How did you get your idea or concept for the business?
My good friend Kailash and I have been closely involved in the AI ecosystem since our university days. Together we have been approached by many companies to help them integrate AI and ML into their products and services. We have contributed heavily to a number of open source projects that include several deep learning frameworks. We have been consulted by a number of companies
While working on numerous projects together, we decided to form India's first horizontal AI start-up - Mate Labs - in 2016 and began work on our flagship product Mate Verse. We launched Mate Verse in 2018 to simplify the entire process of building and training ML models, making it simple for someone who has never written a line of code to use. We chose to focus on the supply chain sector in 2019 because our solutions provided 10X more value. The following year, we were recognised by Google as the best AI company in APAC, allowing us to develop a more accurate and near real-time forecasting system.
We launched our new Mateverse DF in 2020, a fully automated, highly accurate, and granular demand forecasting solution for FMCG/CPG/Pharma companies, that uses the world's fastest proprietary AutoML tech. We approach solutions with AI-led automation in mind, allowing us to rapidly develop and deploy supply chain solutions, which distinguishes us as we provide agile and accurate solutions. Today, we help Fortune 500 companies with real-time predictions that are 100X faster than traditional methods. This provides businesses with a 15%-40% increase in planning/forecasting accuracy.
What are the various Services provided by Mate Labs
We work closely with Fortune 500 companies to provide them with accurate and real-time demand forecasting, through which organizations can lower the risk of overstocking, inventory waste and maximise production efficiency and streamline purchasing. Our solutions provide supply chain planners with robust and detailed forecasts that considers both historical data and real-time conditions. Our platform integrates all relevant data to make accurate and profitable decisions to reduce inventory waste.
Our current suite of solutions helps supply chains optimise processes such as:
● Demand Forecasting - Automated Demand Forecasting optimizes the Demand Plans for the highest accuracy and fidelity for every channel at the most granular levels to prepare for even the most volatile conditions with no Opportunity or Inventory Loss.
● Supply Planning - Optimize Supply Plans using Mateverse’s advanced Demand Forecasting tool for real time and automated Raw Material Forecasts with upto 90% accurate Production Plans to prepare for even the most volatile conditions with no Opportunity or Inventory Loss.
● Demand Driver Analysis - Automated analysis of all the artificial or natural drivers that affect organic demand for every product SKU at the most granular levels with the highest accuracy and fidelity for every channel to prepare for even the most volatile conditions with no Opportunity or Inventory Loss.
● Crisis Forecasting - Automated Demand Forecasting during a crisis for multiple scenarios with the highest accuracy and fidelity for every channel at the most granular levels to prepare for even the most volatile conditions with no Opportunity or Inventory Loss.
● New Product Forecasting - Automated Demand Forecasting for New Products optimizes the Demand Plans for the highest accuracy and fidelity for every channel at the most granular levels to prepare for even the most volatile conditions with no Opportunity or Inventory Loss.
● SLOB - Automated Prediction of Obsolete Inventory with the highest accuracy and fidelity for every channel at the most granular levels to optimise inventory across the supply chain and reduce wastage
What makes Mate Labs different from hundreds of other AI and ML platforms?
Our forecasts are generated using our proprietary AutoML technology, which is currently the fastest in the world. We always approach our solutions with AI led automation in mind. Our AI-first approach enables us to rapidly develop and deploy supply chain solutions. This distinguishes us from the competition by allowing us to provide agile and accurate solutions built on top of our proprietary AutoML technology. The benefit of this is that our solutions are unrivalled in terms of speed and accuracy.
What are the struggles and challenges you face?
We discovered that inadequate infrastructure has slowed the growth and development of supply chain and logistics providers while working with many leading brands in India. Many people are unaware of the benefits that digitization brings to supply chains, which has been one of the most difficult challenges in implementing AI and ML in the supply chain.
Many companies experienced unstable markets and increased competition as a result of the pandemic, which led to many decision makers embracing the desire to integrate AI into multiple businesses. As one of India's leading AI companies, we are collaborating closely with industry stakeholders to address this collective industry need and market demand. By incorporating Mateverse, businesses can easily address some of the biggest challenges plaguing the supply chain ecosystem, which are predictability and data-based demand planning & forecasting.
How do you plan to grow in the future? What does 5 years down the line look like for Mate Labs?
Supply chains must be resilient, but also extremely flexible and dynamic in order to serve consumers even in the most adverse conditions. The pandemic has shown this. We are currently collaborating with Fortune 500 companies around the world to create next-generation Supply Chains that can be fully automated. As a result of these efforts, the entire supply chain should be managed by a single supply chain control tower. In addition, we developed a fully automated demand planning system. We help businesses reduce and better utilise man hours. Furthermore, automated demand planning creates a slew of new possibilities for inventory, distribution, and manufacturing. We are already working with a leading global beauty and cosmetics brand to reduce waste in their supply chain by developing a first-of-its-kind solution based on SLOB (Slow Moving and Obsolete Inventory).
We have already automated the existing demand planning process and are working on automating inventory management, vendor management, distribution, and logistics. We have focused on forecast stability with our core AI background, which has led us to take a guarantee on accuracy and bring standards in generating responsible forecasts. We are currently one of the few companies that accepts responsibility for the predictions generated by its system.
If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?
One of the most important things to remember when starting out is not the solution, product, or service, but the problem statement. The effectiveness of our solution is determined by how well we define and articulate the problem.
Communicating the problem to the target audience and connecting them to the solutions increases the overall effectiveness of the plan by 10X. When a customer understands and can relate to the problem, he is more likely to pay for it. This is extremely important.