Today’s interview is with Anil Kaul who is the CEO and co-founder of Absolutdata, a big data and predictive analytics firm. They describe themselves as decision engineers, where they apply decision sciences to help improve decisions at the world’s largest companies. Anil joins me today to talk about what they are up to and how predictive analytics can be used to help solve the problem of silent customer churn.
Tyson Hartman
Chief Technology Officer
The newest member of our leadership group, Tyson Hartman, brings three decades of experience as a technology and strategy leader. One of his core beliefs is continual innovation best serves clients.
Tyson engineers our technology vision and translates it into actionable strategies for the company and our clients, advising them on their technology roadmap and vision. The company’s innovation labs and tech-specific interest groups follow his direction, and he is a mentor to our senior solution architects.
He has led numerous digital transformations, including launching new entrepreneurial ventures inside existing enterprises. At West Monroe, Tyson focused on offerings, strategy and assets. As the CTO of Avanade, his thought leadership advanced change through innovative applications of cloud computing and big data.
A graduate of the University of Southern California and a member of the IEEE Computer Society, Tyson volunteers at educational and civic organizations in the Seattle area, where he is based.
Kulesh Bansal
CVP & Chief Financial Officer
As Corporate Vice President & Chief Financial Officer, Kulesh orchestrates the planning, optimization, and execution of Infogain’s global finance organization. He is responsible for profitability, finance support for growth, acquisition, driving simplification, process automation, and building a best-in-class finance team.
Kulesh’s 18 years of experience includes leading the finance function at Mahindra Satyam for operations across Asia-Pacific and at Wipro, where he was Finance Head for Cloud and Infrastructure Services. Across his various roles, Kulesh deepened his knowledge of the technology industry and global operations of multi-billion-dollar organizations, delivering operational excellence, increased profitability, and corporate efficiency.
Kulesh is a Chartered Accountant from ICAI and a graduate in Commerce. Kulesh has been awarded Best CFO by Finance Monthly and CORE Media. Kulesh works with an organization providing education to underprivileged children.
Cathy Chandhok
Chief Marketing Officer
Cathy leads the development and execution of Infogain’s marketing ecosystem, enhancing how clients experience the Infogain brand. As Chief Marketing Officer and customer advocate, she is deeply focused on accelerating customer experiences, anticipating market trends, and delivering on Infogain’s value proposition as a human-centered digital platform and software engineering company.
Cathy’s global team of individuals across India, Asia-Pacific, Middle East, and US orchestrate marketing strategies that promote digital transformation and platform-based solutions to Fortune 500 and leading software companies. Most recently, Cathy managed the corporate integration of Infogain’s acquisitions of Silicus Technologies, Revel Consulting, and Absolutdata.
Cathy holds an MBA and a BA from the University of Michigan and regularly presents at industry marketing events in India and the United States.
Vikas Kamran
CVP Infogain & CEO Revel
As Corporate Vice President at Infogain and Chief Executive Officer at Revel, Vikas is passionate about helping brands envision their future in the Experience Economy.
Driven by a human-centered approach, Vikas helps clients develop innovative platform-based go-to-market solutions, engineer powerful customer experiences, and drive business transformation. He leads a team of strategists, designers, and change agents who continually adapt to changing needs and deliver value to customers at scale. As leader of the full-service digital experience consultancy, Vikas built a firm that is resilient and responsive, remaining ahead of market conditions for over 10 years.
Prior to founding Revel Consulting, Vikas was a Senior Manager at Accenture’s New York office, where he partnered with Fortune 500 leaders to rapidly ideate and develop innovative and effective go-to-market strategies.
Vikas serves on the Board of Directors at City Year Seattle/King County, which supports education and opens opportunities for tomorrow’s leaders. He is also passionate about innovation and entrepreneurship, connecting local startups in the Pacific Northwest to funding and resources through his 10-year relationship with Alliance of Angels.
Anil Kaul
Chief AI Officer & CEO Absolutdata
Recently listed among the “10 Most Influential Analytics Leaders in India” by Analytics Magazine India and quoted as a “Game Changer” in Research World, Anil is Chief AI Officer at Infogain and CEO of Infogain subsidiary Absolutdata.
An established leader with a penchant for analytics, Anil is on a mission to transform how the world makes decisions. Over the past 20 years at Absolutdata’s helm, Anil led a team of more than 300 data scientists and engineers, delivering advanced analytics and AI-powered solutions to global companies, including 11 Fortune 100 companies.
Prior to founding Absolutdata, Anil worked at McKinsey Co. and Personify. He is also on the board of Edutopia, an innovative startup in the language learning space.
Anil holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Marketing degree, both from Cornell University. Anil has spoken at several industry conferences and top business schools, including Dartmouth, New York University, Cornell, Yale, Columbia, and the University of California, Berkeley.
Nishith Mathur
Chief Strategy & Solutions Officer
Nishith brings a solutions-driven approach and out-of-the box thinking with a strong record of strategy to execution. As Chief Strategy & Solutions Officer, he leads a team of domain experts that champion Infogain’s solution and service offerings in software engineering, cloud transformation, decision science, IoT, automation, systems integration, and business process engineering.
While he was a Partner at Accenture, Nishith was recognized as the Automotive industry supply-chain expert, serving as an advisor to several C-suite executives. After leading a major telecom-tech acquisition in Asia, Nishith saw the substantial growth opportunity from strategic M&A, and has supported an additional 5 acquisitions since then. Nishith also served as a Partner at IBM in Silicon Valley and led the Hi-Tech business for Tech Mahindra.
Nishith received an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a B.Tech Engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. A firm believer of giving back to society, he shares his insights with the next generation of leaders, teaching Organizational Change Management as a part-time lecturer at the University of California, Davis.
Rohit Nagpal
Chief Business officer
Rohit Nagpal is the Chief Business Officer at Infogain; he aligns client goals for platform-based innovation and digital customer experiences to Infogain offerings. He was previously SVP & Global Head of the Infogain Travel & Hospitality and Decision Sciences businesses and has been instrumental in winning key customers and fuelling our exponential growth.
He has over 18 years of experience in Travel & Hospitality, Financial, and Software Product Technology domains, plus deep relationships with CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs at Fortune 1000 global organizations. Prior to Infogain, Rohit was responsible for sales and account management across Travel & Hospitality and Manufacturing domains at HCL America. He was instrumental in opening and managing large accounts by leveraging AMS, Automation, Data Analytics & Digital service portfolios as well as HCL’s MRO offerings.
He holds an MBA in Finance & Marketing from the State University of New York, Buffalo, and is a graduate of Delhi University, India. He is based in Dallas, TX, and invests his time tracking and analyzing newer technologies and trends that accelerate digital transformation across different domains. He is also actively engaged in Go Green initiatives.
Eddie Chandhok
CVP – Head M&A & Sustainability
With more than 18 years of experience at Infogain leading delivery and operations, Eddie will now head the company’s acquisitions and post-merger integration function. This will allow Infogain to continue on its path of Digital transformation and help customers achieve their platform vision.
In addition, he will drive Infogain’s ESG initiative, working toward goals of reducing our per-employee carbon footprint, minimizing the environmental impact of our operations and driving our D&I objectives. Achieving carbon neutrality over the next few years will be a prime objective for Infogain.
In the decade prior to joining Infogain, Eddie delivered IT, financial operations, and customer service consulting services at EY and Capgemini for Fortune 500 companies. Delivering major programs at American Express, Honda, Ford, Nissan, SBC, US Air Force, and United Technologies, Eddie and his teams provided business strategy, experience mapping, and technology solutions in costing, budgeting, and forecasting, GL, post-merger integration, and call center operations.
Eddie graduated with two master’s degrees from the Birla Institute of Technology (BITS), Pilani, and earned his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from The Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan.
Rajiv Naithani
CVP & Chief People Officer
Rajiv is a leading expert on building resilient, high-performing cultures, leading the people function as Chief People Officer. A service-oriented leader, Rajiv takes a human-centered philosophy to delivering employee experiences at scale, creating meaningful impact to employees in the US, India, UK, Poland, Singapore, and Middle East.
Rajiv has played a transformative role throughout 16-plus years, enriching the people function in senior leadership roles at Dassault Systèmes (R&D and Services Entities in India), GlobalLogic, HCL, and Interglobe Technologies (IGT). For his critical role in evolving organizational culture and integrating core values into employees’ behavioral ethos, Rajiv received GlobalLogic’s Best of the Best CEO Awards for two consecutive years (2013 and 2014). He also won the “Young HR Professional of the Year 2014” award at the 5th Asia’s Best Employer Brands Awards in Singapore.
Rajiv graduated from the Xavier School of Management (XLRI) and serves on the Board of Trustees at Pauri Garhwal Trust, dedicated to the development of underprivileged people in Uttarakhand State, India. He regularly shares his voice as a thought leader, delivering speaking engagements at a number of industry and academic forums and publishing articles in print and digital media.
Dayapatra Nevatia
President & COO
Dayapatra leads a team of over 6,000 delivery and operations associates who partner with the world’s leading organizations to drive change by leveraging digital platforms as a transformative force. Responsible for global operations, he brings nearly three decades of experience, including incubating new verticals, acquisitions, integrations, managing large P&Ls, and leading culturally diverse global organizations with over 100,000 team members.
Prior to joining Infogain, Dayapatra served as Executive Director and COO of Mindtree, in several senior roles with Accenture, and in multiple senior roles with Wipro in India, the UK, and the US. With an inspiring “can-do” attitude and a results-driven sense of urgency, he has deep knowledge of managing growth and scale, and he understands the unique perspectives and needs of Infogain customers and employees in each of their geographies.
Dayapatra holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering from the Institute of Engineering and Technology, Lucknow, and a master’s degree in General Management from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
Ayan Mukerji
Chief Executive officer
Since joining Infogain’s leadership team in 2018, Ayan has led Infogain’s transformation to a human-centered digital platform and software engineering company. Spearheading three large acquisitions over a 14-month period, Ayan strengthened Infogain’s market positioning and customer value proposition, successfully meeting evolving demands by global brands.
Guided by transparency and trust as cornerstones of his leadership philosophy, Ayan brings decades of experience in senior executive roles at Wipro, including Head of European Operations where he successfully navigated the complexities of multicultural leadership across 8 countries, and Global Head of Media/Telecom and Product Engineering Services (over $2 billion in revenues). Subsequently Ayan also consulted with Fortune 500 companies and Top 20 global systems integrators.
Ayan is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta and of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur. He also serves on boards of several hi-tech start-ups.
Shumeet Banerji
Advisory Board member
Mr. Shumeet Banerji, PhD has been a member of the Corporate Advisory Board at Absolutdata since March 2014. Mr. Banerji served as the CEO of Booz & Company from 1993-2012 and as a senior partner 2012-2013. He has advised global public and private sector entities at the board level and has served clients in the financial services, telecom, media, consumer products, retail, steel, and chemicals industries.
Mr. Banerji was a member of the faculty at the University of Chicago, Graduate School of Business and is a frequent speaker at key economic conferences around the globe including the World Economic Forum. Mr. Banerji received his Ph.D. from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University and his MBA and BA both from the University of Delhi.
Rohit Nagpal
Chief Customer Officer
With over 18 years of profound experiences in travel/hospitality, financial, and software product technology domains, Rohit is a well-rounded business leader. Rohit has a breadth of expertise in handling relationships with CIOs and CTOs of billion-dollar corporations and medium-sized organizations. Being based out of Dallas, TX, Rohit drives customer success initiatives by deriving critical insights and channeling those into the right actions to deliver superior client experiences. He is also responsible for client development in North America.
Before joining Absolutdata, Rohit was the SVP & Global Head of Infogain’s travel/hospitality and retail verticals, wherein he was responsible for all aspects of the business, from strategy & planning to client development/relationship with end-to-end delivery management. As an extended role, Rohit was also responsible for Infogain’s European sales along while leading their Poland delivery center.
Rohit has worked in leadership roles at organizations like HCL and Blue Star Infotech. He was responsible for client development and management across travel, hospitality, and hi-tech industry segments in North & Latin America.
He holds an MBA degree in Finance & Marketing from the State University of New York, Buffalo, and is a graduate from Delhi University, India. In his free time, he enjoys traveling, cooking delicacies, and watching American football. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are his tech-obsessions.
Raj Dugar
Board member
Raj Dugar is Managing Partner for Asia at Eight Roads Ventures, an investment arm of Fidelity International. Prior to joining Eight Roads in 2007, Mr. Dugar held positions with with The Carlyle Group where he was a senior member of the Asia buy-out group and was co-founder of WestBridge Capital Partners. Earlier in his career he held positions at Booz Allen and Goldman Sachs.
Mr. Dugar holds an MBA from MIT’s prestigious Sloan School of Management and an AB degree in Economics and Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth College.
Amandeep Kalsi
Vice President of Operations
Amandeep is Vice President of Operations at Absolutdata, where he leads the global services delivery and business consulting teams. A seasoned leader with over 16 years of experience, his areas of expertise encompass marketing and risk analytics, loyalty program design and management, CRM, customer management, supply chain management, and campaign management. Prior to coming to Absolutdata, Amandeep helped bring analytics to Dunnhumby and RocSearch.
Amandeep holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad and a Master in Technology in Biochemical Engineering & Biotechnology from the Indian Institute of Technology at Delhi.
George Arabian
Vice President of Sales
George’s background is building and growing revenue both domestically and internationally for technology focused start-ups. He is responsible for US sales and for establishing the company’s sales infrastructure, organization model and processes. With a focus on a performance-driven lead generation and sales execution model, he leads our best of class sales organization. As a startup veteran with both operating and investor experience, George has been an active investor in seed-stage and round A startups, with three IPOs and two exits.
George holds an MBA from San Francisco State University and a BA in History from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Sandra Peterson
Vice President of Marketing
Sandra is Vice President of Marketing at Absolutdata. A senior executive with 20 years of Silicon Valley marketing experience, Sandra brings extensive global B2B and B2C experience from leading brands like Apple, Palm, Adobe and Nvidia along with several startups. She has a passion for new marketing technologies complemented by a deep background in corporate communications and marketing strategy with career DNA in product marketing and product management. Sandra’s impressive breadth of industry experience spans big data, analytics, mobile, SaaS, consumer electronics, e-commerce, automotive, gaming and music.
Prior to joining Absolutdata, Sandra was Founder and VP of Marketing for Sandstone Partners, a marketing consulting firm she established in 1997. Consulting for startups and Fortune 500s , she guided companies through massive industry shifts to establish new categories, expand geographic regions, and promote emerging technologies. With a MS in International Business and a BA in Management Science from UC San Diego, Sandra has international experience that maps well to our global presence.
SUDESHNA DATTA
Executive Vice President and Co-Founder
Sudeshna leads Absolutdata’s global client operations, developing partnerships across Europe and beyond. She also mains Absolutdata’s talent team, strengthening the company’s ongoing growth and commitment to current and future excellence.
Since the company was founded in 2001, Sudeshna has been very involved in making Absolutdata into an internationally-recognized analytics leader. From building new capabilities and internal processes to nurturing client relationships, she is as instrumental in advancing Absolutdata’s innovative company culture as she is in fostering new talent.
Prior to co-founding Absolutdata, Sudeshna started her entrepreneurial journey as a co-founder of globedecor.com, a home décor company. She started her corporate career before that at Pfizer’s global business development team and led several large cross-functional teams as a Brand Manager for Kraft Foods. During her stay at Kraft, she implemented a successful turnaround strategy for one of the company’s core brands and delivered substantial improvements in volume and profit growth.
Sudeshna is active an author on various organization building topics and regularly publishes articles on entrepreneurship, leadership, talent development, and global operations, and she has been a guest speaker at various business forums.
When she’s not blazing a trail for data analytics, Sudeshna is an avid dog lover, a stylish interior decorator, and a passionate supporter of street art. She also devotes time to causes that empower women and promote healthcare for women and children and supports animal shelters. She has an MBA from Cornell University and a BA in Architecture and Building Construction from the University of Washington.
Suhale Kapoor
Executive Vice President and Co-Founder
Suhale helped build Absolutdata from a startup to its current status as a robust delivery center for analytics and research. In addition to growing our business in the US and other developed markets, currently he is deeply involved in developing business with clients across APAC and the Middle East where we are witnessing consumer and business landscapes develop in very interesting ways, and the adoption of analytics across both MNCs and regional/local players. He is also closely involved with the firm’s Finance and Technology functions.
Suhale has over 20 years of experience in operations, marketing, logistics, and information management systems. Before co-founding Absolutdata, he spent 5 years with Mitsubishi Corporation in international trade, investments, and reengineering. Suhale is an alumnus of the Mitsubishi President’s Global Leadership Program.
He holds an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad and an undergraduate degree in Economics from Delhi University.
Dr. Sudeep Haldar
Sr. Vice President of Growth Analytics & AI Solutions
With over 25 years of experience in global analytics, marketing strategy, marketing effectiveness and consumer insights, Sudeep has a breadth of industry expertise. With deep expertise in leading edge predictive analytics and insights, he drives analytics transformation for strategic clients and leads AI platforms and solutions. Working from our Chicago office, Sudeep partners with sales to lead key strategic accounts, provide thought leadership, and ensure highest quality of service to existing clients. He has worked in leadership roles with organizations such as Mondelēz, Kraft, Staples, McKinsey and Cerenti Marketing Group.
Sudeep holds a PhD in Marketing from Cornell University and has taught at the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and Syracuse University. He is an engineering graduate from Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur and an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management at Bangalore.
Dr. Anil Kaul
Co-Founder and CEO
Anil has over 22 years of experience in advanced analytics, market research, and management consulting. He is very passionate about analytics and leveraging technology to improve business decision-making. Prior to founding Absolutdata, Anil worked at McKinsey & Co. and Personify. He is also on the board of Edutopia, an innovative start-up in the language learning space.
An in-demand writer and speaker, Anil has published articles in McKinsey Quarterly, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research and International Journal of Research. He was recently listed among the ‘10 Most Influential Analytics Leaders in India’ by Analytics Magazine India and has been quoted as a “Game Changer” in Research World. Anil has spoken at many industry conferences and top business schools, including Dartmouth, Berkeley, Cornell, Yale, Columbia and New York University.
Anil holds a Ph.D. and a Master of Marketing degree, both from Cornell University.
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