The 10 Most Influential Analytics Leader to Watch in 2023

Anand Mahurkar: Helping Businesses Realise Data Superpowers

Findability Sciences is an enterprise AI company that has earned numerous accolades and delivered valuable solutions to 50 customer projects in the last year alone. The company is proud to have been featured on the INC Magazine INC 5000 list for the second time, and to have won the US Government SBA Microenterprise of the Year award.

Findability Sciences expertise lies in developing products, solutions, and services that leverage machine learning, natural language processing, and computer vision. The company's impressive portfolio includes forecasting sales for the largest global HVAC company at each of its branches, providing marketing attribution insights for a top 5 retailer, and predicting machine failures for airlines.

Each year, the company makes over 100 million predictions with an accuracy rate of over 90%. Its fastest predictions have a latency of fewer than 4 microseconds for a DSP. Findability Sciences is dedicated to providing innovative AI solutions that drive its client's business success. The firm's state-of-the-art horizontal technology platform has delivered exceptional value to Fortune 500 companies across 12 industries, including manufacturing, BFSI, and real estate.

The company prides itself on its ability to guide enterprises through the process of unifying disparate data sources and extracting actionable insights. Findability Sciences' goal is to help its clients break down data silos and unlock the full potential of their information.

The company understands that every business is unique, and our team of experienced professionals works closely with each client to develop tailored solutions that address their specific challenges and goals. Findability Sciences is a commitment to excellence, coupled with its deep expertise in AI, sets it apart as a trusted partner for organizations seeking to harness the power of data-driven insights.

A Dedicated Leader with Humble Background

Anand Mahurkar is the Founder and CEO of Findability Sciences. His journey began in a small town in India where his parents were teachers. With a humble aspiration of securing a job, Anand pursued engineering in college. Finally, when he landed a job, it was a dream come true.

Throughout his career, Anand prioritized making an impact and thinking outside the box. After serving in managerial positions and completing an executive MBA, he became the President of a data warehousing company in the United States. It was here that Anand realized customers still faced an unsolved challenge despite consolidating enterprise data – the ability to find relevant information. This realization led to the inception of "Findability Sciences."

As a first-generation immigrant entrepreneur from India, Anand was determined to build a company with strong financial fundamentals, ethics, and a self-driven culture. During the early days, he wore many hats and did whatever was necessary to help the company grow. This included tasks such as cleaning the office, brewing tea, driving sales, and managing deliveries. Over time, the effort paid off, and Findability Sciences is the only rapidly growing AI startup with 100% customer satisfaction, no debt, and an impeccable track record of profitability.

Today, Anand's role is to identify and empower leaders to pursue their collective growth and dreams 

Thriving Through the Crisis

For Findability Sciences the biggest achievement was surviving the pandemic as a small business and thriving after its survival. During COVID, the company had to work through a reduction in incoming cash flow, data security with remote employment, and employee well-being.

The company's think tank was committed to addressing the challenges at hand, working around the clock to find solutions. For years, Findability Sciences top priority is customer satisfaction and during this difficult time, the company is humbled to have earned their trust.

The vast majority of the company's clients chose to stay with it, both during and after the crisis. Throughout the crisis, Findability Sciences launched social initiatives such as supporting a state government in India with an AI-driven healthcare platform. Additionally, the company collaborated with customers and prospects to develop new solutions, resulting in significant growth during the second half of 2020. The firm's unwavering commitment to excellence was recognized through prestigious accolades such as FT 500 and INC 5000, as well as positive feedback from leading analysts and media.

Taking One Step At-a-Time

Entrepreneurship proved to be a challenging endeavor for Anand, given his background and limited resources. Bootstrapping a business was particularly difficult.

 Many successful entrepreneurship journeys started from a garage. During that time, Anand did not own a home, which meant that paying rent was a top priority. Anand and his wife were hesitant to take on enterprise debt, so he decided to use all of his savings to launch the business. Hence, he used all his savings! They focused on profitability and cost savings since day 1. Anand was the accounting, legal, and sales for the company for many years. Yet, as a track record, they never missed a payment due date to their employees or vendors.  

Cracking the Jigsaw Puzzle of Data

Anand says "A learner, creative thinker, and detail-oriented problem solver are best equipped to be a Data Analytics Leader." Continuous learning is necessary for a field where technology moves at the speed of light. Offerings become redundant if they don't evolve with the latest releases of AI technology.

Previously, analytics was just run on internal data. However, with rapid changes in environmental trends, external data must be factored in. A big data leader must actively solve the jigsaw puzzle of capturing the correct internal, external, structured, and unstructured data elements for processing.
Additionally, detail orientation is required to validate the statistical significance of the derived insights. Implementing action items on wrongly interpreted insights can lead to disastrous outcomes.

Solving Customer Problems with AI

Findability Sciences initially started by developing an application-agnostic licensable AI platform. It included the company's IP in self-learning multi-modeling Machine Learning, Intelligent Document Processing, and Conversational AI. 

However, the company quickly realized that the end goal of customers was solving problems with AI, and not AI itself. Further, it realized that every organization had a different data architecture. This posed a challenge to the replicability of Enterprise AI solutions. 

In response to this challenge, Findability Sciences prioritized the development of products and solutions that could be seamlessly integrated into diverse enterprise environments. The company's approach involved creating connectors with critical internal systems, including ERP, CRM, and Databases, which facilitated swift and effortless deployment. Additionally, the venture established connections with over 40,000 external data sources. Through a deep understanding of its client's unique business processes, Findability Sciences developed solutions that addressed key challenges such as demand forecasting, the propensity to pay, and churn analytics, delivering high accuracy and exceptional results.

Anand explains this in an example, for the world's largest HVAC manufacturer, key issues were sales planning, inventory management, and branch transfer logistics. The company's AI solution helped the enterprise with over 2 million monthly forecasts with 90+% accuracy at an SKU and Branch combination level for 24 months in the future. Findability Sciences Machine Learning IP with self-learning multi-modeling capabilities can train over 300 models per minute and produce thousands of predictions in seconds! With the company's solution, the firm saved on branch-to-branch transfers and retained accuracies despite complex conditions such as COVID, Economic Downturn, and SKU Transitions.

To recommend an ideal bid price, Findability Sciences built a reinforcement and rule-based model for a DSP company. The model provided a 25% margin uplift with a 95% spend rate (amount spent from the customer budget). The DSP company saw improvements in both reach (CPM) and engagement (CTR) campaigns. The technology brought together speed and accuracy, with the company's fastest prediction taking less than 4 microseconds.

Being Tech-Savvy

While talking about disruptive technologies, Anand says "AI's function was traditionally limited to answering the question, "What happened?" However, in today's rapidly evolving landscape, it is expected to provide answers to the more complex question of "What will happen?" and "What should we do?" Within the field of Data Science, this is referred to as Descriptive and Prescriptive Analytics, respectively."

Traditional enterprises have been largely driven by business processes, and intelligence was considered a post-process to analyze their impact. However, Findability Sciences is heading to a stage where organizations must make data-driven decisions to remain competitive. 

Anand continues "Disruptive technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, and Cloud Computing are having a significant impact on innovation today, and the role of a leader has changed to reflect this impact."

The role of a leader has changed over the years due to these disruptive technologies. Leaders are now expected to be more tech-savvy and knowledgeable about the latest technologies. Leaders also need to be more adaptable and flexible, as disruptive technologies are constantly changing the business landscape. They need to be able to pivot quickly and make decisions in a fast-paced environment. Finally, leaders need to be able to inspire and motivate their teams to embrace these disruptive technologies and drive innovation forward.

Promising Future Ahead

Anand says "The current landscape presents a ripe opportunity for evolution within the industry, particularly with the recent emergence of ChatGPT, which has renewed interest in the potential of AI." Historically, Findability Sciences technological advancements have outpaced the adoption curve, making it challenging to persuade customers to integrate AI into their operations. However, the company observed a noticeable shift in trends, with organizations becoming increasingly receptive to launching data-oriented initiatives. Over the next two years, Anand anticipates that enterprises will begin to view AI as a necessity rather than a value-add. As a result, Findability Sciences is poised to make a significant impact in this environment and is actively expanding its customer base.

Advice to the Emerging Leaders

Anand's bits of advice "As a leader, the most important thing is to build a strong team. Analytics is a team sport. Hire people with diverse backgrounds and skill sets to ensure that your team has the breadth of knowledge necessary to tackle complex problems. Also, make sure your team members have strong communication skills so they can explain their findings to non-technical stakeholders."

He continues to say that next comes focusing on solving business problems. Understand the business problem you're trying to solve, and how technology can help you solve it. This will ensure that your technology efforts are aligned with the goals of the business.

Management: Anand Mahurkar, the Founder and CEO

Website: https://findability.ai/