 "<b>Infinite Analytics:</b> Tracking consumer behaviour digitally")
When Infiniti Retail, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons, launched Cromaretail.com in April 2012 to replicate its large-format consumer electronics and durables retail chain Croma's success in the e-commerce space, it faced a peculiar problem. People were buying only a portion of its catalog comprising around 6,000 products because of the broad product assortment in eight categories.
"New products were not getting proper attention unless we manually promoted them. When we started looking for a solution, we wanted to choose a partner who not only had cutting-edge technology, but also could work with us to tailor the product to our needs. We chose Infinite Analytics," says Ajit Joshi, chief executive officer of Infiniti Retail.
Joshi says implementing the 'recommendation engine' of Infinite Analytics brought immediate results. In the Diwali season of 2014, around 25 per cent of Cromaretail.com's revenues came from the engine. Orders with recommendations accounted for 29 per cent of overall orders with conversions through the engine touching a whopping 217 per cent.
Infiniti Retail is one of the retail companies that are adopting the predictive analytics technology of Tata Sons' chairman emeritus Ratan Tata-backed predictive marketing and analysis start-up Infinite Analytics.
The foundation
The idea behind Infinite Analytics was born in a class taught by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Infinite Analytics' co-founders Akash Bhatia and Puru Botla were then doing their MBA, and masters in engineering and management, respectively, at MIT.
"When we built our prototype in the 'Linked Data Ventures' class at MIT, the idea was to break down silos between different databases to come up with a unified platform for user data. As we began working through the data, we realised how unique every user was. Both of our backgrounds have been in e-commerce and we knew how difficult the problem of personalisation was. It was crystal clear how we could use predictive analytics and semantic technologies, connecting the silos with the information defined in the knowledge bases to make relevant personalisation," says Bhatia.
Floated in 2012 as a part of the inaugural MIT Founders' Skills Accelerator, Infinite Analytics has an analytics platform that consumes user data from any source, including transactions, clickstream, social and open data, to create a 360-degree view of the customer and analyse it to predict the consumer behaviour.
Its platform also consumes the retailer's product catalog and enhances it using its proprietary semantic knowledge bases and algorithms to improve product search and discovery for the client, eventually leading to higher conversions and, hence, higher revenues.
Ratan Tata's role
Infinite Analytics was boot-strapped for a year-and-a-half before it closed its first round of funding. It has raised $1.1 million in a seed round that started with Akash Bhatia's uncle Harish Bhatia, followed by investors from Taiwan, India, the UK and the US. Early this month, it received an undisclosed amount from Ratan Tata. Existing investor Nikhil Vora, founder of Sixth Sense Ventures, also participated in this round.
Bhatia says even before Tata invested in Infinite Analytics, he had shown a keen interest in the company. "What Tata brings to the table is invaluable - his experience in running a conglomerate as diverse as the Tata Group, and in diverse markets and geographies... He already has us included in some of the projects he is involved in, where our platform can be used."
Market dynamics
Drawing a clear line between Infinite Analytics and those that call themselves analytics companies by just providing social listening tools or retargeting or even just basic business intelligence, Bhatia says the market forces, however, would weed them out.
Bhatia expects the predictive analytics market in the next couple of years to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 40 per cent to touch $150 billion, with explosion of data, Internet of Things and more and more digitisation being the growth drivers.
"Even in India, with the Digital India initiative, there will be an explosion of data. Infinite Analytics, with its analytics platform that can consume any source of data, will be a unique position of advantage," he says matter-of-factly.
Currently, Infinite Analytics is focused on the retail sector, both online and physical. Its ability to attract users across different channels allows it to create an omni-channel personalisation.
"We currently have 15 enterprise customers across the US, India and Latin America, including AirBnB, BabyOye, Croma Retail, eBay and Future Group. With a bulging pipeline for the next few quarters, the next two years should see us going through a hockey-stick growth into one of the foremost predictive analytics companies in the world," says Bhatia, adding that Infinite Analytics can break even shortly.
FACT BOX
Inception: 2012
Founders: Akash Bhatia and Puru Botla
Area of business: Predictive marketing and analysis
Market size: $150 billion in the next two years
Fundraising: Raised a seed round of $1.1 million from various investors in 2014; raised an undisclosed amount from Ratan Tata in August 2015
"New products were not getting proper attention unless we manually promoted them. When we started looking for a solution, we wanted to choose a partner who not only had cutting-edge technology, but also could work with us to tailor the product to our needs. We chose Infinite Analytics," says Ajit Joshi, chief executive officer of Infiniti Retail.
Joshi says implementing the 'recommendation engine' of Infinite Analytics brought immediate results. In the Diwali season of 2014, around 25 per cent of Cromaretail.com's revenues came from the engine. Orders with recommendations accounted for 29 per cent of overall orders with conversions through the engine touching a whopping 217 per cent.
Infiniti Retail is one of the retail companies that are adopting the predictive analytics technology of Tata Sons' chairman emeritus Ratan Tata-backed predictive marketing and analysis start-up Infinite Analytics.
The foundation
The idea behind Infinite Analytics was born in a class taught by World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Infinite Analytics' co-founders Akash Bhatia and Puru Botla were then doing their MBA, and masters in engineering and management, respectively, at MIT.
"When we built our prototype in the 'Linked Data Ventures' class at MIT, the idea was to break down silos between different databases to come up with a unified platform for user data. As we began working through the data, we realised how unique every user was. Both of our backgrounds have been in e-commerce and we knew how difficult the problem of personalisation was. It was crystal clear how we could use predictive analytics and semantic technologies, connecting the silos with the information defined in the knowledge bases to make relevant personalisation," says Bhatia.
Floated in 2012 as a part of the inaugural MIT Founders' Skills Accelerator, Infinite Analytics has an analytics platform that consumes user data from any source, including transactions, clickstream, social and open data, to create a 360-degree view of the customer and analyse it to predict the consumer behaviour.
Its platform also consumes the retailer's product catalog and enhances it using its proprietary semantic knowledge bases and algorithms to improve product search and discovery for the client, eventually leading to higher conversions and, hence, higher revenues.
Ratan Tata's role
Infinite Analytics was boot-strapped for a year-and-a-half before it closed its first round of funding. It has raised $1.1 million in a seed round that started with Akash Bhatia's uncle Harish Bhatia, followed by investors from Taiwan, India, the UK and the US. Early this month, it received an undisclosed amount from Ratan Tata. Existing investor Nikhil Vora, founder of Sixth Sense Ventures, also participated in this round.
Bhatia says even before Tata invested in Infinite Analytics, he had shown a keen interest in the company. "What Tata brings to the table is invaluable - his experience in running a conglomerate as diverse as the Tata Group, and in diverse markets and geographies... He already has us included in some of the projects he is involved in, where our platform can be used."
Market dynamics
Drawing a clear line between Infinite Analytics and those that call themselves analytics companies by just providing social listening tools or retargeting or even just basic business intelligence, Bhatia says the market forces, however, would weed them out.
Bhatia expects the predictive analytics market in the next couple of years to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 40 per cent to touch $150 billion, with explosion of data, Internet of Things and more and more digitisation being the growth drivers.
"Even in India, with the Digital India initiative, there will be an explosion of data. Infinite Analytics, with its analytics platform that can consume any source of data, will be a unique position of advantage," he says matter-of-factly.
Currently, Infinite Analytics is focused on the retail sector, both online and physical. Its ability to attract users across different channels allows it to create an omni-channel personalisation.
"We currently have 15 enterprise customers across the US, India and Latin America, including AirBnB, BabyOye, Croma Retail, eBay and Future Group. With a bulging pipeline for the next few quarters, the next two years should see us going through a hockey-stick growth into one of the foremost predictive analytics companies in the world," says Bhatia, adding that Infinite Analytics can break even shortly.
FACT BOX
Inception: 2012
Founders: Akash Bhatia and Puru Botla
Area of business: Predictive marketing and analysis
Market size: $150 billion in the next two years
Fundraising: Raised a seed round of $1.1 million from various investors in 2014; raised an undisclosed amount from Ratan Tata in August 2015
| EXPERT TAKE Infinite Analytics' premise is the ability to do a 360-degree lateral data analytics -using social media, transactional data, click streams, voter bank information, offline data, etc., for profiling and predictions on consumer behaviour. Using information from multiple data streams to create a holistic consumer profile allows for a deeper understanding of behavioural patterns, context and trends. This ultimately allows them to predict more accurately about a consumer's actions and as a result, help make accurate marketing decisions. An analytics company will need more and more data to improve the accuracy of their predictions. The challenge in the near-term would be to strike a balance between 'the acquisition of big data' and 'machine learning'. From a scalability perspective, it is important to develop and further invest in technology that helps to process data streams faster. With more clients and more data being added every day, they will need to scale faster than ever before. In the immediate future, predictive analytics companies must act as an important aid to traditional research - answering marketing problems with low investments and faster turnaround times. In the longer term, the applications of predictive analytics are endless - it can help solve issues related to effective governance, financial markets, etc. Organisations such as hospitals, universities, charities, law enforcement and even corporates make millions of operational decisions that take time and resource. Predictive analytics has the power to improve their efficiency, save resources and make intelligent decisions on the fly - that's where a large part of the opportunity lies. Mairu Gupta is director, global media distribution at National Basketball Association |