other deep tech applications that can adapt across industries such as FMCG, Agri Inputs, and Consumer Durables, and bring out the value that was theoretically envisioned. For instance, Industry 4.0 is a highly discussed concept around the globe, but its implementation has not been easy so far. The company has adapted the O4S platform to bring the theoretical benefits of Connected Manufacturing into proven practical applications.