Globally, 52% of people work from home at least once every week (according to Owl Labs). There are a number of good reasons why people choose to work from remote locations. They live in another city, they have kids to take care of, the commute is just too long, so they’d rather telecommute, they are die-hard digital nomads; and rarely, like now, it is imposed on you. The current threat of COVID-19 has brought a world that was hurtling on,…
Keep your distance please: a case for social distancing in troubling times
Disclaimer: This piece of writing is meant to drive the case for social distancing and self-quarantines. It isn’t meant to cause panic. I’m in no way an expert, in neither epidemiology nor mathematical modeling. The approach undertaken below is laden with assumptions, both known and latent in nature. This is an opinion piece and not an advisory on public policy. November, 2019: People in the wet market in the city of Wuhan, an oft-forgotten city in the Chinese province of Hubei, go…
Life in quarantine: A digital paradox takes flight
The Airbus engines roared into the sky, I sensed the brisk and steep ascent of the flight, as it was a bit unusual for an aircraft of that size to take off at such a sharp angle. However, my attention was not on the ascent, but on what I would witness, in about ten minutes into the flight. I was eagerly looking forward to the rare occasion of sighting both Mt. Everest and Mt. Kanchenjunga in one visual frame! Yes,…
Lessons for business. From Charles Dickens, start-up founders and Scott Fitzgerald
Over 200 years ago, Charles Dickens opened “A tale of two cities” with these memorable lines: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before…
The state of FinTech in Europe: Key trends from Finovate Europe 2020 in Berlin
We’re three months into the new decade and Crayon Data has already unlocked something very special. For awhile now, we’ve wanted to showcase the powerful AI-led personalization capabilities of our product, maya.ai in Europe. And this year, we were selected to demo maya.ai at Finovate Europe. In between some fantastic meetings, my colleague Vijay Anand and I had a chance to sit in for interesting sessions and talks at Finovate Europe. Here’s what we learnt from the sessions on the…
Life @ Crayon – Vaibbahav
1) How long have you been at Crayon? I’ve been in Crayon for about 12 months. 2) What do you do at Crayon? I manage sales in the MENA region for Crayon. 3) What’s your average day like? I usually spend my days meeting CXOs of financial institutions and I try to solve their problems using AI led personalization. 4) What’s your favourite Crayon memory? This one time when nearly the entire company, including the CEO, the CFO and the…
Consumers want to be recognised for their individuality; can enterprises keep up?
At the start of the last decade, smartphones and social media were still in their infancy. But by the time we hopped over to 2020, with their omnipresence, they increased access to information dramatically; Choice exploded and consumer expectations ramped up, manifold. The state of choice: then and now Let’s start with an example. Think of how we approached travel planning in the pre-smartphone era (I know it’s hard to picture, but try!) Most of us went to trusted tour…
Suresh Shankar in conversation with Indra Nooyi
Indra Nooyi, former CEO of PepsiCo, sits down with Suresh Shankar, Deputy President of PIIMA and CEO of Crayon Data, for a candid conversation on performance with purpose, living in a world without privacy, supporting women in the workforce, balancing work and family life etc. Indra Nooyi is the former Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, and sits on the Board of Directors of Schlumberger, Amazon and the International Cricket Council. She is also the chief architect of Performance with Purpose,…
Artificial intelligence in the battle against the coronavirus: How can it help?
An outbreak of flu-like symptoms that originated from a wet market in the city of Wuhan, China has brought chaos to the world. The new coronavirus or 2019-NCoV, was first reported on December 31st, 2019, as pneumonia. The number of infected people increased exponentially and the virus started to spread like wildfire. Authorities identified the virus a week later on January 6th. This was followed by multiple deaths in China and carriers were identified in several other countries too. Today…
Crayon Data to demo maya.ai at FinovateEurope 2020
Finovate Europe is one of the largest FinTech conference in the world. More than 1,200 senior attendees, 150 speakers and 60 demoing companies will be in attendance. Crayon Data a singapore based AI and big data company will exhibit and demo their flagship product, maya.ai at Finovate Europe fintech event. maya.ai equips top tier enterprises, across industries like banking, e-commerce and travel-and-hospitality, to have personalized conversations with each of their customers. Across all channels. maya.ai comes equipped with richly curated…