The present technological era, in brevity, is on the path to leading the human race to an unimaginable zenith. Largely influenced by the advancement and mass adoption of Artificial Intelligence, our daily lives are being improved and enhanced ceaselessly by organizations which are leveraging this reformative technology. One profound example of such prolific organizations is Algo.ai. The company is on a mission to assist its customers in utilizing big data and AI to improve their business operations, customer experiences, and their bottom lines.
Algo.ai’s ever-growing suite of full-stack AI services aids data-driven decision-making across enterprises. The company turns its unique blend of machine learning, natural language processing, data analytics and workflow automation into products that help users intuitively through complex enterprise environments to make stronger, faster, and more informed decisions. Last year, Algo.ai was featured in Top Bots’ Essential Enterprise AI Landscape, 15 Most Promising Cognitive Startups by Startup City Magazine and 10 Most Promising BI and Analytics Solution Providers by Insights Success Magazine. As a 3-year old startup from Michigan these are impressive accolades which brought them to our attention when compiling the list of 20 most innovating companies to watch in the coming year.
Delivering Innovation
Algo.ai’s primary focus is upon its customers’ success. The company believes in doing anything and everything to ensure its customer partners receive exceptional ROI from all its solutions. Algo.ai prides itself on creating long lasting relationships with every single customer it has partnered with thus far.
Algo.ai offers incredibly flexible, custom-implemented full-stack AI applications primarily for Supply Chain operations such as Inventory Management, Demand Forecasting and Planning, Warehouse Optimization, Business Intelligence, and many more. It also offers Vendor Managed Inventory as a Service (VMIaaS) using its SkyLight and Algo platforms. The company exhibits distinction in combining its powerful horizontal Enterprise AI platform with industry leading subject matter expertise and full-service B2B integration.
The company places a very high value on treating its team well, especially since sometimes the work can be very demanding with tight timelines and a fast pace of development. It fosters a very flat organizational culture so that every team member has a chance to really make their mark and make sure that their opinions and input is valued thus resulting in great collaborations across departments and innovations that can be tested and deployed quickly.
The company also invests in its offices by providing an uplifting, comfortable and creative environment for its high energy team to enjoy coming to work every day. It takes pride in its positive and inclusive culture and this helps the company attract and retain top talent.
Setting Benchmarks
Driving an organization towards unprecedented glory can only be achieved by a proficient leader. With no speculations of any kind, Amjad Hussain, the Founder and CEO of Algo.ai,is made of the same mettle. Amjad’s mission is to enable people and machines to work together for superior outcomes.
During its early period, the company faced considerable challenge in finding the right personnel and turning its vision into a reality. As such, Amjad dedicated his time and efforts to build a passionate team of artificial intelligence scientists, software engineers, and industry domain experts. He brought a small team of driven, dedicated, and talented people together to use diverse AI methods and architectures running on Big Data to build solutions to meaningful and complex problems for enterprise customers.
An entrepreneur by heart, Amjad is a CEO during the day and an avid AI algorithm designer by night. With a resolute focus on Artificial Intelligence, Amjad earned his Masters’ in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UMIST, in the UK followed by an MBA from MIT. He has been recognized amongst the Crain’s ‘40 Under 40’ Executive Award for his pioneering contributions in advanced analytics. Amjad also boasts an Advanced Management Program from Harvard and Stanford.
Amjad believes that AI is going to be overhyped in the short run and under-hyped in the long run. Taking this landscape into consideration, Amjad says, “Algo.ai will focus on a narrow AI field, applying diverse AI methods and architectures on data for business decision making, workflow automation, and unique customer experiences.” He also adds that the company envisions a future where it continues to build Enterprise AI applications to help people make smarter decisions in an uncertain environment.
Leaping Over Hurdles
Commenting upon the challenges he has and continues to face, while leading the company, Amjad expresses, “Bootstrapping an Enterprise AI company comes with considerable challenges since most of the advanced functions of the platform rely on specially trained algorithms using proprietary customer data. This means that you have to work painstakingly for each new customer and feature before it can be productized and scaled.”
In Amjad’s opinion, doing this without a large amount of funding up front means that one has to be very creative and disciplined in every aspect of the business, always weighing priorities and operating within the constraints of the customer generated revenue. “This has taught us to be very lean and creative. Ultimately we are very glad we went this route because we have been able to stay in control of the company mission and stay true to the promises we have made to our team and our customers,” he adds.
A Vision of Progress
Algo.ai aims at continuing to grow both in customer footprint, global footprint, and domain footprint. The company inaugurated its first office in London last year to service its international clients, and its implementation roadmap and product roadmaps are already packed for 2019. In addition to building out the core Algo.ai platform and the company’s associated Inventory Management and Supply Chain functions, it is also investing in incubating complementary technologies for its enterprise customers in Retail and other industries. In this regard it is developing products in Computer Vision, Facial Recognition, Augmented Reality and more. “We love incubating complementary technologies that our customers need and are happy to be a go-to technology partner for building new experiences using AI for our customers”, Amjad adds.
One of these endeavours brought about the existence of AlgoFace which is a suite of SDKs to empower beauty brands and retailers with the ability to create hyper-personalized digital buying experiences. AlgoFace team is now growing and with a strong demand for the technology we will be seeing AlgoFace growing and impacting the market significantly in 2019.
Amjad sees this growth happening both organically through customer referrals and partnerships, as well as a smart M&A strategies. “We are always looking for small innovative teams that are building something great that fits into our platform or solves a pain point our customers are dealing with”, says Amajd.
