At BrilliantRead Media, our aim is to bring to our community some of the unique and compelling stories from the start-up ecosystem. As part of this endeavour, we invited seasoned entrepreneurs Logesh, Prakash, Deepika and Suresh for an exclusive interview with us. They are the Founders of Datsy.io. Let’s learn more about their inspirational journey and advice for our growing community!
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with the founders of Datsy:
We are aware of your contribution to the ecosystem, talk us through your background and your journey as an entrepreneur, please;
We, The Datsy founders are from different backgrounds of culture, age and experience levels. Although, few things remain common to our characteristics, such as aspiration, creativity and the urge to become an entrepreneur and never give up attitude. The difference in experience and exposure is a fantastic mix that worked us and helped us to lift our journey.
We have always been determined in whatever we do. Also, we have worked together in the past organization that gave us a common platform to ideate and create Datsy with a better understanding on each of our strengths and weaknesses.
You are always positive and motivated, what keeps you going?
Yes, we are always positive and motivated. We had ups and downs in the making of Datsy, but we always believed in us and we could make it happen. We participated in many knowledge sharing sessions to validate ourselves with the thoughts and directions given by the industrial veterans.
That served as the right fuel for our entrepreneurial journey. Our team is a mix of good speakers, writers, readers and listeners where we share all the motivations we gained, articles we read, inspirational stories, key points observed from other leaders.
More importantly, we always treated our failure points as one more step towards success.
What attracts you towards entrepreneurship instead of a corporate career?
Entrepreneurship is our passion. For us success is not defined by wealth or status creation, rather is always about, how far can you push yourself and your surroundings to the next stage on Intellectual and equal-social grounds.
We, founders, have worked together in our previous organization which is an OTT based solution provider. We saw AI capability was missing there. That made us come up with the POC for the problem statement in our previous organization. That became our first step into exploring more about AI-based recommendations.
When our fellow co-founders were discussing on how we can use AI to bring in level-play field for SMBs, we did market research on same and the results were really reassuring that we have a wide area to play with. That drives us to step into the journey of Datsy. We ideated in 2017 while we were still doing our day job, which took most of our time so we decided to spend more of our time in our own venture and our own idea, and then Datsy as a team was formed.
‘Datsy’ is such a unique name; talk us through more about it, please. Our audience would also love to know what kind of problem you are solving with the help of your start-up?
Datsy Suggest is an AI-powered personalization & recommendation engine. Since we are an AI shop, we deal more with the data and data science being the field of study which uses algorithms and methods to extract the insights from any variations of data and build a model. So Datsy is Data + Science (sy).
We play at the customer engagement factor for any business that is digitalized. We bring in the intelligence to solve any B2B business that is aspiring to become AI-enabled players at an affordable cost.
In the current market scenario, every digital product or service needs an edge of intelligence to better understand its customers and provide personalized services.
On the contrary, establishing an intelligence infrastructure will be a daunting task with high entry/exit barriers and high cost of ownership, etc. This is where DATSY steps in to fill the gap between the need for intelligence enablement and the overheads in implementing them through its managed service Intelligence infrastructure.
Customers are a lifeline for any business, engaging them from the launch of the home page till checkout drives average revenue per user. Datsy Suggest provides a personalized recommendation to OTT, e-commerce, eLearning and many more domains.
In e-commerce, when a user login to the portal, showing personalized catalogue in place of templated products would increase the engagement of the user. When the user selects the product, displaying the similar products, products that are trending, customers who bought this also bought, showing products based on the user’s patters and bundling of products would drive the sales efficiently
What are the key ingredients of your start-up?
As like any start-up, a solid idea with a passion to achieve what we want to do are the key driving factors. Of course, the conviction and drive towards the passion along with sound execution and business model forms the key ingredient, which is the culture at DATSY.
Having laid foot in the intelligence industry, it is important we take utmost care in ensuring like-minded people join-us to maintain the rigour, culture and enthusiasm of the team.
One other thing which is often missed-out with any growing organization is agility. An idea with passionate people and a sound execution model without agility will not take you to places.
An agile and dynamism exhibited in every walk of our work helps us to place where we’re today. It took just less than a year to convert an idea into a working SaaS model for us and this would have not been possible otherwise without agility and drive for excellence.
Please share with us about your expansion plans?
In the journey of enabling mid-markets and SMBs with a level playing technical access, our roadmap is longtail with each pillar of AI would naturally form as multiple product lines.
We also envision a point of convergence where composite AI capabilities can be offered at an affordable cost to the SMBs, but that’s for another day.
How e-commerce sales are increased through a product recommendation engine?
1) Creating better user experience: Providing a smooth shopping experience for the user is the key to retain customers and increase e-commerce sales conversion.
2) Enhanced customer engagement: Product recommendation engines provide a host of customized options for increasing user behaviour, like a personalized landing page, personalized emails with product catalogue, etc., which in turn enhance customer engagement and improve checkout conversion.
3) Increased traffic: The product recommendation engine helps in filtering and providing an optimized product array for each user. Improved customer experience and an engaging customer platform help to drive more traffic to the platform.
4) Rating-based product recommendation: In this tech-savvy world, the customer’s purchase decision heavily depends on user feedback and influencer reviews. Rating and reviews of the filtered product gain more trust and help the user to make a final purchase decision.
During this COVID-19 crisis, what are the measures you have undertaken to continue your business without disruption?
Knowing the market is not opening up for any new business until the economy is stable. For the first few months of COVID-19, we did research on the marketing the AI capability that Datsy is providing and the results were not promising for us to spend more time on marketing. So, we decided to enhance our product capability by enabling SaaS functionality.
Since we were making good progress in the enhancements and a few months later, the market is also opening up for such capability, we are running a marketing campaign last few months and there is good traction on our product. We are also reaching out to the referrals to demonstrate Datsy Suggest.
How can personalization on the OTT platform enhance user-experience?
A Content Recommendation Engine, provided by Datsy, will help OTT platforms recommend shows and movies based on the users’ history and interests. Datsy is an AI-powered platform built to enhance customer engagement on digital streaming platforms by giving the consumers a more personalized approach.
Datsy services include analysing the user’s history and preferences by using APIs. These API’s anticipate the needs of the users and provide them with a more hands-on method, a better movie recommendation system.
How do you manage yourself and keep on going despite the challenges? What drives you?
We always approach challenges as literally “challenges” not “dead ends”. Our experience has always been that each challenge when resolved to move forward, make you a “better you” on the other end. Since our perception towards the outcome is always positive, we never shy away from facing challenges.
At times we also need some adrenalin shots, which we draw from experiences of able leaders around us. Books and following achievers stories have always been our culture, which reinforces the fact that “Nothing is going to be easy, but with hard work and perseverance, nothing is going to be tough as well”
Given the rapid pace at which the world is changing, what are the leadership traits that are necessary for success?
Confidence to execute the venture success, communicating the idea with other leaders and experts. Prioritizing the plans with the incremental launch of features. Carrying a positive attitude and being the best in the thought process.
What is the one strategy that you guys believe has helped you grow as a team/start-up?
Understanding the customer problem and providing them with the right solution. Our idea is more focused on engaging the customer and recommend them the choices they would prefer.
Datsy Suggest provides AI based hyper-personalized recommendations on a SaaS model. That enables every business to record the user purchase or browsing pattern, train the set of actions performed by the user and provide recommendations back to the user.
This brings in the products that user would prefer to buy since they are user’s choice thereby increasing the average revenue per user.
Please share with us – what has worked well for you so far?
Trusting in whatever we do as part of Datsy. We have reached out to so many leaders, we demonstrated our product to as many customers, investors, key players in an organization and the feedback from them always lifted us more towards a successful journey.
Our idea and product capability excited many of the industrial experts, which resulted in guidance and support in various forms. We had hard times like any start-up but we never took back, we always moved forward to make Datsy, a successful venture. Motivating ourself with every positive move in Datsy be it small or big, kept us moving ahead.
What are the business mantras you have embraced as you sought to establish your success story?
Hyper personalized recommendations have bought in excitement to the leads and prospects when they enquire about our product. We play at an affordable cost to SMB business along with managing the end-to-end infrastructure allowing them to focus on core business.
We always wanted to fill the gap between the tier 2,3 and tier 1 companies by enabling the customer engagement factor. Understanding the customer problem in-depth and bringing in the best solutions to them. Cross-domain and composite offerings are the other highlighted feature in Datsy for the multi-line business to have a good customer base.
When we gave out the best, without any surprise, support came in from necessary directions in the form of inputs, credits, references and mindshare.
What are the benefits of recommendation engines in OTT content delivery?
a) A quicker way to discover content – The content recommendation engine makes it easier for the consumer by analysing their past interests and providing them with the best content that matches their taste.
b) Customized options – If a user likes a particular genre of content, then the movie recommendation system makes sure that the genre they want will be given priority and displayed on the home screen of the particular user.
What are the three most important lessons you have learned building your start-up?
a) An idea without execution is just a dream – in the entrepreneurial journey, execution outweighs the novelty in the idea. i.e you can win customers even by replicating an existing idea in the market but. just by executing it better for yourself as an organization and to your customers
b) The founding team is an integral part of the business – More than skillset, shared values, mindset and aspirational alignment makes a founding team strong enough to stand up to the need. In any start-up, the founding team is an integral part of the business. One weak link breaks the entire chain
c) Spend resources wise – When we say resources, it includes time, effort and money. In a start-up, it is very important to realize the resources are finite and making the best use of it to extend your runway is going to be a continuous process, even after growing into a million-dollar organization
In your opinion – what is more necessary: Idea or a good team for a successful start-up?
The idea and a good team is a successful combo for a successful start-up as said Good idea is always a good start for many doors to open, but executing it with the right people lifts your start-up from ideation phase to solving customer solutions phase.
We would love to know your advice for all those starting out as an aspiring entrepreneur?
Aspiring to become an entrepreneur is the first step to run a successful venture. Follow your passion with dedicated effort, time and team. Communicate your idea in all the forum, validate your idea with the industrial experts and professions.
Demonstrate the capability you have, any feedback is always to make you move ahead. Use the feedbacks wise and enhance your idea with all the inputs from tractions. Talk to many entrepreneurs who have been there and done that.
Reach out to many leaders about your capability. Be part of knowledge enrichment sessions to empower yourself also to validate your path towards a successful journey. Last but the most never ever lose hope! Never ever doubt yourself.
BrilliantRead is committed to bringing stories from the startup ecosystem, stories that reshape our perspective, add value to our community and be a constant source of motivation not just for our community but also for the whole ecosystem of entrepreneurs and aspiring individuals.
Note: If you have a similar story to share with our audience and would like to be featured on our online magazine, then please write to us at [email protected], we will review your story and extend an invitation to feature if it is worth publishing.
