Conversations on AI

The path to knowing how to build the next generation of products goes through understanding the methodology used by the world's largest brands to capture the consumer imagination through their offering. So who better to unveil the way than Sriram Krishnan, the man behind products for Facebook, Twitter, and Snapchat 

From working on mobile ads and products for Facebook, Snapchat to running consumer products on Twitter, Sriram Krishnan opens up on his experience with technology products and why mental models are critical for people to start trusting Artificial Intelligence.

This engaging discussion also captures:

• The Facebook journey behind Mobile advertising, monetization and personalized ads
• Building sophisticated Machine Learning models for mobile
• AI-based recommendations
• Product Innovation

Speakers:

Sriram Krishnan
Product Leader, Investor, Advisor
Sriram Krishnan is an experienced product leader and investor. For 2017-2019, he lead products on Twitter's core product teams. 
He is also an active investor/advisor in several early-stage companies in the US and in India. Sriram previously ran various mobile ad products for Snap and Facebook. 

Aakrit Vaish
Co-Founder & CEO, Haptik
Aakrit Vaish is the Co-Founder & CEO of Haptik, one of the world’s largest conversational AI companies. He started the company in 2013 and lead it to a successful strategic investment with Reliance Industries in 2019 in a $100 million transaction. Aakrit invests in startups and has been a part of the Entrepreneur 35 Under 35 and Business World 40 Under 40 List

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Haptik is an artificial intelligence company powering conversational assistants for brands to transform customer experiences. The platform has enabled over 300 virtual assistants, reaching close to 100 million devices and processing over 3 billion end customer interactions. Haptik is backed by Reliance Industries, a $100 Billion+ conglomerate, with close to 500 million customers.

As COVID-19 engulfed the world, the need for medical services and medicines went through a sea change. On one hand, the world was grappling with the immediate need for COVID-related health infrastructure. The pandemic has lent a sudden push to the e-pharmacies business in India.

To understand the sector and the impact of technology in this booming business, Bruce Schwack from Netmeds.com joined us for a free-wheeling discussion.

With the evolution of online pharmacy to an online care system, Bruce has witnessed the little pharmacy turn into a Walgreen superstore. Customers are driven to online pharmacies which have turned into a health & wellness superstore. Watch this interaction to understand what he thinks about the segment and the role that Netmeds will play in shaping this Industry.

This discussion focuses on:
The online-offline pharmacy collaboration
The disruption in the pharmaceutical supply chain due to Covid-19
Exceptional customer service via digital transformation
Voice technology and its impact in this segment

Speakers:

Bruce Schwack
Director of Communications & Chief Customer Experience Officer, Netmeds.com
Bruce has developed and managed customer service centers for multiple brands throughout the world, including more than 50 centers throughout India. He has resided in Chennai since 2008. 

Priyanka Ahuja
VP, Customer Success Jio Haptik
Priyanka comes to us from London Business School prior to which she has been part of the Indian startup ecosystem in the zero to one journey of Chai Point and Uber Eats India.
At Uber Eats, she was responsible for launching the restaurant marketplace in Bangalore. At Chai Point, she was the first female member of the core team and also the youngest Business Head. She wore multiple hats - built the B2B arm of the business ground-up while scaling it to become a key revenue driver of the business

The increasing focus of companies on cost reduction and improving efficiency accelerated the growth of AI in the fintech market. Artificial Intelligence in fintech is allowing organizations to reduce their cost, automate their procedure and decrease the possibilities of mistakes.

Dinis Guarda specializes in the crossroad between strategy, ideas, business, poetry, technology, and how 4IR, AI, Fintech, digital transformation, and blockchain are changing humanity. With his expertise and host Vikram Kamath's experience, this interaction covers a rainbow of topics right from fraud detection to touchless transactions and so much more. 

This discussion shines the spotlight on:

AI in the BFSI services sector
Investing in people to ensure execution of technology-first processes
Increasing levels of automation
Digital priorities for businesses in the financial services industry

Dinis Guarda
Author | Founder | Creator | Youtuber | Influencer

Dinis Guarda is committed to researching, creating ideas and solutions for the future of society, businesses, and organizations and how to advance with Technology IP, solutions, strategies, action education, thought leadership in #smartcities #digitaltransformation #AI #blockchain #Fintech #society5.0 #4IR #future.

As the author of books, and Top 1-10 Global Influencers/Thought Leader, he writes and reflects on the challenges of humanity and our cities and organizations.

As an influencer,  he has gained recognition by institutions such as thinkers360, Cointelegraph, crypto weekly.co/100/, Forbes, and others.

He has a combined social media presence that reaches directly 500,000+ active data - communities across Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube.

Vikram Kamath
Director of Product, Jio Haptik

Vikram has 14+ years of experience and joined Jio Haptik from Amazon where he was a Product Lead responsible for launching new products in the North American market. He has led a team of 25+ members at Amazon and his latest product is on the path to making $500M in revenue in the next 2-3 years

Vikram has worn multiple hats which are important to make a product successful & looks after product strategy, operations, commerce & more at Hapti

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Haptik is an artificial intelligence company powering conversational assistants for brands to transform customer experiences. The platform has enabled over 100 virtual assistants, reaching close to 100 million devices and processing over 3 billion end customer interactions. Haptik is backed by Reliance Industries, a $100 Billion+ conglomerate, with close to 500 million customers. 

Dennis has supported global brands like McDonald's, FedEx, AT&T, Starbucks, Wells Fargo in their customer experience journey.

He is also Co-Founder of a unique initiative called the 'Customer Experience Factory'

Technology is a key enabler for customer experience. Today organizations rely on technology to understand customers better, provide quicker resolutions, empower better & personalized interactions, and proactively engage for both, sales and support.

Hence when it came down to the changing landscape of CX, we spoke to Dennis Wakabayashi who is helping businesses improve the CX marketing of their organization by introducing the best solutions available along with the latest technology innovations.

Dennis is known for delivering enterprise-level Customer Experience solutions for brands around the world with a focus on the integration of traditional and digital marketing practices to create Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV). Watch this interaction to deep dive into the changing world of CX.

This discussion focuses on:

Optimizing the digital roadmap

• Artificial Intelligence & subsequent impact 
• Customer experience & the penetration of voice technology
• Key areas of CX to reduce marketing operational costs

Dennis Wakabayashi

VP of CX Implementation, RR Donnelley | Top 50 (CX) experts of the decade🎤

Dennis Wakabayashi is the VP of the world’s 7th largest marketing solutions company where he is responsible for the strategy and execution of integrated marketing also known as customer experience (CX) for Fortune 500 companies.

In May 2020 he was named a top CX expert of the decade and ranks among the top 150 cx influencers globally.

He regularly hosts/MCs marketing industry events, appears on international podcasts and is a renowned public speaker, author, and educator. He has more than 50,000 social media followers and is dedicated to empathy, collaboration, and growth for customers and brands. 

To reach out to Dennis Wakabayashi,

 Visit: www.denniswakabayashi.com

Alex Fields

Director, Market Development Jio Haptik

Alex Fields is Director of Market Development for North America at Haptik. He is focused on expanding the North American business through partnerships with both channel partners and tech partners. Alex most recently worked in strategy at the world's largest blockchain company. Prior to that, he worked as a strategy consultant

In order for the business and the customer experience (CX) to change, people have to change & stories act as the catalyst in facilitating this change.

Stories - The catalyst that drives change is what motivates our host to deliver an exceptional experience to his customers

According to research from IDC, 34% of companies believe they’ll fully adopt digital transformation within 12 months or less. How does that alter customer experience? Is AI really going to alter the entire CX landscape as we know it? Questions galore and we have the perfect guest to answer them all.

With over 3 decades of experience, Mike Wittenstein brings us a unique way to look at the amalgamation of customers and technology. Our host, Aaron Shagrin with over 2 decades in global sales & business development has Mike on the hot seat for a really interactive and informative session.

This discussion focuses on:

• How do stories paint a feasible picture of the future?
• Is AI improving customer experience?
• The leadership transformation towards customer experience
• Customer success assisted by technology

Mike Wittenstein
Founder | Managing Partner | Business Strategist | Executive Coach @storyminers.com

Mike has been helping leaders craft and execute strategies that increase and sustain their competitive advantage. A lifetime of diverse global experiences has taught him how to kindly ask tough questions, translate clients’ words into stories, and express business strategies as customer and employee experiences.

To reach out to Mike Wittenstein,

• Visit: www.storyminers.com
• Ask: www.storyminers.com/yama
• Email: [email protected]

Aaron Shagrin
General Manager, North America Jio Haptik

Aaron Shagrin is Senior Vice President of Revenue & Partnerships for North America at Haptik. He brings over 20 years of experience in global sales, business development, product management, and corporate strategy at multiple startups, Fortune 500 companies, and investment firms. Most recently, Mr. Shagrin was General Manager at Evolv Technologies, AI and ML-powered conversion optimization SaaS platform company

Did you know that our guest Dan Gingiss is the author of The Experience Maker (September 2021) and Winning at Social Customer Care!

He also hosts the Experience This! Show podcast and The Experience Maker Show.

During the pandemic, consumers have moved dramatically toward online channels, and companies and industries have responded in turn. Digital adoption has taken a quantum leap. With customers rapidly interacting with digital channels, businesses are adopting technology at a faster pace than expected.

Hence when it came down to reimagining CX, we approached Dan Gingiss who has over 20-years of experience in delighting customers. From technology to marketing and AI, this conversation between Dan and Alex really dwells on the shift in customer experience.

As Dan Gingiss says, "When you create a remarkable experience for your customers, they become your best marketers". 

This discussion focuses on: 

• Customer experience trends that are meant to stand the test of time
• Brands that are the epitome of amazing customer experience
• His upcoming book - The Experience Maker
• Artificial Intelligence & its ability to personalize and customize interactions

 Dan Gingiss
Keynote Speaker🎤| Customer Experience Coach🙋🏻‍♂️| Author📖| Podcaster🎧

Dan Gingiss is an international keynote speaker and customer experience coach who believes that a remarkable customer experience is your best marketing strategy. His 20-year professional career spanned multiple disciplines including customer experience, marketing, social media, and customer service. He held leadership positions at McDonald’s, Discover, and Humana.

He earned a B.A. in psychology and communications from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. in marketing from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

To reach out to Dan Gingiss, Visit: www.improvemycx.com 
Find out more about his upcoming book, 'The Experience Maker'

Alex Fields
Director, Market Development Jio Haptik

Alex Fields is Director of Market Development for North America at Haptik. He is focused on expanding the North American business through partnerships with both channel partners and tech partners. Alex most recently worked in strategy at the world's largest blockchain company. Prior to that, he worked as a strategy consultant

With more than 15 years of experience in Artificial Intelligence, Kapil Bardeja opens up about building AI-powered products, enterprise analytics, and the OKEAN platform with host Akshay Kulkarni, Product Manager, Jio Haptik and sheds light on how AI helped keep their business agile during the pandemic.

Analytics? It is hard to imagine its impact on our day-to-day lives but they play a critical role.  This week's guest comes from an agile organization that leveraged its AI expertise to diversify its product portfolio when the pandemic struck.

The conversation focuses on:

• The experience in building their OKEAN platform for Covid, hygiene, and health-specific analytics 
• The evolution of smart city analytics over the last decade
• The future of AI with respect to customer privacy
• Computer vision and its impact across verticals

Kapil Bardeja
Co-Founder & CEO, Vehant Technologies

Kapil Bardeja is the Chief Executive Officer, co-founder, and a member of the Board of Directors of Vehant Technologies. He is responsible for the overall business strategies and operations of the organization. Mr. Kapil founded Vehant after a successful stint in Mckinsey & Co. He brings with him vast knowledge and experience of 17 years as a senior business leader in the S&M domain and Marketing Research. He holds a Masters's degree in management from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi

Siri, Alexa, Google Assistant - They have redefined the way we interact with voice technology while becoming household names in the process. In fact, you’re likely to have a higher recall for these brand-names than you would for your neighbor’s name!

• Voice-based shopping will rise to US$40 billion in 2022
• 27% of the global online population is using voice search on mobile
• By 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice-activated

 All these statistics deduce one conclusion -The impact of AI-powered voice technology is growing at a rapid pace.

So what is causing this shift towards audio and how is Artificial Intelligence contributing to this?

 In this discussion, you will learn about:

• How AI-powered voice technology will alter consumer search behavior
• The key to Brand Interaction & Customer Experience
• Smart living through integration with day to day products
• Access to vernacular voice technology

Presented by

Niraj Ruparel
Head of Mobile & Emerging Tech, GroupM

Niraj Ruparel heads Mobility and Emerging Tech at Groupm India. He has vast experience in mobile marketing, Voice Marketing, consumer platforms, brand communications, and marketing analytics. He has been recognized as one of the top 40 rising talents in Asia Pacific by Campaign Asia Pacific. Niraj has also been named in the list of top 25 Mobile Marketing Leaders in the country by World Mobile Congress

Host: Pratyush Kukreja
Head, Enterprise Sales & Marketing, Haptik

Pratyush Kukreja heads Enterprise Sales for India and MEA at Haptik. He comes with extensive experience as a founder at two startups, working with PE and VC funds and multi-industry exposure. He has done his Masters from Indian School of Business, Hyderabad, and has had stints across the US, Malaysia and India

While rethinking the customer strategy, we came across a very unique thought process on service. There are two sides to service: the outcome and the experience. Outcomes are quantitative while the experience side is qualitative. 

To make the experience side distinctively memorable and likely to create a compelling story, it takes innovative people, aided by great technology, with a laser focus on the customer and their unique aspirations. Innovative people typically come from cultures led by leaders who are effective at inspiring, encouraging, coaching, mentoring, supporting, etc. Customer-centric strategies must include support of the cultural side of the enterprise, not just its tools.

This free-wheeling discussion with Dr. Bell is all about that experience. The author of the best-selling book, Inside your Customer's Imagination takes us on his journey of creating a profound customer experience while highlighting how customer-centric strategies must include support of the culture side of the enterprise and not just its tools.

This discussion shines the spotlight on:

• The impact of digital transformation on businesses
• The effects of Personalization
• The conversation around Artificial Intelligence
• The idea behind his best-selling book 

Dr. Chip R. Bell
Senior Partner at the Chip Bell Group | Keynote Speaker | Best-selling Author

Chip has served as keynote speaker, consultant, and trainer on innovative service to such major organizations as GE, Microsoft, Nationwide, Marriott, Lockheed-Martin, Cadillac, etc. He has been ranked in the top 10 best speakers in the world on customer service by Global Gurus for the seventh year in a row.

The author of 24 books, Chip's newest book, "Inside Your Customer's Imagination: 5 Secrets to Creating Breakthrough Products, Services, and Solutions,” was released in the fall of 2020. He has appeared live on CNBC, CNN, Fox Business Network, Bloomberg TV, NPR, ABC, and his work has been featured in Fortune, Businessweek, Forbes & more eminent publications. You can know more about him at chipbell.com/

Teja Edara
Senior Manager (US/EU), Customer Success, Jio Haptik

Teja is an experienced customer success manager with a focus on net retention and driving growth. He has also been a successful founder in the past building products/platforms in conversational AI, digital marketplaces, and e-commerce. Currently, Teja is a Sr Customer Success manager with Haptik and manages Haptik’s customers in the North America and EU region

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Haptik is an artificial intelligence company powering conversational assistants for brands to transform customer experiences. The platform has enabled over 100 virtual assistants, reaching close to 100 million devices and processing over 3 billion end customer interactions. Haptik is backed by Reliance Industries, a $100 Billion+ conglomerate, with close to 500 million customers.

A recent McKinsey survey of global companies found that as of 2020, only 15% of respondents “are scaling automation techniques across multiple parts of their business.” So, even though the last few years have forced organizations to adopt new technology, there is still a significant blue sky for leaders when it comes to AI and how it can help them drive business decisions.

Yet the adoption of AI & related technologies is set to witness a seismic shift across industry verticals. Our guest, Babak Hodjat highlights the importance and advancement of technology in today's day & age. 

Babak with all his expertise in the field of natural language processing, machine learning, genetic algorithms, distributed AI, and more, discusses a host of issues with Aaron Shagrin. 

This discussion focuses on:

• The recent developments in AI
• The disruption caused by generative language models like GPT-3
• The debate around ethics & privacy in AI
• Possibilities around Self-learning AI
• Cognizant's push in advancing AI across multiple industries

 
In this interaction, Babak talks about the Pandemic Response AI System which illustrates the non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPIs) that the AI generates for different countries and regions over time and their predicted effect. Click on the link to access this demo - https://evolution.ml/demos/npidashboard/

Babak Hodjat
CTO for AI, Cognizant

Babak Hodjat is the CTO for AI at Cognizant where he leads a team of developers and researchers bringing advanced AI solutions to businesses. Babak is the former co-founder and CEO of Sentient, responsible for the core technology behind the world’s largest distributed artificial intelligence system. Babak was also the founder of the world's first AI-driven hedge fund, Sentient Investment Management. Babak is a serial entrepreneur, having started a number of Silicon Valley companies as the main inventor and technologist.

Babak has published many papers in the fields of Artificial Life, Agent-Oriented Software Engineering, and Distributed Artificial Intelligence, and has 31 granted or pending patents to his name. He is an expert in numerous fields of AI, including natural language processing, machine learning, genetic algorithms, distributed AI, and has founded multiple companies in these areas. Babak holds a Ph.D. in Machine Intelligence from Kyushu University, in Fukuoka, Japan.

Aaron Shagrin
General Manager, North America Jio Haptik

Aaron Shagrin is Senior Vice President of Revenue & Partnerships for North America. Based out of Austin, Texas, Aaron is leading all go-to-market activities including revenue, sales, marketing, and partnerships for North America

He brings over 20 years of experience in global sales, business development, product management, and corporate strategy at multiple startups, Fortune 500 companies, and investment firms. Most recently, Aaron was General Manager at Evolv Technologies, AI and ML-powered conversion optimization SaaS company.

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Haptik is an artificial intelligence company powering conversational assistants for brands to transform customer experiences. The platform has enabled over 100 virtual assistants, reaching close to 100 million devices and processing over 3 billion end customer interactions. Haptik is backed by Reliance Industries, a $100 Billion+ conglomerate, with close to 500 million customers.