Actify Data Labs: Bringing deep expertise in tech world
With time Indian tech talent is becoming more confident and is risk taking. That is why we see tech entrepreneurs who are leading from the front, taking risks and exploring beyond the realm of established software services business models. Simultaneously traditional businesses are also realizing that technology is critical to build new disruptive business models and many leaders are realizing that tech is not a minor side-function but is the most important function. People are saying “tech is the business” and that is making a lot of difference how Indian tech experts are looking at the future. Everyone is realizing that the future of a technology expert extends far beyond providing cheap labor to US markets.
Today we are going to talk about one such maverick who has given new dimension to Indian tech world by means of deep-rooted knowledge and zeal to transform the tech domain. We are talking about none other than Bijoy Khandelwal. He is the COO and Co-Founder of Actify Data Labs. He is also the Chief Architect at Actify who has conceptualized and developed the entire product suite at Actify. Bijoy brings in deep expertise in technology, big data, data science, scalable computing, and system engineering. He believes that data is the central piece of the technology stack of the future.
He helps organizations make the most of their internal and external data. With this mission, he helps create data integration solutions – data lakes, data warehouse, data marts; computation solutions, machine learning solutions and business solutions to help leverage data. He also brings in deep expertise in data quality & master data management, data stewardship and business process and technology reengineering to capture the right data at the right time.Actify Data Labs is a data platform and machine learning company that helps organizations leverage the power of data using its data platform ADAPTify its product suite and its dedicated digital lab.
ADAPTify – an all-data platform
This is an end-to-end data platform that helps an organization navigate all the steps needed to leverage data. Viz: Integrating data across sources (both structured and unstructured), creating data lake, creating data marts, creating dashboards & reports, building machine learning models, exposing data or machine learning models as APIs so that data can be securely provided to other systems.
Their machine learning driven product suite consists of:
- UCID: Master data management and creation of unique identifiers using a combination of hard and fuzzy matching.
- Customer identity management: Extract information from various scanned (or photograph) of identity documents (passport, driving license, certificates etc.), creation of identify vault and masking key information in the images.
- BMI meter: Identification of age, gender, and BMI from the facial image of a person. This could also be used for face matching across multiple images of the same person
- Actify Document Manager: An AI based document management utility that helps organizations in identifying misclassification of document types
- Actify Share: A secure file share utility that allows organizations to securely transfer files within its boundary and with partners. Each file is deleted after the user specified retention period and all downloads are monitored. The process is secured with end-to-end encryption.
- Actify Short link and QR code utility: Create secured short link for distribution using mail/SMS/WhatsApp. Create QR codes. Track usage of links and codes.
- Insight bot: Chat and voice bot that uses natural language processing to create insights, micro dashboards, and reports
- Disease code mapper: Maps ICD 9 and ICD 10 disease and procedure codes and enables cross walk between coding systems. Further the solution also provides average length of stay for various disease types.
Apart from this, by means of their digital labs, you can develop and implement machine learning models to leverage the power of image, text and IOT data. They not only focus on developing ML solutions but in implementing the same as automated pipelines, APIs, Mobile Apps and Web Apps.
Talking about the goal of the company, Actify has been focusing on a product-first strategy that aims to empower organizations (irrespective of their size) with the technologies that are required to leverage data. Actify believes that data will be a key competitive tool in every industry. And Actify’s platform will ensure that the power of data is made available to a wider set of organizations. Moreover, Actify dreams of building a true “made in India data platform”, that will put India in the technology product map.
“In the near-term our objective is to enhance the implementation of our all-data platform across more and more organizations and keep on showing value from data to our existing clients so that we demonstrate exceptional ROI from our platform to our existing customers.I am also trying to build a truly full stack development and implementation team within Actify. As we acquire new customers for the platform, I also want to create an ecosystem of partners who will be able to support our platform and become our growth partners”, asserts Bijoy.
To gain this much of traction, Bijoyhasalways believed in three simple mantras throughout his entrepreneurial voyage:
- There is no replacement of hard work irrespective of one’s intelligence and smartness
- He would always like to learn – learn everything that he can. He has always attempted to learn every aspect of technology and never restrict himself– programming, infrastructure management, security you name it. Never put silos in your learning approach
- It is always important to demonstrate what you can give to the organization rather than what the organization can give you
Unmatchable pragmatism and depth of technology expertise
Though the journey has not been a smooth one for him. Talking about the challenges faced during this entrepreneurial journey, he had go through some pre-conceived notions. In India expertise is often equated with years of experience or the strength of your college degree. On one hand, we always celebrate examples like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. On the other hand, when it comes to companies and teams in India, we get into the myopic view of number of years of experience and strength of college degrees. In his initial years, he had to fight against these biases. However, the biggest factor that has helped him become successful is his pragmatic and depth of technology expertise.
For Bijoy, starting Actify was one of the biggest risks at a time when none of them had ever worked in a startup. However, he was motivated by his confidence in technical acumen. This has been one of the biggest assets for him. As a business leader, he believes in encouraging creative thinking within the organization. He leads by example and provides a problem to the team and let them find out the solution. He refrain from guiding them.
Talking about his outside interests, he says, “Technology is my sole interest inside and outside the organization and I like reading and implementing every new technology that is out there or that is getting out of labs”.When it comes to his lifestyle beyond corporate world, he believes in keeping it simple and comfortable. Talking about attires, he says, “Attire has a larger role to play to project a certain idea and image. One has to understand those instances and behave differently if needed”. However, even when he is not at work, he keeps experimenting with new technology.
Words of wisdom
Keep on learning and honing your expertise. No one can take that away from you. And that will give you confidence. But remember that confidence should never translate into lack of humility. And have a keen listening ability – listen to your customers, employees, peers. Be selfless.
