Sriram Chakravarthy
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<strong>Sriram</strong> <strong>Chakravarthy</strong>: Eliminating Problems and<br />
Facilitating an Easy Approach to AI<br />
Observation and creative thinking describes the personality of a successful person and through<br />
embracing this traits, one can easily prevail. Possessing such attributes, <strong>Sriram</strong> <strong>Chakravarthy</strong>,<br />
the CTO and Co-founder of Avaamo has contributed his great knowledge in the remarkable<br />
success of his company.<br />
Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between <strong>Sriram</strong> and CIO Look:<br />
Give a brief overview of your background and your role in the company.<br />
I am the chief technology officer and co-founder of Avaamo, also the leader in conversational AI.<br />
Before Avaamo, I spent more than 15 years designing massively scalable distributed software as<br />
vice president of products for the social computing division at TIBCO. I was responsible for<br />
building tibbr, TIBCO’s SaaS-based social computing platform. During that time I successfully<br />
scaled engineering, support, and services to serve customers in 121 countries.<br />
Earlier at TIBCO, I handled product strategy and management of TIBCO’s core portfolio of<br />
business integration products and, a $400 million product line. I’ve also worked as a software<br />
engineer and architect in messaging, e-commerce and cloud software and have picked up a dozen<br />
patents. In the earlier part of my career, most of the products I was building were about<br />
connecting business applications. The idea with Avaamo is roughly the same except we are<br />
bringing the automation to the last mile of interaction so it can better serve customers.<br />
How do you diversify your tech solutions that appeal to your target audience?<br />
First, I think it’s important to tell you a little more about Avaamo. We’re a deep-learning<br />
software company that specializes in conversational interfaces to solve specific problems in the<br />
enterprise. Our primary goal is to make conversational computing for the enterprise a reality.
The way we’re doing that is moving past technology that merely answers commands to<br />
technology that understands context and can converse.<br />
To deliver the conversational AI as promise, fundamentally new technology has to be built to<br />
perform multi-turn discussions and execute intensive judgment tasks just like humans. When you<br />
can do this, you can revolutionize businesses. The number of use cases is staggering; companies<br />
can streamline and improve their service desk and drastically improve customer care; insurers can<br />
generate quotes in minutes, and health care providers can help diabetics or cardiovascular patients<br />
better by monitoring their health care through a virtual assistant on an app.<br />
Avaamo was built from scratch to appeal to the global audience. We support multiple languages<br />
and multiple verticals. We created the platform for a diverse set of users and people across the<br />
globe. Most businesses now expect to cater to a global audience, and their success is based in part<br />
on how they handle that expectation. People prefer to interact in their own languages, and they<br />
want to experience brands in their own language. Besides, Avaamo’s target audience is the<br />
enterprise, so by default, we need to think globally.<br />
Describe some of the vital attributes that every tech individual should possess.<br />
The field is incredibly competitive. There’s fierce competition to get into a job with a successful<br />
tech company and fierce competition, if you decide to form a startup. Intelligence and work ethics<br />
are essential and, frankly, expected. What is even more important is that people entering the field<br />
or starting a new job to understand what a company is trying to do for the customer. Everyone in<br />
an organization needs to think about what they are doing day-to-day to help achieve that goal.<br />
That’s true if you are the engineer, salesperson, and marketer. You also need to be intellectually<br />
honest and be willing to put in long hours at times.<br />
What were the past experiences, achievements or lessons that shaped your journey?<br />
What I learned as an engineer is that it’s not about the lines of code I wrote; it’s about the lines of<br />
code I did not write. As a product manager, it wasn’t about the features in the product, but the<br />
features that were eliminated to make sure it was just right. As a product marketer and later a<br />
CTO, you face difficult decisions on a daily basis, and you can’t always expect to get it right. But<br />
it’s important to realize that to finish first you have to first finish.<br />
What were some of the primal challenges and roadblocks that you faced during the initial<br />
phase of your journey?<br />
A lot of it is about challenge and vision. The biggest problem starting off, especially in<br />
technology, understands where you need to be in the next five years. When someone starts in<br />
tech, it’s easier to join a large company and become a part of an existing framework. If you have<br />
a notion that you want to create something that has a significant impact on the world, you need to<br />
start thinking if that’s the right place. In my life, I could have joined a Fortune 500 company right<br />
out of college. Instead, I joined a startup because I wanted to jump in and learn as much as<br />
possible. A smaller company offers that kind of training and exposure.<br />
With ascension in the number of pivotal and ground-breaking technological advancements,<br />
the role of technologists is continually evolving. How according to you, has this role changed<br />
over the years?<br />
It’s changed in a few ways. Even five years ago I would have said that business was the driver for<br />
technology. Now, you see that software is changing the world. The software is the business.<br />
Everyone is reinventing themselves as a result.
Where do you see yourself in the coming years and what are your future goals?<br />
First and foremost the goal is to help Avaamo become a crucial component of reinventing how<br />
business is conducted in the 21st century. The possibilities are enormous: conversational AI<br />
promises to both radically overhaul customer service and free human time and talent for different<br />
and more engaging jobs. I would also like to be part of a group of technologists that work<br />
collectively to make the world a better place by boosting employment, solving our most pressing<br />
scientific and business challenges and sparking creativity around the globe.<br />
Read more: https://is.gd/sPm8yi