With the adoption of technologies, businesses and industries are undergoing digital transformation. Due to technological advancements, AI is becoming an integral part of the digital transformation process. The use of AI technology is estimated to grow up at USD 98 billion by 2023 according to the reports of IDC and Gartner predicts that the global spending on AI will be 3 folds in the next 5 years. By uncovering the AI potential and deploying them in business, practices will lead to the rise of adoption. It is anticipated that customers will prefer products that are easy to deploy and give a very high ROI. This increased adoption will contribute to making AI the new norm of the business world. Sankha Muthu Poruthotage (Co-Founder and CEO of Linear Squared) believes that collaborative intelligence will play a vital role in upgrading the AI performance. He says, “Collaborative Intelligence is the key to this, if AI can be made more creative, applicable and accessible across many industries and it will no longer be viewed as a technology of the elite.”
Sankha and his founding partners Rajith Munasinghe (Co-Founder and CMO), and Mohit Pande (Co-Founder and Senior Vice President) understood the potential of Collaborative Intelligence a long time ago and thus established Linear Squared with a vision to deliver ready to use AI and ML-driven products that convert data to proactive actions. The founders sensed that offering a combined Machine learning and Big Data solutions for the mass consumption could make this tech familiar even for the non-technical users. Sankha further explained, “To draw a parallel from the PC industry, during early days personal computing meant assembling several components such as display units, keyboards, and motherboards on your own. It was limited to technical uses until Apple II came along. We felt that Machine Learning was at a similar stage!”
Innovative Suite of Products
Linear Squared is an innovative tech company specialized in building products that deliver ready-to-action insights using Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies for businesses across multiple industries. Its products leverage on Machine learning and Deep Learning algorithms that enable these products to achieve both scale and accuracy. The SaaS product is cost-effective as it leads to paying per usage model which makes it affordable to many companies. Also, these products are easily deployable across industries because the companies can train their own data and customize it to capture industry specifics.
These innovative suites of products comprise, FORECAST2, this is a highly scalable, multi-variant forecasting solution that allows users to build 1000s of forecasting models in just 05 minutes. Also, CAPACITY2 which is the world’s first Artificial Intelligence-driven sewing planning assistant for the apparel industry.
Proficient Leader and a Self-Motivated Team
Where the products in the market juggle between either scale or accuracy, Linear Squared products achieve both scale and accuracy without compromising one another. The team of Linear Squared ensures that the products deliver the user the ability to build 1000s of models whilst considering a multitude of influencing variables. This team is under the leadership of Sankha who has managed to deliver the best products to the customers. Sankha, along with Rajith and Mohit, looks over the operations of the company. However, primarily Sankha heads the product development. He holds a Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of Connecticut, USA. He specializes in classification techniques using both parametric models and Machine Learning algorithms, regression and GLM models, clustering and segmentation techniques, survival models, changes point detection, and sequential techniques.
As a leader, the responsibilities are never-ending and sometimes the role gets overwhelming, however, Sankha enjoys his role in product development. He gets to be the part of fun debates with the team members, like with the Data Science team on algorithms, with engineering teams on Software Architecture, with Rajith and Mohit on the product strategies.
Currently, as pandemic has forced the businesses to work from remote locations, it becomes tough to communicate and understand further strategies. Times like these demand a leader that can motivate the team and push them forward. Nevertheless, Sankha states that it is opposite in Linear Squared as it’s the employees they draw motivation from. The team comprises young teammates thus they are self-motivated. This runs a positive attitude throughout the work ecosystem. “I draw a lot of inspiration and motivation from them! Not the other way around. I would like to think it’s a combination of culture and the kind of work that we get to do,” conclude Sankha.
Unprecedented Challenges of Pandemic
The unprecedented effect of the pandemic has created chaos in many business operations. It led to an irrational buying pattern, which was not something the retail customers had experienced before. The panic amongst individual surged the rise in purchasing goods. For years, Linear Squared has brought together cutting-edge technology and native industry understanding to aid data-backed strategic decision-making and execution. However, in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis the biggest challenge the team faced was not being able to stimulate such an event due to the lack of data related to such behavior. Sankha said, “We were not able to build models to capture such a scenario.”
However, the team of Linear Squared has managed to turn this crisis into an opportunity and currently is working with customers to train ML models using data from other indicators, which can reflect consumer behavior during these times. The pandemic has opened up new opportunities for the retail industry, especially for online grocers. Also, many of its clients have recorded a surge in demand and benefits. Change of events has shed light on the importance of better forecasting and inventory management. Apart from this, the healthcare and pharmaceutical industry are being digitally transformed due to customer demand. Keeping up with the demand Linear Squared is updated with the requirements and upgrading products accordingly.
Linear Squared has always been innovating and experimenting with its products. Recently, FORECAST2 had a major release and in the coming months, the team plans to launch new modules of FORECAST2. Sankha believes that start-ups have a rich appetite for risk-taking, he concludes his statement by saying, “Funnily enough, start-ups are more than willing to launch new things than more established organizations. Sometimes I feel we have to launch less and persevere more.”
Essential Elements for Business
Through the years, Sankha has been benefitted with the rich industry experience and has helped him establish a leading AI solution provider company like Linear Squared. According to him, a successful business needs to have many elements aligned like the product, pricing, distribution, marketing and branding, teammates, etc. All of these elements need to align properly which requires a continuous tweak and measure them to get them fine-tuned. This process requires time and effort, which makes patience and hard work the key here.
Sankha further advises that one can rarely get these elements fine-tuned through money thus the focus should be on getting them right. Start from the simple and solve a narrow problem at first. Understand the process of fine-tuning these elements through that narrow solution. By tackling these elements and fine-tuning them accurately will prepare the entrepreneurs for the bigger challenges set ahead in the journey.
