Exclusive Interview Archives

Ekta Ahuja: Transforming Homes with Innovative Services

With more than 19 years of experience at the forefront of the interior design industry, Ar. Ekta Ahuja is one of the most well-known interior designers in Pune. Ekta received her architecture degree from Dr. B.N College of Architecture, Pune, and soon she worked with Ar. Hafeez Contractor, who is an icon in the field.

Later Ekta founded her own Architecture & Interior Designing house named; Tejomaya Architects & Interior Designers, which is a true reflection of effulgence, brilliance, and splendour that echoes through every architectural and interior design it creates with finesse. Ekta and her team’s relentless passion for contemporary art and design inspires them to create a stunning vision of luxury, style, and grandeur like never before.

The ever-evolving style from Ekta is often best defined as ‘classic contemporary’ creating a stylish and nonchalant dialogue. Ekta’s use of neutral tone in furniture and adding colours with artifacts, artworks, and soft furnishings creates unique, memorable, and inspired spaces.

Transforming Homes

Thanks to an experienced, highly qualified, and dynamic team of interior designers, technicians, architects, and project managers specializing in various aspects of design, Tejomaya Architects & Interior Designers’ employees allow it to offer the best experience for its clients.

Ekta and her team manage the entire process starting from the conception stage through the completion stage. The team is equally happy to work on both residential and commercial projects, both in Pune and outstation.

Tejomaya offers multiple services for its clients, which include;

Interior Architecture & Space Planning: Tejomaya Architects & Interior Designers are one of the best residential interior designers in Pune. As the founder of the firm, Ekta takes a complete overview of every project, so that every aspect of the scheme is completely integrated and is in line with the clients’ brief. The architectural design team is very much well versed, when it comes to providing various internal services like state-of-the-art AV, Automation, HVAC, Lighting Systems, and MEP.
Interior Space Planning: Sometimes, a small change can bring a huge difference to a troublesome area. Interior Space Planning is Ekta’s specialty, and this service helps to bring out the best of any space without having to make any major changes.
Furniture Design: Rather than following a distinct house, Ekta and her team ensure that every project Tejomaya undertakes is perfectly tailored to its clients’ needs, tastes, and style.
Lighting Design: Just like every human, all rooms and buildings have their personality, and most of the time few touch-ups and proper lighting design consultation, one can make it stand out. So, Ekta and her team work with their clients throughout the whole process to get the best out of it.
Landscape: Tejomaya Architects and Ekta is best known for their pre-construction consultations. Ekta feels an impressive space or structure that often leaves a long-lasting memory and impression that can be bought to light by natural lights and landscapes. Ekta and her team use these features extensively indoors and outdoors.
Interior Styling Consultation: As every room or building has its personality and stories to tell, Ekta uses many materials, textures, and colors to make each place comfortable, and welcoming.
Old Property Renovation–Restoration-Remodel: Under Ekta’s leadership, Tejomaya architects identifies the proper methods to transform old properties for the new intended usage.

Tackling Challenges

During the initial days of Tejomaya architects, it was more of a one-woman show, with Ekta only. However, with time, the company grew and hired new architects, supervisors, and other team members.

Although, the main challenge for Ekta was always recruiting the right talent because Tejomaya architect does bespoke designs. So, the organization needs to have a good amount of talent, who can follow Ekta’s design sensibilities, and show clients’ personalities in their designs.

Inspiring Employees

The pandemic was a tough time for everyone, but the planning and organizational skills of Ekta and her team helped them to sail through. Since everybody moved to a work from home concept, it increased Ekta’s horizon to hire new talents across the country.

Ekta Ahuja also witnessed that people understood the value of a good home, so her industry and business has flourished post-Covid. So, once work starts flowing, the team automatically gets motivated. Also, being in the office after a long time has motivated people to a large extent. Additionally, when a bunch of creative minds works together it’s a different outcome. She says, “Learning is a continuous process and it can happen only when you are exchanging ideas in our field, so that’s the biggest motivation for them to work in a team and see their project come up and site getting done.”

Future Roadmap

For the future, Ekta Ahuja and her team at Tejomaya are venturing into a lot of architectural work, so Ekta wants to increase the horizon of her firm and is looking to expand her team pan India. She also has an architectural department, which is doing more and more architectural work.

Advice for Young Entrepreneurs

When we requested Ekta to provide some suggestions for the young entrepreneurs. She says, “The most valuable advice I have always received, and I would like to pass it on that you should always stand by your values and beliefs as if you don’t stand by something, you’ll fall for anything.”

Company Name: Tejomaya Architects & Interior Designers

Management: Ar. Ekta Ahuja, Founder

URL: tejomayadesigns.com

Yossi Abadi: Selected Among 10 Most Innovative Business Leaders Revamping The Future, 2022

Abadi, rated by FORBES as the most recognized Israeli in LATAM, has been selected for his social vision, entrepreneurial spirit and technological development in both America and Africa.

Meet Yossi Abadi, the CEO, and Co-founder of Tenlot Group. Yossi was born and raised in the Holy Land, he is 100% Israeli, but with a Latin spirit. He lived several years in Mexico and the Dominican Republic and speaks fluent Spanish. Yossi is married and the father of two wonderful children.

A person with a clear vision, Yossi is motivated by an abundance of passion. He thinks what best characterizes him is his motivation to create new initiatives, and ideas to start projects from scratch. Yossi felt, he has fulfilled his mission when the other members of his team are as passionate and motivated as he is to lead a project. Yossi is also passionate about diplomacy, social responsibility, business, and entrepreneurship.

Yossi earned his Law (LLB) and International Relations (BA) degrees from Reichman University (IDC) in Israel, specializing in Homeland Security and Terrorism, graduating summa cum laude.

From 2012 to 2015, he was the Chief of Staff of the Minister of Energy and Mines of the Dominican Republic, responsible for international negotiations and alliances with other countries. Yossi had previously served as an International Advisor to the National Authority for Maritime Affairs of the Dominican Republic. He was also appointed as the Honorary Consul of El Salvador in Israel.

The Steadfast Leader

Throughout his life, Yossi has had many people who have left their mark on his vision and career. Above all, Yossi feels blessed to have had the unconditional support of his family.
He has also been privileged to work with a phenomenally successful mentor: Jacob Engel, Chairman, and Founder of Elenilto Group and EngelInvest, as well as Chairman and Co-founder of Tenlot Group. His work in developing markets and philosophy of giving back to communities in which a company works have truly inspired Yossi.

Leading Projects in Various Sectors

Tenlot Group is a high-tech corporation, active in the gaming industry. In addition to providing B2B and B2G services, based on the firm’s advanced, proprietary gaming platform, the firm specializes in private investment in lottery operations in cooperation with various governments worldwide. Its investment group also leads projects in the mining, renewable energy, and infrastructure sectors, with private investments and government alliances on several continents.

Most of the time, Yossi and his colleagues work with governments, and charity organizations, operating under license on their behalf. This requires a lot of responsibility, much more than a simple private project, because there is no room for failure.

Yossi says, “When your team grasps the scope of the responsibilities that come with working on behalf of mega-institutions, you have taken the first step towards a successful operation.” He also adds, “When the client sees the commitment and dedication of the team, they understand that ours is a company that truly looks out for their interests. That is the key.”

A Child who Dreamt of Being a Lawyer

As a child, Yossi always dreamt of becoming a lawyer– a passionate litigator, who fights for justice, as we see in the movies. He prepared himself from a very young age for a career in law, well before university. But once Yossi achieved his goal, he felt that his passion for business, investment, and being able to contribute to the social development of communities was stronger than his love for litigation in court.

Losing fear of taking risks was the first lesson Yossi learned and the first real decision he made. It is what led him to leave what he was doing, change course and embark on new paths. Since then, Yossi always remembers that to reach new heights, you sometimes have to break paradigms.

Yossi decided to leave something solid and promising, in his own country, Israel, and fly abroad to chase a dream that was not even clear. This completely changed the course of my life.

Tackling Primary Challenges

Being an Israeli who works mainly in Latin America and Africa, Yossi Abadi thinks what most caught his attention is the need to adapt to the local culture. Many multinationals come to global markets wanting to impose their style, and they are destined to fail.

He says, “You cannot expect to visit a country and ask whoever invites you to enter their house to have the same style you have. There are so many cultural differences. It’s the biggest challenge in any operation we’ve had.”

Yossi Abadi believes it takes patience, respect, and a willingness to adapt. He adds, “What had surprised me is the patience and confidence my entire executive team has had in the countries in which we operate when faced with significant challenges.”

Picture of the Future

What excites Yossi Abadi most about the future is knowing that anything is possible. To know that there is nothing, that is too out of reach or too difficult – if you only believe it. His personal goal is to continue generating businesses that impact people’s lives and help them change for the better – to make a difference. Knowing that as a company, and as a businessman, Yossi not only generates wealth but also hope.

Martin Wachter: Leading the World of Virtual Sports and Betting Solutions

With the intent of offering the first real sportsbook with a virtual outcome, Martin Wachter, the CEO of GoldenRace founded the company. GoldenRace is a world-leading developer and provider of award-winning virtual sports and betting solutions for land-based and online operators. Based on its target of offering a real sportsbook, Martin and his team created realistic odds, and their virtual sports engage players constantly, generating more than 25 million bets per day through the firm’s partners around the globe.

The company’s bestseller is its virtual football league. Apart from virtual football GoldenRace is also one of the global market leaders in pre-recorded video sports, and its games have been licensed and certified in the most demanding jurisdictions. They are currently available in over 50,000 shops and on more than 400 websites.

The Man Behind the Company

Martin was born and raised in a small village in the Austrian mountains, and since childhood, he has dreamed of creating something big. Martin is comfortable adjusting to any situation and doesn’t get flustered easily when faced with unexpected challenges.

After finishing school Martin began working in sales for an insurance company and from day one, he loved to sell; he considers it one of his strongest talents. Martin started to learn about this business and what he does today in another company but bringing his idea was proving to be difficult. So, becoming an entrepreneur gave him the chance to achieve all his dreams and share his experience with others.

Martin also feels that to be successful in business, and in private it is important to not only be financially healthy, but people should also keep themselves fit mentally and physically. For those reasons, Martin does several different sports and studies a lot about food and diets.

Ensuring Client Satisfaction

Martin feels, one of the good things about Golden Race, is the company has clients in all areas of the world – those small businesses with dreams of becoming big, like Martin himself in the past, and also larger clients who are leaders in the market. Martin and his team at GoldenRace don’t differentiate or make decisions about where they are now – they look at their potential, their future, and where they want to go.

In terms of unbreakable faith, GoldenRace’s clients know that the firm takes responsibility for mistakes related to its products and that the firm keeps its word through the good and the bad. An agreement is an agreement and this is how Martin and his colleagues work.

Tackling Primary Challenges

During the early days, Martin and his partner decided to fund the business without any external funds, which posed a lot of challenges for the firm. It was a very challenging time to be able to employ new people as the business wasn’t big enough. Martin and his partner had to do jobs on the side to finance their dream and pay the employees on time.

The first 8 years were very difficult for both of them, as they worked every day and the outcomes were not as expected, but they never gave up, and then things changed for the good and now they have built something big.

Martin says, “The challenges grow, the team grows and it’s a big responsibility when you know that your 300 employees are counting on their jobs to support themselves and their families and children.” He also adds, “We’ve worked hard to be in a good position and have an amazing business – even the pandemic didn’t stop us from having so many employees.”

A Balanced and Equal Industry

When it comes to creating a balanced and equal industry, Martin’s first suggestion is to reinforce that companies are successful thanks to the people that work in them – the boss is just one person. Happy employees are the cause of a successful business. In his view, one should never ask people to do something he/she is not willing to do, and leading by example is essential. He feels, it’s important to find ways for your teams to have a good work-life balance, which is one of the reasons Martin Wachter has implemented a 4-day working week.

Martin says, “To be more balanced as a company, you should try to be clear where you want to be and what you want to achieve. You should have your own goals and not be driven by what your competition does.” He further adds, “Customers are also what makes the company grow. At GoldenRace one of our main targets is to help our customers grow as it will help us to grow as well.”

Future Goals

Martin feels it’s important that GoldenRace always remember where it came from and what made it what it is today so, the firm can continue growing and remain the global market leader. Martin and his colleagues want to expand the business in new markets, especially in North America, with new partnerships already signed in the US and Canada. Martin Wachter is excited about everything that has happened so far and will in the future.

GoldenRace still has a lot to do and markets to access, which motivates Martin to carry on pursuing his work and his story of success.

One of the things which makes him most excited and proud is that GoldenRace doesn’t follow the market – the market follows it and its creativity, and Martin Wachter will do all that needs to be done to remain on this level.

Jeremy Denisty – Nurturing The Business Growth With Comprehensive Consulting Solutions at Scopernia.

Founded in 2011, Scopernia has been connecting with big and small enterprises, offering them a sneak peek of what’s next and help them flourish in an evolving world under the guidance of Jeremy Denisty. Scopernia is the brainchild of two visionaries, Dado van Peteghem and Jo Caudron. They founded this company 11 years ago and Jeremy took the helm in 2020 as the Managing Director.

Personifying an amazing, hardworking, organized, inspiring, optimistic, and self-motivated individual who diligently transverses the path to achieving, Jeremy holds great expertise and extensive knowledge because of his continuous dedication.

The 30-year-old business leader was born and raised in Belgium, and he grew up walking on the path of artistic life. Jeremy started acting lessons when he was 4, was a child actor as main characters in French feature films from 2005 up until 2019, worked as a radio host, and in some TV programs.

Besides his involvement in the media, Jeremy continued his studies and ended up getting a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Sciences and 2 MSc in International Management and Management Sciences. His first business professional experience was at Procter & Gamble in France, working on Pampers.

At the end of his studies, Jeremy decided to put his artistic life aside and had the opportunity to join Henkel, P&G, or Unilever. He chose Unilever and spent 5 amazing years at Unilever as a Sales & Marketing Manager in France, Belgium, and The Netherlands.

Jeremy and his wife always wanted to move abroad, so when she had the opportunity to transfer to Dubai at the end of 2019, he quit his beloved Unilever job and they moved to Dubai. The day Mr Denisty landed in Dubai he met Scopernia’s Founding Partner, Dado Van Peteghem. One week later he started working as an Engagement Manager. 5 months later, in the heart of the COVID crisis, Jeremy took the lead of the office with a clear strategic plan in mind for the Firm’s future. And, the plan was successful, they tripled their revenues in one year.

Scopernia, Making Organizations Future-fit and a Force for Good

At the core, Scopernia helps people transform and grow faster & better in a complex and fast-changing world. Concretely, they help public and private organisations solve complex problems to:

Optimize their core business to accelerate growth
Transform their business ideas into a reality
Find new revenue streams
(Re)Define their Organization of the Future
Target Gen Z through Gaming with Scopernia Gaming

A lot of consulting companies claim they do all of that What really sets Scopernia apart is how they do it:

By focusing on: involving employees, stakeholders, customers in the process
Through innovative methodologies
By co-creating the solution with the client
By making it fun and engaging for all involved, creating faster buy-in and ownership
By focusing on the implemented impact

“Our vision is to change the way strategy & management consulting is being done, and help clients across industries grow, whether they are not sure how, don’t have the people, or don’t have the time”, said Mr Denisty.

What Inspired Jeremy to be an Author?

Communication and playing with words have always been something Jeremy enjoyed and felt comfortable with, from his early days in his acting career.” When he understood the force for good it could be in business, it pushed him into writing.

Clients & Unbreakable Faith

Scopernia serves every organization with more than 100 employees. By design in the region, since the company got here through a massive transformation project with the Chalhoub Group, they tend to have more clients in Luxury, Retail, and Consumer Goods.

List of 10 current and past clients:

Chalhoub Group, the organization itself as well as many of their portfolio brands individually: Faces, Lacoste, Tumi, Level Shoes, etc.
Trafalgar Luxury Group (distributors of Patek Philippe, Tag Heuer, Chopard, and many other luxury brands in the Middle East)
Mapyr (leading distributors of baby gear brands in the Middle East)
Sprecher Berrier Group of Companies (distributor of perfume brands)
Unilever Middle East
GlaxoSmithKline
HSBC MENA
BNP Paribas
Engie Mescat
Aliaxis (global leader in water and energy solutions)
Cartamundi Group (worldwide leader in card and board games)

While discussing how he assures the faith of the clients, Jeremy apprised, “We have 0 compromises on delivery quality and our clients know it. We are 100% reliable, strive to deliver above expectations, always, and consider ourselves as advisors rather than contractors. That mindset is a standard in our organization. On top of that, we don’t price based on hours spent but fixed on the value created.”

Hurdles on the Way

When asked about his initial challenges, Jeremy Denisty said, “The primary challenge was to re-think who we were going to serve, helping them solve which problems. We re-focused our organization on business growth and transformation (what it was initially founded on) and managed the pivot with success.”

The Driving Force

Here are the 10 things that so far worked out for Jeremy Denisty and led him to where he is today.

Having focus: single-minded focus will put you closer to your goal(s)
Be curious: be open-minded and learn new things every day
See the world through others’ eyes: search for new perspectives, whether it is to innovate or to empathize
Strive for perfection: never settle for average, details matter and will make a difference
Be loyal and operate with integrity: great leaders will want you at their side, trust unlocks everything
Hard work is easy: be disciplined, commit to yourself and what you can accomplish.
Live multiple lives: be open to new opportunities, pivot, change, add, and subtract
Don’t let failures take you down: they are part of the process, they exist to make us better, smarter, and more mature.
Leverage every skill you have: what do you do better than 99% of the people you know?Figure it out, leverage it.
Love, and be loved: nurture relationships, listen more than you talk, be truthful, thankful, and genuinely happy for the success of others

“On top of that, I’ve had the chance to be trusted by amazing mentors. Dado Van Peteghem in particular, our Founding Partner, has put his trust in me to lead this office, and I am very thankful for that”, shared Mr Jeremy Denisty.

Favorite Book

Made to Stick by Chip & Dan Heath

Future Roadmap

Jeremy Denisty is focused on building a niche boutique consulting firm with exceptional people, delivering unparalleled quality of work. He believes in changing the way consulting has been done for the last 50 years.

Besides, in the coming 3 years, he would also like to open a pro-bono vertical with a dedicated team, helping social and purposeful entrepreneurs & businesses to grow in the region.

Awards & Milestones

Jeremy proudly shared, The first book, Written and published by our Founding Partners, “Digital Transformation: A model to master digital disruption” (2012) is an international bestseller sold in more than 55 countries.

And, Scopernia’s Founding Partner, Jo Caudron’s last book “The World is Round: An optimistic master plan for the transformation of business and society” (2020) has won a Management Book of the Year award.

It was published the day the lockdown started, and it appeared most transformations that he had thought of for the next 10 years happened in 10 days because of COVID.

A Piece of Advice for Female Entrepreneurs

Reach out and get in touch with female entrepreneurs that are a bit further in the journey. Don’t go at it alone, there are many brilliant entrepreneurs out there, reach out, get support, share your ideas, listen to others that have done it, don’t be afraid to ask for help.

Favourite Quote

“A plan without execution is the slowest route to victory. Execution without a plan is the noise before defeat.”– Sun Tzu

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.

Soleadify: Providing Honest and Dependable Data to Automate B2B Processes

With the intent of providing firmographic and technographic data on SMBs, Soleadify was Co-founded by Florin Tufan in 2018. Previously Florin was the Chief Product Officer at T-Me Studios, which is one of the largest mobile app publishers in Europe. Florin has been working in tech for the past 10 years, in various roles: sales, business, marketing, and product. He completed his Bachelor’s degree from Academia de Studii Economice din București, and Marketing from IAA School.

By leveraging the most modern AI and ML technologies, Soleadify constantly crawls the internet to produce 50+ data points on 70M+ companies from around the world. The firm’s clients usually integrate its APIs to streamline internal processes in industries like SMB lending, insurance, management consulting but the firm also has multiple partners in the financials technologies space that use its APIs to build new features in their existing products, features that make use of Soledify’s data enrichment capabilities and ESG data feeds for mid-market companies.

Helping Clients to Create Value

As a firm, Soleadify’s main goal is to focus on clear business outcomes, Florin has witnessed a lot of executives that push the use of AI tools just for the sake of the technology without questioning if that particular tool can bring value to the business.

Like many other geeky CEOs, Florin is also fascinated by innovative tools and use cases but, at the same time, as the leader of the company, doesn’t want to over-engineer Soleadify’s activities so it can be said that his main goal when considering new AI tools is to choose the one that aligns with the firm’s business objectives, help it create value for its customers and can be easily integrated into the existing workflows.

Emerging AI Trends

According to Florin, the future will see AI advancements in two very important and different niches;

NLP: One of the biggest emerging trends in AI is, of course, language modelling. A particularly difficult challenge in AI since language is intrinsically a very human concept that we “force” computers to adapt to. Florin and his team at Soleadify believe GPT-3 will have a significant impact on AI adoption since it opens the door to so many new use cases, particularly in the world of marketing. And this is where Soleadify fits as well, with more on the understanding rather than creating side, the firm’s ML models are trained to be able to understand the global business world at huge scale and speed.
Real-World Understanding with Advanced Computer Vision: AI is making it possible for driverless cars and heavy industry automation to heavily increase production speeds for the goods humans need.
The Use at Scale of Deep Neural Networks: AI is being used to automate the most repetitive decision-making processes across enterprises, allowing easier data interpretation when combining inputs from different and varied sources, such as text, images, and numerical business outcomes (e.g. revenue, order value).

When Covid Came as a Blessing in Disguise

Right after the first Covid outbreak, Soleadify used its NLP and big data capabilities to build a search engine for various medical supplies, which was used by thousands of companies in need.

For Soleadify’s specific niche, Covid-19 has been a blessing in disguise, because the pandemic accelerated digitalization for most businesses, especially for SMBs, which had 2 choices at the start of this pandemic, focus on your online presence or go bankrupt. With this shift, the firm experienced a substantial increase in business data that it could collect and sort.

From Florin’s knowledge, this influx of data happened all over the internet since the beginning of this pandemic, so anyone that’s in the AI industry can be more than thankful to have access to increasing volumes of valuable data, that eventually will be used to build more efficient models and tools.

Tackling Challenges and Getting Prepared for the Future

One of the specific challenges Soleadify is facing right now is company classifications at scale. The models it builds can accurately predict most types of businesses, but there are still edge cases for new emerging industries and companies, one good example would be blockchain companies that still don’t have a specific industry classification. Another issue that challenges Soleadify’s models is the language barrier, the firm’s goal is to collect data on businesses from all over the world, and right now it is trying to find creative solutions to increase its coverage in countries with emerging economies.

Florin says, “In the next years we want to explore new opportunities based on our core technical capabilities, I’m talking about AI-based data extraction, sorting, and delivery. Starting from that three main pillars our goal is to build tools that facilitate access to data about any business in the world.”

Some of these tools that Soleadify is planning to build are:

an open search engine for companies so that global company information is easily available online, at scale.
Launching a few free company data APIs to democratize the usage of company data.
Partnerships with major complementary players for data enrichment.
Launching a “market trends” offering, where Soleadify can use its data to publish insights on the dynamic business world that it studies.

aiconix: Offering B2B Solutions to Improve Productivity

Artificial Intelligence or AI is a term that describes a machine’s learning, reasoning, logic, creativity, and perception, which were once thought of as unique to humans but now replicated by machines and is used in every industry.

AI is a game-changer in all industries. Nowadays, the amount of data that is generated, by both humans and machines, far outpace humans’ ability to absorb, interpret, and make complex decisions based on that data. Artificial intelligence forms the basis for all machine learning and is the future of all complex decision-making. Today AI technology offers several critical benefits that make it an excellent tool for any modern organization. That’s not all, AI also allows organizations to make better-informed decisions, thus improving businesses by quite a few folds by increasing the speed and accuracy of decision-making processes.

It was on April 2018, when Eugen L. Gross, Co-founded aiconix, which enables its customers to enrich their audiovisual content to make it detectable, searchable, and usable.

aiconix currently offers B2B solutions that aim to improve productivity by providing customers simple and immediate access to the recent AI innovations.

An Creative Turned Entrepreneur

aiconix’s Co-founder and CEO, Eugen L. Gross, started his career as a camera assistant in Vienna and quickly became a cameraman for news when he moved to Berlin. In the 90s Eugen worked as an SNG operator and technical lead of an OB-van. But he was drawn back to the camera, shooting mainly live music and entertainment productions for TV. In the 2000s he became a partner of a TV production company in Cologne and produced a beautiful but very unsuccessful long-term documentary in Northern Germany where Eugen was a shareholder. In early 2010 he also worked as a producer and director before pursuing a master’s degree in media management and set the course for aiconix in 2016 with his master’s thesis.

Path Breaking Offerings

In an automated process, aiconix can enrich audio-visual content with metadata. Also with the auto-cataloging process, the search in the media archive according to certain parameters is very easy. With AI features such as face recognition, object localizer, or person tracking, one can search and process the AV content in many ways.

The organization also offers several speech-to-text solutions such as the automated transcription and subtitling of any audio or video file and live-video streams, which is important for companies who want to reach those who are deaf or hearing impaired and also help non-native speakers to better understand the content.

Additionally, as a part of the STADIEM acceleration program aiconix has set itself the goal of improving the automated recognition of Austrian dialects in audio-visual media. For this purpose, aiconix is training a language model that specializes in the recognition of Austrian dialects. The focus of the project is on the recognition of “Wiener-Standard-Deutsch” (Viennese Standard German), followed by other Austrian dialects, and the recognition of other dialects within Europe. This project has indirectly received funding from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme through the STADIEM project (Grant Agreement 957321).

aiconix’s customers are mainly media companies and digital asset management or content management software companies, but in general, all owners of the high volume of media content are potential customers such as educational institutions, Government, Healthcare providers, or Insurance companies.

A Life Changing Technology

As we all know AI is a game-changer in all industries. Nowadays the amount of generated data outpaces our ability to absorb, interpret, and make complex decisions based on that data. Artificial intelligence forms the basis for all machine learning and aiconix believes, it is the future of all complex decision-making.

AI technology offers several critical benefits that make it an excellent tool for any modern organization. Just a few examples: AI can automate a repetitive task that was previously done manually, it can make products and services smarter and more effective.

Additionally, this technology can also analyze data at a much faster rate than humans, allowing it to find patterns much more quickly, and to uncover patterns humans would simply miss. Simply put, Artificial Intelligence allows organizations to make better decisions, improving business processes by increasing the speed and the accuracy of decision-making processes.

Protecting Data and Privacy

When it comes to upcoming trends of AI, data privacy and ethics are the top focus. According to the organization, Multimodal models and federated learning are the next big things and will again speed up the possibilities it has. Multimodal AI is the ultimate convergence of computer vision and conversational AI models to deliver powerful scenarios closer to human perception. It takes AI inference to the next level, combining visual and speech modalities.

In machine learning, usually data that is aggregated from several devices and is brought together to a centralized server. Machine Learning algorithms, then grab this data and train and finally predicts results for new data generated. But this could become a “privacy nightmare”. The solution could be federated learning, which is a method of machine learning that enables individual devices to learn together using a common model. It enables the individual training of models on different, isolated data sets. Only these trained models, which no longer contain personal data, are then shared with each other. The devices send their respective models to a central server, which creates a single, combined model from them.

Preparing for a Bright Future

As an AI company, aiconix want to play a pivotal role in its market and strive for long-term customer relationships. The organization is agile and able to cope with the changes brought and driven by external factors. But most importantly, aiconix is always trying to drive change instead of responding to change. The organization’s goal is to bring (AI) solutions to the market and create a demand for it by relating its utility to the daily work of its customers. Therefore, the best way to become future-ready is to create the future.

AgroScout: Bringing Sustainable Farming Mainstream

Agricultural supply demand will grow by 60% (by 2050) according to FAO.Agriculture, unpredictable by nature, will struggle to supply quantities and consistency

With the intent to aim for ‘zero hunger’ and sustainable farming AgroScout AgTech was founded in 2017 in Israel. The firm offers unique crop intelligence to support processor supply in real-time, to more accurately plan processing and manufacturing operations across regions and growers.

The company helps suppliers of fresh produce and food production companies to transform their supply chain and improve margins with greater visibility and data driven insights. The deep learning algorithms of Agroscout solutions are based on artificial intelligence in order to enable an efficient detection, identification, and monitoring of crop throughout the whole year. The system inputs data from different sources aerial , satellite and plant level.

AgroScout is dedicated to Leverage Supply Chain Insights to maximize the productivity and efficiency of the entire agro production operation to produce actionable reports with supply insights.

The Steadfast Leader

Simcha Shore is the CEO, and founder of AgroScout AgTech company seeking to impact global food security with and AI helping agro industry make informed and better decisions and grow more with less. Simcha brings vast experience leading development projects in information systems, remote sensing, image processing, AI, and drones.

Innovative Services

Our current food systems are not sustainable for either the planet or the market. AgroScout solutions based on AI reduce agricultural waste and improves food production efficiencies in order to help conserve global resources, bringing more value to growers, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers, and making food manufacturing more resource-efficient , and sustainable than ever before.

Dedicated to developing advanced technology for crop monitoring in order to boost Supply Chain and Production Efficiency AgroScout has launched its dedicated platforms :

Web App: The robust data architecture and AI engine process the real-time data of tens of thousands of crops and farms lines globally. Constantly optimizing end-to-end solution and offering highly specialized supply chain optimization and intelligence.
The WebApp with AI reporting and analysis platform generates an internal report with comprehensive and informed insights geolocation of all abnormalities found in the crop. With a dashboard enterprise AgroScout is aggregating data and insights from leaf level to field level to enterprise level to better supply and procurement decisions generating real-time actionable insights, and getting smarter and more personalized with every new signal.
AgroScout Sky: The AgroScout solutions are accompanied by mission planning intelligent support with Skyapp where a user will apply autopilot flight patterns. To get a informed insights for procurement and sustainability areas, one needs an auto scouting app.
AgroScout mobile App: The mobile app is a complement of the webapp and get all the insights on the go. Just like any other road navigation app, this app helps its users to navigate each infected location. This mobile app provides an additional level of agronomy services in the field, which eventually helps to detect pests and diseases in real-time, monitor the crop and view based on layers satellite, aerial or plant level. The mobile app also has a live option of Consulting to an Expert, which provides additional support via direct chat within the app for spotting irregualrites and asking for recommendations.

Helping Farmers to Increase Yield

AgroScout’s platform brings simple-to-operate and easy-to-understand technology to Maximise commercial opportunities with insights and analtics designed to offer food & beverage companies comprehensive and informed insights.

With the AgroScout platform, win and maintain contracts with more accurate forecasting and a and a better quality of service and you dont have to maintain or install any complex infrastructure, thus keeping investment to a bare minimum. The organization also offers variable pricing plans to give the much-needed flexibility.

With the ability to have leaf-level detection and see GPS-tagged images to locate and navigate directly to individual plants or areas, now agronomists and procurement teams can target areas that need to be treated and, more importantly, determine the best type of treatment to implement. Information provided by the AgroScout software will eventually enable food industry to reduce the number of pesticide or fungicide applications and use fewer resources in a sustainable way for future generations.

Increased Support for Farmers

Recently, AgroScout has announced that it has acquired the assets of TerrAvion, which is a market leader in imagery data management for agriculture. The acquisition adds to AgroScout a higher-resolution agriculture imagery capabilities and agro data artificial intelligence for a wide variety of crops. With this acquisition, both the clients of AgroScout and TerrAvion will be able to access a powerful combination of aerial and satellite imagery products and precision agriculture services for their fields.

Effects of the Pandemic

Simcha believes AI space helps AgroScout to work with developers and specialists globally in further developing its capabilities. As AgroScout is a SaaS-based company utilizing AWS cloud to collect and analyze data via AI. It is providing the firm right speed to help all its customers. Covid-19 had extended the outreach to professionals on a global scale that contributes to AgroScout’s software development.

Satisfied Clients

“Easy to use and easy to operate, AgroScout could change everything about my day-to-day with insects, diseases, and viruses.”– Alexandre Dzierwa, Grower and Agronomist Dzierwa Group, Licensed Pepsico Grower.

“I have over 35 years of experience in professional counseling for Yir’on Agrobusiness , Israel, preventing, detecting, and monitoring pests and diseases for a variety of crops. Yir’on has about 20 fields with a total area of 240 hectares. Without a doubt, I have found the use of drone and the AgroScout software very friendly, especially with its ability to get up-to-date reliable information on a much larger scale in a shorter amount of time.”– Mirit Shulman, Chief Inspector, field crops, Yir’on Agrobusiness.

“I have been a professional crop advisor for the last 25 years. As soon as I started using the AgroScout Platform, I realized how this technology is going to change my work. For example, in just 20 minutes, I can scout an area that would have taken me 3-4 hours by foot- and I would have sampled less than a tenth of the number of the plants.”– Amon Fried, Agronomist and Field Crop Inspector.

A Unique Firm

Driven by unique Crop-Intelligence & made to improve agricultural supply-confidence, planability & sustainability for the food processing industry.

AgroScout is an agro analytic platform empowering crop monitoring that collects user-generated data to create timely analytics providing actionable insights.

However, AgroScout has seen its share of ups and downs as, Simcha says, “The main challenges we faced were collecting data, tagging data as biological data are very challenging.”

Although the firm aspires to be a future leader in the sustainability factor, as Simcha says, “We aim to be part of and have a positive impact on global food security and sustainability.”

Lexis Serot: A Thought-Provoking Leader, Humanitarian, and a Doting Mother Setting New Benchmarks

A path-breaking leader, Lexis Serot is driven by a passion for transforming lives and providing life-changing experiences. She is spearheading the motto of Collaborating, Empowering, Supporting, and Protecting others through her organization, LittleWins.

She is the Founder and a model leader at a young, rapidly growing organization. Her vision of leadership is about setting an example and leading a unique path to achieve desired purposes and goals.

“The reason I started LittleWins is a huge part of who I am today. I wanted to tell my daughter that when life presented an “at-bat” I swung like hell. With my daughter, I saw firsthand how difficult it was to access the proper care and equipment that could enable her to reach her fullest potential. Every detail of LittleWins has been carefully designed, with compassion, respect, and love for this community.”

A Ground-Breaking Leader

Lexis is well versed in the care, therapies, and equipment that help her daughter – and people with a range of abilities. She has navigated a frustratingly complex system that leaves people with disabilities and their families feeling isolated and alone. Understanding the need of the hour and being shocked by the disparities that, limit many people’s access to durable medical equipment, she decided to address this problem by founding her company.

Based on her experiences, interactions, and an “unrelenting desire to make a change,” Lexis began laying the groundwork for LittleWins in 2018. The name is personal and relatable to her community because every progress milestone for a person with disabilities is a little win for them and their family.

All About LittleWins

One in six children and one in four adults in the U.S. have a physical, developmental, behavioral, or sensory impairment. Most can’t afford the durable medical equipment they need or wait months for insurance companies to approve it.

Lexis believes that access to equipment and supplies should be simple. The mom of four, including a daughter who has cerebral palsy, founded LittleWins.com to connect and support people with disabilities and individuals who actively work to provide a better quality of life for others.

LittleWins.com harnesses the power of the community to help its members buy, sell or donate medical equipment, get information, and connect with others. Members list and browse equipment by category and location on the company’s website. They connect directly with buyers and sellers through the site’s app. They share tips, experiences, and advice on LittleWins’ social pages.

“People with disabilities deserve to say, ‘there is nothing I’m not worthy of.’ LittleWins goes to bat for every one of them,” says Lexis.

Since 2018, Lexis has continually adapted the LittleWins.com website with web and e-commerce developers. She directs a marketing assistant and marketing communications agency. She works closely with her legal and financial advisors. She collaborates with regional and national organizations that support people with disabilities. She partners with other entrepreneurs, who offer products and services to her community. She created and posts regularly on LittleWins’ online support forum, receiving and providing feedback to help people with disabilities and the families that support them live their best lives.

Coming Together for fulfilling a Bigger Purpose

Lexis is a passionate advocate and cheerleader of the work of national and local organizations that serve people with disabilities. She works with durable medical equipment suppliers such as NuMotion to identify used equipment that can fulfill the needs of LittleWins community members. She connects regularly with other entrepreneurs – such as Communikind founder Cimeran Kapur– and promotes their services on LittleWins.

She joined forces with another woman entrepreneur, Hotsy Totsy Haus CEO Christi Leonardi, a deaf single mother, to create LittleWins-branded, natural ingredient bath bombs, that are now being sold, on the LittleWins website.

Lexis regularly works with NuMotion, National Seating & Mobility, the Cerebral Palsy Foundation, and Clearbrook.org, which empowers adults and children with intellectual and developmental disabilities to live their fullest lives possible.

Building a Resourceful Community

Lexis’s relentless efforts to build an online community of people with disabilities have paid huge dividends. More than 6,000 followers now visit LittleWins.Facebook and Instagram pages; and 800+ visitors go to the LittleWins website every week. To date, LittleWins.com’s 7,500 + community members have donated, purchased, or exchanged more than 200 pieces of equipment. They also exchange experiences and advice daily on the site’s secure messaging app.

The Team LittleWins “Empowering Communities and Smashing Stereotypes” Private Facebook Group. Now 400 members strong, the Group, led by Lexis, is a platform for families and people with disabilities to share their stories, provide advice and experiences on products and services and provide mutual encouragement.

After launching LittleWins.com in 2019, Lexis began to explore how the site could serve her community’s needs beyond durable medical equipment. To build the LittleWins brand, she launched a line of LittleWins apparel – beanies, trucker hats, and t-shirts.

The LittleWins blog and podcast feature educational posts, stories about her clients, inspirational leaders in the disability movement, interviews with durable medical equipment and adaptive technology experts, and more.

Lexis continually mines feedback from the company’s surveys and emails that can inform how it can create (or support) solutions to common challenges for people with disabilities. She is preparing to launch a medical supply subscription box program that will provide people with disabilities and their families exactly the right supplies they need, when and how they need them.

Combined, these initiatives are raising awareness of LittleWins’ mutually-supportive community, and the used durable medical equipment items that are available on LittleWins.com

The Big Wins of LittleWins

During the past year, Lexis launched two new projects, with a third about to launch. LittleWins teamed up with Dine-It-4ward to raise money for the Cerebral Palsy Foundation.

LittleWins sponsors events that, support services for people with disabilities, such as the abilities Expo, Virtual Run/Walk of Clearbrook, a leader in creating innovative opportunities, services, and support for people with disabilities; Farm Fresh Food Bank, The Kids Equipment Network, and front line responders. She also put together the first-ever music festival to accommodate people with disabilities this past summer.

She’s donated hospital beds to people who needed them during the start of stay-at-home orders. For this effort, Lexis Serot took out an ad to reach people who had hospital beds but no longer needed them. She picked the beds up from each donor’s home, disinfected them, and delivered them to people who needed them.

Lexis Serot gives virtual shout-outs to companies that actively support people with disabilities through their product marketing and hiring practices. She shares stories of LittleWins community members and their loved ones.

In 2021, Lexis Serot was named a Top 100 Healthcare Visionaries by the International Forum on Advancements in Healthcare, previously known as the Smart Health Conference. She has been asked to be a keynote speaker at this year’s conference, to be held in Dubai. LittleWins was also awarded honorable mentions, by Fast Company’s 2021 World-Changing Ideas.

Lexis’s Ultimate Vision

In addition to her day-to-day leadership of LittleWins.com and full-time care of her four young children, Lexis’s entrepreneurial spirit, drive, and relentless pursuit of growth for LittleWins.com are rooted in her desire to help others. Her deep belief in the unique service she’s created, her ability to tell her personal story, and her talent for connecting with people who share her vision and journey.

She believes that community-based models – supportive online villages like LittleWins – can re-unite everyone to solve shared challenges, reach common goals, and make sure everyone has an equal shot at success. Through the COVID-19 pandemic, she has used the power of online communication to tell the stories of her customers and her community.

The Road Ahead

Lexis Serot envisions a world that values people of all abilities – a world that actively supports their right to the help, equipment, and services that help them achieve their full potential. She reckons that everyone’s attitudes toward people with disabilities are improving, she believes – pointing to companies whose policies and practices support workplace equality. “But we still have a long way to go,” she notes. “We must celebrate and tap into our differences on a much broader level.”

Lexis Serot exemplifies leadership in 2022 – an entrepreneur in evolution who derives satisfaction from helping others – and continually finds new ways to serve them a better and brighter future. She has even launched version 3 of the LittleWins website at the beginning of this year. This version update was spearheaded by the community and what they wanted to see from LittleWins and how it could be better. The latest update includes a premium membership which allows members a fixed shipping rate through FedEx and the ability to print their labels at home.