Insight is gained by analyzing data and information to understand what is going on in a particular situation or during a phenomena. This insight can then be used to make better business decisions. Data only valuable if you can translate it into actionable insights. Moulding data to insights carves the blueprint for one’s business.
vPhrase Analytics Pvt. Ltd. is a global technology company that provides AI-powered business intelligence and reporting automation solutions using machine learning and natural language generation technology. Founded in 2015, vPhrase is an NLG leader, headquartered in India with global clientele.
The company enables organizations to make data-directed decisions by reducing the risk of data misinterpretation and deriving meaningful insights from complex datasets, in words.They are also focused on building the product in the first 2 years and then started selling.
Having raised their seed round of investment in 2016 and our series A in 2019. They have been profitable for the last 2 years and are currently with a team of 55 people with offices in Mumbai, Pune and New York.
In the following Interview, Neerav Parekh, Founder and CEO shares more details about the company
Please give an overview of the services and solutions you offer.
Our product Phrazor provides insights from data in a few bullet points. It’s a self-service business intelligence platform that helps users make data driven decisions without the help from IT team.
Phrazor uses artificial intelligence and natural language generation to analyse data, draw out insights and then communicate those insights in words. It’s a proprietary technology that we’ve built and we’ve filed 3 patents to protect our IP.
Motivation behind building vPhrase.
While I was running a digital marketing agency, I noticed that my clients always wanted my account managers to visit them personally and explain the campaign performance even though we used to send out a nice report with beautiful charts.
On more digging, I found that the clients would get overwhelmed by the reports and more often than not found them difficult to understand. That is when I started wondering what changes do I need to make to the report to ensure anyone reading it is able to understand it. What is it that my account managers do which solves this problem of understanding?
Well, they interpret those charts and explain the insights in words which the clients quickly understand. How could I automate this process of interpretation of data and communication of insights in words.
That is when the idea of building a product was born. And when I started thinking of the product I realised the enormous potential it had to change the way data was understood not just in digital marketing but in every other place where data was being presented, which was literally in every company. Every company has to send performance reports to its employees or to its customers. That’s when I decided to sell off my agency and build vPhrase.
What obstacles and/or limitations does the company face while hiring and retaining employees?
Employee retention hasn’t been a challenge thanks to the culture we’ve built over the years. We are not a company but a family. However, I cannot say the same about hiring. Hiring has been challenging, primarily because of the field we are operating in. There is a shortage of good talent in data science and natural language processing space in India.
How do you maintain and drive individuals to build a strong team. How do you inspire and motivate people at the workplace to make it interesting and creative?
We are in the new tech business, hence, most of our team members are young. To keep these young guns happy, we maintain a college-campus like atmosphere in office. If you come to our office, you’ll experience all the chatter, laughs and of course some chaos.
We trust ourselves to rise up to any challenge thrown at us and hence we have kids, two years out of college, confidently leading meetings with CXO suites of listed companies. When you hire sharp people, you need to keep challenging them continuously to ensure they stay motivated and excited.
Because we are operating in the Natural Language Generation field, which very few companies have dabbled with globally, it motivates them to keep pushing the boundaries to keep leading. They know what they are building is the best in the world and they want to keep striving to retain that top spot. At the end of the day, it’s the work and the culture at our company that keeps everyone motivated and inspired.
What new can we expect from the company in the coming years?
We are expanding into North America. In the coming years, you’ll see increased footprint of our business in the US and Canada. You will also see us pioneering new tech in the natural language generation space.
About the Founder
Neerav Parekh is the founder and CEO of vPhrase. Neerav has more than 15 years’ experience working in different roles and setting up businesses in Technology, Marketing and Finance. After completing his MBA, Neerav worked at Citibank and then co-founded startups in technology and marketing space before founding vPhrase.
Neerav has received the prestigious Leader in Innovation Fellowship from Royal Academy of Engineering UK. He is a thought leader in the areas of business intelligence and data science, is an advisor to institutes teaching data science and regularly speaks at events including those by the Government of India, CII, NASSCOM, ASSOCHAM and more.
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