For Deepspatial Inc CEO Rahul Kushwah, businesses around the globe possess reams of data that, if utilized properly and combined with third-party data, can help them grow and prosper.
But most businesses have no idea either what the data means or how to exploit it for maximum benefit to increase productivity, lower costs, and improve profitability.
That’s where Toronto-based Deepspatial comes in, as the company promises it can answer every business question on the plant.
The company’s AI and machine learning technology leverages geospatial data along with business data as well as its proprietary datasets that give businesses the flexibility to ask questions, visualize current situations, and predict potential future scenarios. The answers provided are simply displayed on live, interactive maps.
“Quite frankly, businesses are sitting on piles and piles of data, and they don't really know what to do with it. All of these businesses actually go out and spend millions and millions of dollars just buying other data sets to have some sort of analytics done on it,” Kushwah said.
“What we are coming in saying is that, guys you don't need anything like that. You bring in Deepspatial, you ask Deepspatial a question and that answer will be populated on the maps. And as your business data is changing, let's say your sales are changing over different locations, all these insights are going to change. So, it’s not a static tool. It's a dynamic tool, which you incorporate as part of your business operations, and you end up getting daily insights.”
A client’s business uses these location-based insights and recommendations to grow and optimize operations, such as pricing and right-sizing inventory to meet future market demand, identifying the most advantageous supply chains to expand into high potential areas, and refining brand campaign messaging via social media for primary target audiences and to improve customer service offerings.
Technology goes beyond traditional business analytics
Kushwah is quick to point out that Deepspatial’s AI and machine learning platform goes way beyond traditional business analytics.
“It's a bit hard to really make people understand that no, that is not what we are offering,” he said. “Because when you're talking about business analytics, it's a static process. You basically have mathematicians analyzing a lot of data and giving you answers. What we are doing here is we're using your data, we're using a proprietary data set, but more importantly, we are bringing in the AI component, which is giving you dynamic insights. It's not just glorified business intelligence.”
Deepspatial’s AI engine isn’t some drawing-board concept, in fact, it has been used successfully by several multinational clients, including Anheuser Busch, which is now working with Deepspatial on targeting additional markets.
After the world’s largest drink and brewing company asked a series of questions using the AI platform, Deepspatial provided, for example, nuanced competitor profiles down to the level of individual restaurants and bars in a particular city as well as identifying product inventory and menu placement. Also, the platform identified key competitors and brand perceptions in individual neighborhoods.
Also, working with the Future Group, one of the largest retail firms in India, Deepspatial identified new locations which led to a 45% increase in the success rate of new stores while scouting time for properties fell from 15 to three days. Deepspatial was also able to predict the sales-per-square-feet within 90% accuracy of any location.
India, for Deepspatial, has now become a major growth target, after the government in February 2021 liberalized geospatial data, allowing companies and individuals to conduct mapping and share the data from various applications, including transport and e-commerce. Also, to strengthen its footprint in India, the company has recruited several sales and marketing experts from some big-name companies.
“Just trying to get access to a lot of the government's data sets was actually just impossible in India,” Kushwah said. “You had to go through layers and layers of bureaucracy, and pretty much now they came out and said all the data is going to be publicly available. Anyone can come in and use it. Now we can even make it more powerful by using these freely available data sets.”
Deepspatial also recently signed a revenue-generating contract with snack-food giant DFM Foods, India, for a strategic geodemographic customer profiling and market expansion project. Its machine learning algorithms will look to optimize delivery/route strategies as well as create predictive models of demand and supply to better manage the supply chain.
In addition, mattress giant Sheela Foam just signed up for Deepspatial’s technology to help it expand and better identify markets. Sheela Foam is the largest polyurethane-foam manufacturer in the Asia Pacific region with footprints in India, Australia, and Spain. It is also the largest manufacturer of mattresses in India.
Beyond India, targeting the North American market
But for Deepspatial, Kushwah said the company sees the North American market as its prime target beyond India, and it recently hired former directors of Starbucks Canada and Enbridge to help expand its footprint.
In North America, Kushwah noted, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted an uptake of new disruptive technologies, as businesses that were traditionally focused on growing now are thinking of surviving and maintaining revenue, among many other concerns.
Deepspatial plans to target two heavily affected industries - retail and consumer packaged goods. The company also is looking at pandemic-immune industries such as natural gas, telecommunications, and utilities, specifically tailoring its SaaS (software as a service) based products to each sector.
Meanwhile, Kushwah said the company is upgrading its technology by changing the interface of the product to make it more user-friendly as it expands into the Indian and North American markets.
“We really want to have a very interactive dashboard that can basically show anyone, even people who are not experts in the space, that this is what Deepspatial does. And this is the value proposition," he said. "They want to see something, which is very simple, which is intuitive … you buy a license, you plug in the product, and right away you start to get insights.”
Kushwah also noted that Deepspatial’s AI-backed “neural network” is always evolving as it receives and processes more and more data
“The more data you feed, and the more it is used by the clients, the better its keeps on getting," he concluded.
Contact the author: patrick@proactiveinvestors.com
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