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Asokan Ashok – The Professional Journey

Asokan Ashok, CEO of UnfoldLabs has over 30+ years of experience as a technology leader and innovator. Being a technology leader with his business relationships and industry expertise, he has nurtured and influenced many aspirants towards strategic thinking. As a tech leader, Ashok regularly speaks at industry conferences, events, webinars and shares his technology and leadership expertise with the industry.  Ashok has great experience in developing innovative and futuristic software solutions, technology platforms and mobile/communication systems. His commitment to and his proficiency in cutting-edge technology has brought him, UnfoldLabs and the organizations that he has been involved a lot of success, growth, and recognition. His efforts in the technology industry & thought leadership have given several upcoming innovators a ray of inspiration to keep going.

Ashok is on the Board of Advisors for multiple technology companies and plays an active role in the growth and development of the companies that he is involved in. His unmatched work in the technical industry and thought leadership has given a lot of upcoming innovators a platform to learn and grow. All his articles and laurels are just a glimpse of his vision, and profound futuristic work in this ever-changing dynamic tech industry. He strongly believes that Tech can help humanity and has been working on tech solutions that can help human beings around the world. He certainly disrupts the usual mindset of the industry as he never resists himself from doing the unthinkable.

Products – Wings to Elevate

Been in the technology industry for long and driving innovation, Ashok has been on the forefront of delivering innovative products. At UnfoldLabs, Ashok has been spear heading a lot of products/solutions that can help humanity with technology. This zeal has driven him to come up with solutions that beats the industry standards – MyFamily (Digital Parenting), SecureME (Android Launcher), DistanceD (Distance Calculator), uFallAlert (Detect Unusual Falls by the elderly or by workers), unfoldQuotes (Inspiring and Motivating your Near & Dear Ones) & many more. There are a few award-winning products with over 500K+ downloads on the mobile app stores.

Ashok has always been in the forefront of innovation, technology and how it can enable human beings for the better. Early in 2019, Ashok ideated and innovated on an amazing platform to protect families from digitisation – usage, tracking & online threats and that laid the foundation for development of “MyFamily” – A Digital Parenting Platform. This is one of the leading products available in the market that can help families stay secure. Another wonderful ideation from the labs is SecureME, an amazing android application that allows businesses to restrict user access to allowed applications on device. DistanceD, a perfect distance calculator that helps you monitor friends/ family/ colleagues/ employees based on their distance was delivered and can help social distancing during this pandemic as well. There are many more outstanding products developed at UnfoldLabs that can help humanity in their daily lives.

Every recognition for the products/ solutions and company has been possible only due to the kind of accomplishments Ashok has received in the past few decades. He has always made sure that his team, peers, and his entire connected ecosystem leverages his technological know-how to their benefits. The products really brought a change in the customers lifestyle thus helping them grow. Technology has been shaping the world, Ashok & UnfoldLabs are creating wonderful solutions to shape and make a dent in the world. The technology industry has seen the impact and has achieved quite a few awards for his vision and execution of technology solutions.  The awards have been for leadership, technology innovation and product innovations.

Business, Technology, Growth & Impact

Ashok believes that the technology will have a significant impact on most businesses, as it will shift orders of magnitude in terms of data transmission speed, volume, and connection quality. He strongly envisions that technology can be steered towards helping human lives around the world. During the covid times, technology advancements in vaccines like mDNA has helped the world getting vaccinated. UnfoldLabs built a platform for one of our clients to accomplish vaccinating people at their offices during these trying times.

As a servant leader, Ashok is very involved in the personal development and performance of the team. He strongly believes that everyone has something to offer, and the leader should observe and nurture the team members towards success.  His views around leadership and management have clearly helped him build innovative teams that are of high performance and deliver with quality in mind. He encourages work life balance, with trust, empowerment, and a personalized approach to working as a team. He is an avid listener who listens receptively and without judgements and loves to hear multiple viewpoints. His motto about working with teams is to “listen to understand, and then be understood.” He is authentic and very dependable to the teams that he is involved with, as people love working with him to ideate, innovate and deliver quality in products/ideas.

Humanity & Mentorship

Ashok Asokan strongly believes the growth cannot happen in isolation. Growth can happen only when people around us also grow along with us. He is a world class mentor who has guided a lot of technology leaders to deliver innovative products and thrive on areas of technology and humanity. He is known for his ways of handholding and helping his mentees with a keen style of observing and steering them towards growth trajectories based on their interests, motivation, interest, and vision about their lives. He actively seeks to develop and align his ideas, thoughts and experiences to his mentees needs and their sense of purpose which helps them be value driven leaders of the future. He also values this as a social responsibility to thrive and deliver better messages towards his mentees.

Asokan Ashok – The Business Leader

Being a business leader, Ashok Asokan has a motto of “Leaders with integrity live up to their words (i.e., they practice what they preach) and own their faults rather than hiding them, blaming their team, or making excuses”. A true leader never forgets that their actions reflect not only on themselves, but also on the organization’s reputation.” Everyone should blend emotion and logic to make judgments that benefit themselves and those around them. In simple, Be OPEN MINDED, Stay CALM & FOCUSED. Magic Happens!!

 

Nora Osman: The Natural Change Agent

As a New York-born first-generation American, Nora Osman was raised by her immigrant parents, who instilled the values of working hard and taking care of others as a priority. At a very tender age, she learned that everything is possible if you believe in the American Dream. Nora also believes, “you alone are responsible for mapping your own journey in life and making your dreams a reality.” Until high-school, Nora travelled to several countries and attended international schools, which eventually gave her exposure to a diverse world and unique learning. This life-changing experience taught her to be independent, curious, and open. After completing her High School, Nora attended a state university in Long Island, graduating with a Bachelor’s of Science Degree with a focus in Business Management.

Professional Journey

Nora’s professional journey started with her role in accounting. However, she soon started showing interest in mainframe, networking, and personal computers. By the time Nora left her first company, she was handling their entire IT portfolio, serving as the Operations Manager. This experience gave her much-needed exposure to multiple stacks of technology. Additionally, it also opened the door for her to work at a software solutions company. While developing her systems engineering skills, Nora also started cultivating skills in communication and sales. This background helped her to take on her first true management role in a health insurance company in New York City. Over a span of a decade, she began her journey in service management and learned about people, processes, and tools. She managed multiple areas like Service Desk, Desktop Support, Engineering, Application Support , and Budget management.

Nora’s vast knowledge in ITIL helped her gain an edge in  building sustainable business processes with her team. However, this expansion eventually catapulted her career and resulted in multiple roles like Director, Sr. Director, and VP of different technology areas in different industries.

Later she started her own business in partnership with her husband and co-authored a book with three other writers. To date, she remains most passionate about helping people in many areas of professional development.

Although Nora had direct experience and exposure as a business entrepreneur in the culinary space, she takes pride in herself when it comes to having a business-centric mindset in IT in general. She loves to understand the business purpose first and foremost and build others’ respect for this same calling.

Motivating the Team

Nora is a huge fan of Simon Sinek and she truly believes in his mantra “Start with why.” She makes sure that she and her team start the work with an understanding of the true purpose of the work. People want to know why what they are doing matters, and once they do, they then need to feel empowered to figure things out and to use creativity to achieve the goal. Nora encourages her team to “think outside of the box, assume there are no constraints, and then answer the question, how would you approach things?” And aside from giving them space to think and develop a plan, she loves to encourage them along the way, showing genuine interest in their progress, giving constructive feedback, and taking pride in their evolution.

Awards and Accolades

In her 25 plus years as an IT leader, Nora has championed innovation and problem-solving in the service management space of multiple organizations, ranging from commercial insurance, software development, health insurance, financial services, and healthcare.  Amongst Nora’s biggest accomplishments is her specific track record of establishing highly functional/motivated teams that transform the organization, exceeding its mission, and delivering an outstanding customer experience.

Nora is very proud to have developed leadership skills in many individuals and having helped them to choose a career path, which otherwise was beyond their wildest imagination. Exponential growth is of utmost importance to her, and she hopes to leave a legacy of servant leaders, who could make a difference in this planet we live on.

“With that said, I’m proud to have seen several members of my team achieve personal recognition and awards in customer service and also climb the steep ladder of success with promotions.”– Nora added.

In 2021, Nora was recognized as a finalist for an Employee Engagement Leader of the Year award by Reworked, which was a notable accomplishment for Nora.

Tackling Customer Experience Problem

Nora Osman believes, while in the technology space it’s all about solving a business problem. Technology doesn’t exist for its own purpose, it solves our needs. She is passionate about solving the customer-experience problem, developing strong people awareness of how process and human interaction matter even more than tools.

She has also found that many leaders are entirely focused on getting from point A to point B, but they aren’t thinking of how that journey will impact others, including the employees who have to do the work to deliver service or the customers who are using this service. So she helps to connect the dots in these areas, and motivates everyone to keep the balance between employees and customers.

Helping Others to Lead

Nora’s vision is entirely centered on elevating others, their strengths and talents, and igniting the flame that’s within them. She lights the torch that they carry, and then she likes to provide a sounding board and support along the way. The combination of Nora’s strengths helps her to be a natural change agent. Because she capitalizes on her innate creativity and her ability to truly understand people while being a skilled problem solver, she embraces the challenge with less resistance than most. The striking thing about Nora Osman is her ability to be comfortable being uncomfortable, as that pit in the stomach excites her since she knows she is learning and growing and doing something that’s real and of value.  Intuition for Nora Osman is a catalyst for action, and she trusts it innately.

When it comes to suggestions for budding entrepreneurs she advises, ‘look, listen, and learn’. She adds, “Look with curious eyes, and see the world around you, the need, the pain, the problems, and the ways to solve them, and see the beauty in all this.  Listen with an open heart, with the intent to understand, and with a kind spirit, and listen to your own thoughts and intuition. Learn all that you can, about others, and how to help them, about ways in which to do this, and always learn to focus on the why.”

Quote:

 “Do what’s right, and not just what’s easy…what’s easy isn’t always right, and what’s right isn’t always easy!”

Women Leaders leading the Business Industry in 2022

Women empowerment is a term that has changed the world greatly. Inspiring women to step forward and embark on a journey of success and prosperity has offered the world some of the finest women leaders. Rising above the gender bars of society and proving to the world that business is for all, these most influential women have created history.

So, here is the list of the most influential women in the world in 2022 who are known for their passion, energy, skills, and aptitude.

10 Exceptional Business Women Leaders 2022

These influential women in the world have proved that success is for those who are ready to move ahead with dedication. So, here are the top women leaders:

1] Lisa Su- CEO of Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)

Lisa Su is a Taiwanese-American businesswoman and electrical engineer. Before becoming AMD’s CEO and president in 2014, she worked at IBM, Texas Instruments, and Freescale Semiconductor. Su is one of the most influential women interested in finding out how things worked. As a Ph.D. student, Su was one of the first scientists to bring attention to an unproven technique for improving semiconductor technology. Fortune magazine named Su one of the World’s Greatest Leaders, 2017.

2] Mary Barra- CEO of General Motors

With a passion for American automobiles, Mary started her journey after graduating from the General Motors Institute with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. In 1980, she started to work with General Motors. She worked at General Motors for quite a long period and in numerous engineering and administrative positions that carved her career. She went on to Stanford Graduate School of Business for MBA. She became the first female CEO in 2014 and is one of the most influential women in the world.

3] Susan Wojcicki- CEO of YouTube

In 2014, Susan Wojcicki was named CEO of YouTube. She graduated from Harvard University with honors in history and literature before finding her passion for technology. She became Google’s 16th employee and marketing manager in 1999. She later rose to Chief Vice President of Advertising and Commerce. Wojcicki realized YouTube’s potential and urged that Google buy it, which she did in 2006 for US$1.65 billion. She is now in charge of YouTube’s phenomenal expansion and is one of the finest women leaders in the world.

4] Leena Nair- CEO of Chanel

Leena Nair is Chanel’s newly appointed global CEO. She is also one of the top female leaders in India. Before joining Chanel, she was the CHRO of Unilever. Nair earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Walchand College of Engineering in Sangli and his master’s degree in management from XLRI in Jamshedpur. She began her career with HUL as a management trainee. She was named one of Fortune India’s Most Powerful Women 2021 and became the company’s first female and Asian CHRO at 52.

5] Falguni Nayar- CEO and Founder of Nykaa

Falguni Nayar, the CEO, and Founder of Nykaa, is a self-made woman millionaire. Nykaa was started in 2012 with a vision to offer online access to cosmetics. FSN E-Commerce Ventures, Nykaa’s parent business, is the country’s first woman-led unicorn to list on the stock exchange. She was selected ‘Businesswoman of the Year’ at the Economic Times Awards for Corporate Excellence 2019 to contribute to the Indian beauty sector. Her place in Indian startup history has been reinforced by the Nykaa IPO.

6] Kiran Mazumdar Shaw- Chairperson & MD of Biocon

One of the top female leaders of India, Kiran is a first-generation entrepreneur and global business leader. With the extensive experience of 40 years in biotechnology, she is the one who founded the biggest biopharma company, Biocon, in 1978 in her house garage. Kiran has received various awards and recognitions during her tenure and the most prestigious Padma Shri and Padma Bhushan awards. In 2020, she was named EY World Entrepreneur of the Year, and in 2019, she was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year India.

7] Sonia Syngal- CEO of GAP Inc.

One of the few women leaders who are a part of the Fortune 500 list, Sonia is from India and has lived most of her life in Canada and America. Sonia is recognized for helping young women raise their voices using Gap Inc’s graphic tees. She has held significant leadership and general management positions with Gap Inc. since 2004. It included the Managing Director of the company’s Europe business, Senior Vice President of Gap Inc.’s International Division, and International Outlet, division.

8] Jane Fraser- CEO of Citigroup

Jane Fraser is the company’s first female CEO of Citigroup. She served as President of Citi and the Global Consumer Bank CEO till 2021. She oversaw Citi’s consumer businesses in 19 countries, which included retail banking and wealth management, credit cards, mortgages, operations, and technology. She is also a member of the Harvard Business School Dean’s Advisory Board, the Stanford Global Advisory Board, the New York Economic Club, and the Council on Foreign Relations as Vice-Chair for Partnership for New York City.

9] Karen Lynch- CEO of CVS Health

Lynch took over as CEO in February 2021. She was previously executive vice president of CVS Health and president of Aetna, the company’s insurance division. She is the Fortune 500’s highest-ranking female CEO. CVS is one of the world’s largest healthcare companies. Lynch is ranked first on Forbes’ list of the 100 Most Powerful Women in the World for 2021 and Fortune’s list of the 2021 Most Powerful Women in Business.

10] Padmasree Warrior- CEO of Fable

One of the women leaders who moved ahead to bring awareness to mental health and wellbeing, Warrior is truly influential. Padmasree founded Fable, a mental wellness-focused curated reading platform, in 2019. She was the CEO of NIO USA before moving to her passion. She is on the  Microsoft and Spotify boards of directors. She did chemical engineering at IIT Delhi. Then she earned a master’s degree in chemical engineering from Cornell University. Warrior was even named on Forbes’ list of the world’s top 100 most powerful women.

Success is for those who believe in themselves and are ready to work hard to reach the top. These women leaders proved that when you have determination and willingness, there is nothing that can stand in your way to success. So, feel inspired by the list of the women leaders in 2022 and gear up yourself to follow the path of success.

With iPhone 14 coming soon, Apple changes the focus of its television advertising.

Apple is now going to launch the iPhone 14 to the market, which will be one of the craziest times for Apple lovers to follow the latest tech news as the company is almost there to launch its new iPhone. 

Since the company has decided that they will launch the new smartphone, they are now going to make a very important decision for the launch and advertisement process related to television and advertising. 

The company has decided that they will not advertise the new iPhone 13 to the market as they think that it is not a crucial time to launch the advertisements for the iPhone 13, and they will completely focus on the iPhone 14 from now onwards. 

They have made that they will now start the complete campaign for the iPhone 14, and they will attract the view of the customers towards the newly launched iPhone. The company is also excited to launch the new product to the customers, and people will be able to get one of the most effective ranges of the iPhone that is going to be the best television and marketing procedure. 

Hopefully, the company will launch the newly invented product to the market, and this is going to be one of the most useful tactics of using various Apple device marketing issues by the help of which people will be able to understand that the iPhone that is going to be launched in the few days that is going to be one of the most useful devices for them and it has also become one of the most useful tactics for them.

After the launch of the iPhone 14, the whole thing related to the iPhone 14 will get changed, and people will be able to use the product for a period of time also. It can be changed in any situation, and the marketing procedure that is being used is also becoming one of the Muslim picnics for users. Can take help from the various advertisement methods that are available around the iPhone 14 launch by the help of which people will be able to understand that the product that has been used can be relatively helpful for the uses in several cases. It can be checked thoroughly and should be checked and processed in various situations

Elon Musk Confirms SpaceX’s Rocket Test Accident From April

The SpaceX accident occurred during the testing, but none of the officials confirmed the news. Now, Elon Musk has confirmed the news directly. Elon Musk has declared that earlier this month, the accident took place, and the test took place during the test that took place in the pipe in a rocket and the booster prototype of the flattering of the testing process. The company is still building and testing the pipe that was taken in the rocket and drinking the shape of the pipe, and the accident did not become bigger. Space X is now creating and testing the Starship next-generation launch system in Boca Chica, which is situated in Texas. During this testing process, the accident occurred. The company is now rolling back to the booster prototype, and the development facilities can take place from the launch pad. According to the huge fireballs that are taking place at the base of the rocket and this has also been a huge accident that is taking place in the rocket. 

 

The musk comments that are taking place in the media have now become viral. The whole interview that took place, the video of the interview will be uploaded to Youtube, and the whole video is also getting millions of views. The engine of the rocket is also designed and shared with the help of the rocket engine, and it is also becoming the key nugget of the youtube platform. People will also get a detailed view of the company about the whole tests and accidents. 

 

He has added that from now onwards, the testing process will be more strict so that the whole test will become a very easy and accurate one so that the rocket’s accuracy rate can take place. The test questions are also becoming strict, and there will be a number of pressurization tests that will take place for the detection of accuracy. The Starship’s Booster 7 prototype is also becoming useful for the users so that the test questions and answers can be taken place with high accuracy. Another accident took place according to the experts in the earlier month, and SpaceX is also now going to be conducted this April, and till now, the images are also taking place. As a result, this is going to be one of the most effective tests that should take place.

Gautam Adani Is Now the World’s Sixth Richest Person

In recent years, the Adani group, a conglomerate with businesses in sectors such as energy, port and maritime transportation, mining and edible oil, has grown dramatically in value, propelling Gautam Adani to the world’s sixth-richest person with a net worth of $118 billion. This has been fueled by a meteoric rise in the value of the Adani group’s publicly traded stocks. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, the 59-year-old entrepreneur has surpassed Google’s legendary co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin in terms of wealth.

Gautam Adani now 6th richest person in world, $20.6 billion richer

Important to note in this context is that Adani’s net worth increased by $8.57 billion, or approximately Rs 65,091 crore, on Monday, owing to an increase in the share prices of Adani Green Energy, Adani Enterprises, Adani Gas, and Adani Transmission on the New York Stock Exchange. The shares of Adani Group rose by as much as 16 percent on Monday, despite the fact that the country’s benchmark indices finished the day with losses.

Adani Green Energy enters the list of the top ten most valuable companies on the Bombay Stock Exchange, replacing Bharti Airtel.

Gautam Adani has become the world’s wealthiest person this year, thanks to an increase in his personal fortune of about $41.6 billion dollars. Meanwhile, according to the most recent Bloomberg billionaire ranking, Mukesh Ambani, chairman of Reliance Industries (RIL), India’s most valuable firm, has a total wealth of $97.4 billion, making him the 11th richest person on the planet. He has seen a rise in his personal wealth of $7.45 billion so far this year. According to the Bloomberg wealth index, Adani is $20.6 billion ahead of Ambani at the moment, and it may be difficult for the chairman and CEO of Reliance Industries to catch up.

What has made Adani so wealthy, and so quickly, is a pointless question. Clean energy, airports, and power plants are among the areas where the mogul is investing. Adani Green Energy is the massive stock market gainer that propelled Adani to the top of the market rankings. On the Bombay Stock Exchange, the company’s shares rose by 16.25 percent to close at Rs 2,701.55 a share on Monday. It made it onto the list of the top-10 most valuable corporations as its market capitalization soared above Rs 4.22 lakh crore.

Throwback: Gautam Adani, India’s richest man, escaped the 2008 Mumbai terror attack and kidnapped and is now the country’s richest man.

Ambani has been at the top of the list of India’s wealthiest people for the past 14 years. After being momentarily dethroned by pharmaceutical tycoon Dilip Sangavi a few years ago, the oil-to-telecom conglomerate head reclaimed his position as chairman and CEO.

This Indian tycoon made more money in the last quarter than either Musk or Gates.

Adani said last week that he had achieved a net worth of $100 billion, making him the newest member of the centibillionaires club. The fact that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos (who presently has a net worth of $176 billion) was the first person since Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in 1999 to reach the $100 billion mark in 2017 is worth emphasising. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, currently the world’s richest person with a fortune of $249 billion, became the latest member of the exclusive club in 2020.

Enhancing Product’s Discoverability and End User

Consumer behavior is changing. And so the way they search on Google is changing, too. The new challenge for companies, both large and local businesses, is to create relevant content that addresses consumer needs in a specific way. To be found, then, content must be smart. This means it requires talking about the right topic, in high demand, and optimized to be as visible as possible to the target market – especially on search engine results pages or SERPs.

On their side, for search engines to return the correct results and provide instant answers to users, they need to understand what you’re talking about.

Created the first semantic AI-powered SEO platform that helps businesses produce smart content that is understandable to search engines and relevant to new consumers. It is a new approach to SEO and offers a competitive advantage to all those businesses, big or small, that want to grow by getting more organic traffic and more significant customer engagement.

Using AI and machine learning, WordLift analyzes the content of your website and selects the concepts (entities) that are most relevant to your business. The dynamic infrastructure behind your website allows it to be suitable for search engines and voice assistants and to create well-contextualized and related web pages and articles, turning web pages into connected data and making the user experience more relevant.

For e-commerce sites, WordLift builds a enhancing a product’s discoverability and end-user experience by enriching each piece of content with all product details, including linked data.

With this technology, it is possible to increase organic traffic from search engines and improve the quality of the user experience. WordLift can be integrated with all CMSs, providing APIs and webhooks.

Automation is a massive need for companies investing more and more in it. Whether it’s automating content creation, discovering new search opportunities, or implementing conversational AI, you need a graph-based structure that describes the content you produce. A Knowledge Graph is a critical element of any organization’s AI strategy. It’s not just for Google, Bing, or Amazon anymore. A Knowledge Graph is for any organization that looks at growth strategically.

WordLift’s innovative AI is used on more than 800 websites and actively contributes to the traffic growth of Luxottica Group brands, Enel X, ZoomInfo, and other large Fortune Global 500 companies.

The WordLift team is focused on the continuous research and development of innovative solutions for businesses. It has developed that will be launched shortly. It will help businesses find new search opportunities and create a Knowledge Graph starting from website data.

WordLift closed in January an investment round of 800.000 euros with the venture capital firm Primo Ventures SGR S.p.A., which invested through its Barcamper Ventures and Barcamper Ventures Lazio funds. The objective is to accelerate growth by expanding the customer base both nationally and internationally.

“WordLift is one of those startups that immediately demonstrates a strong international reach, with a product delivering clear value to its customers. The results achieved and the entrepreneurial vision of the founders convinced us to support them in their growth path”.

– Niccolò Sanarico, investment manager of Primo Ventures

Quote by Andrea Volpini CEO of WordLift:

The entry of Primo Ventures marks a stage of maturity for our startup and projects our technology, one of the first AI made in Italy, into a path of the international scale of which we are proud.

Mosaic Smart Data: Delivering Next Generation Data Analytics

With a vision to provide financial market professionals with data-driven tools to optimize their trading operations, Mosaic Smart Data was founded in 2014 by its CEO, Matthew Hodgson. The organization’s technology enables participants to harness their market and transaction data and see in real-time what happened, why it happened, and what is likely to happen next.

Before founding Mosaic, Matthew worked extensively in the fixed income markets for multiple prestigious global financial institutions. He saw first-hand the potential for trading firms to extract the value from their largely untapped transaction data assets. Being able to refine this raw data and distill it into meaningful smart data, where value can be extracted in the form of actionable insights, is a significant challenge that all market participants face. Matthew founded Mosaic Smart Data to enable firms to gain a significant competitive advantage through a better understanding of their transaction data.

Dependable Platform for Clients

By leveraging the latest AI and machine learning capabilities, Mosaic Smart Data technology enriches and personalizes the analytic insights its users receive. The company delivers this in real-time through the MSX® platform and its best-in-class smart data analytics platform MSX360®. Imagine having the world’s best digital quant sitting beside you guiding you to opportunity and action – this is precisely what Mosaic delivers.

A Transformative Industry

Matthew has always believed AI would be transformative in the financial services space because of its ability to deliver the kind of hyper-personalization usually only offered by consumer technology platforms. Today, the idea of walking into a video shop and trawling through shelves feels completely antiquated – everyone is used to a service like Netflix doing the legwork for them and suggesting options they will want to watch from a database of thousands.

Similarly, MSX360 allows Mosaic’s clients to see patterns of client behavior which could be seasonal, monthly, or weekly. This allows a bank to predict the best time of day for a trade and the most suitable instrument to use. The model learns from individual users’ activities and interests over time to constantly improve recommendations. This means banks become more efficient because they can target the right resources to the right opportunity and the right time.

The Shift to Digital Working

Matthew believes, during the era of Covid-19 and the subsequent shift towards a digital working environment, banks have to be smarter than ever when it comes to gaining a comprehensive view of their data and extracting value from it. Matthew says, “While people are speculating that the end of the ‘new normal’ might be on the horizon, the impact it has on the way we work and where we work is undoubtedly set to remain, with efficiency being the key. AI can deliver a huge range of efficiency benefits.”

According to Matthew, during the stressed market conditions of the past two years, the ability to wring every actionable insight from data is becoming vital to a firm’s survival and success. AI-powered data analytics is a perfect solution for this challenge.

Awards and Accolades

Mosaic Smart Data’s biggest accolade is its client base, which includes the biggest financial institutions across the world – including the US, Europe, Asia, South America, and South Africa. The organization has won several prestigious industry accolades, including the Banking Tech Awards, the FS Tech Awards, the InvestHK UK Fintech Awards, and being named Fintech Company of the Year by City AM.

The Changing Demographics of the Industry

Matthew believes forward-thinking banks of all sizes are now starting to deploy AI to enable predictive and prescriptive analytics, as well as connecting systems to prompt them as to the next best action for their clients. By absorbing information that might otherwise be missed, AI delivers the analysis to drive new sales engagement with clients and by delivering those insights at the optimum time.

According to a recent survey, 75% of banks with more than $100 billion in assets are currently implementing AI strategies, and investment and adoption at scale are expected to increase significantly over the coming years. This comes as no surprise when you consider it has been estimated by McKinsey that AI can potentially unlock $1 trillion of incremental value for banks. These tools can be thought of like a GPS for the sales desk – those banks without it will struggle to compete against more forward-leaning firms who are empowering their employees with the most advanced digital tools.

Matthew thinks, banks that fail to make AI central to their core strategy and operations—often referred to as becoming “AI-first”—will risk being overtaken by competition and deserted by their customers in the coming years.

The current operating environment is both uncertain and challenging for investment banks, but a carefully planned program that builds on cutting-edge data analytics and AI technology holds the key to driving growth and delivering the modern, information-driven trading experience that clients demand.

Matthew also says, “After all, it’s typically during periods of stress where relationships are forged. As a bank, if you’re able to guide a client through the fog of confusion, you will likely have a relationship for life – and AI and machine learning can assist in facilitating this.”

Kimo: Helping Personalized Education at Scale

With the intent of providing personalized education at a scale, Amsterdam-based Kimo, was established in 2018. With +1 billion in need of upskilling in digital domains in the coming decade, Kimo believes that’s a big deal. In practice, personalization means Kimo’s system can tailor learning content to the specific context and needs of the student. Behind the scenes, that means Kimo needs to have millions of content items in all formats (e.g. videos, courses, books, articles, podcasts, market reports, etc.), difficulty levels, and price points. The essence of the company is thus content curation.

Purpose Driven Leader

Kimo is being led by its CEO, Rens ter Weijde, who started his career as a sports psychologist, working with athletes to improve their performance. Rens worked in professional football, field hockey, free diving, base jumping, and with artists in Cirque du Soleil. After some successes Rens joined McKinsey & Company to do similar work with their clients. A few years later he left the organization to build his own impact + strategy consulting company called Purpose+. Rens led this company for 6 years, he and his colleagues worked for 80 clients, including G20 summits. After that Rens was looking for, something new and challenging and realized that EdTech needed a significant upgrade.

Rens believe, the AI industry is one of the most fast-moving industries in the world today, with some improvement areas (e.g. parameters in large language models) seeing a CAGR of +100%. It’s also an area where many great minds work together and share knowledge, e.g. through code and papers. For Rens, he sees it as an extension of psychology, which is his original domain of interest. One could see AI research as a decentralized way of testing many psychological hypotheses, done by many developers globally and with lots of budget behind it.

AI Industry Trends

Rens realizes many things are happening, depending on the angle you take – tech, philosophy, competition, regulation, etc.

He believes a few relevant trends are changing the AI industry; First of all, the data-centric AI approach advocated by Andrew Ng is an interesting change of perspective in Rens’ view, as much progress depends on the quality of the data now.

Second, the race for specialized silicon to run AI software more efficiently (cloud or edge) is intriguing to watch as well, coming from both big players like Nvidia and Google as some new kids on the block.

Third, the rapid rise of large language models in recent years (e.g. GPT3, Megatron-Turing, Wu Dao) based on the transformer infrastructure is something to keep an eye on, as similar things may happen in other domains.

Fourth, zooming out to a geopolitical level, there is clear competition for AI progress and talent between nations, with many countries drafting an AI strategy and significant budget allocations.

As a final trend, Rens mentions the regulatory landscape ,which is emerging, combined with the preference of some companies to reduce their dependency on big data.

AI has millions of use cases for society. Rens believe the general trend to be, one of ‘human + machine’ augmentation, not direct competition for jobs. For customer service specifically, there are many ways to

  • Pre-segment calls based on text
  • Provide smart support to CS agents through AI suggestions, sentiment monitoring, etc

Helping People to Learn New Things

KIMO is a meta-level platform, it doesn’t make its content and Rens believe they don’t have to. As an organization, Kimo realized a few things that were not common knowledge, in education companies.

First, there is enough learning content for most areas on the web, making more is not necessarily the solution to drive engagement.

Second, the web is heavily polluted and ad-heavy, thus curation and/or finding direction for people is hard.

Third, people spend 5 hours per week, 260 per year, on average on the web, ‘trying to learn new things, versus 10-20 hours per year, in the organization they work for.

Fourth, people mostly look for ‘short content’ instead of, long content (e.g. courses, which have a 95% dropout).

Fifth, most people patch together content in different formats depending on the context, e.g. a podcast for a bus ride, or a book chapter for the weekend.

Effect of the Pandemic

Even during the pandemic, Kimo’s funding perspectives were still positive due to low a low-interest-rate environment, excess capital, etc. AI did some amazing work during the pandemic to speed up progress in certain areas, although largely out of sight. Rens also believe it will inspire new AI in healthcare trends, in the coming years, see e.g. AlphaFold from DeepMind.

Mission and Vision

Kimo’s mission is to provide personalized learning at scale, with a strong focus on emerging economies where access to high-quality education is harder. The firm believes that having a system that curates all the learning content on the web (note: 95% is free) is the way to go, given that the web contains everything but is also heavily polluted.

Future Roadmap

When it comes to the future, Kimo is headed to full-scale personalized learning, on N = 1 level, reaching 5 million users minimum in the next 2 years. On being future-ready, the firm is deeply embedded in expert networks in the tech industry, and it invites two guest speakers a week for its students on a wide range of topics.

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