Sourabh Gupta of Skit ai On The Future Of Artificial Intelligence

I think the need for constant improvements and upgrades makes AI exciting. AI algorithms must be upgraded consistently; it’s an iterative process that brings about innovation in the technology and the product.

As part of our series about the future of Artificial Intelligence, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sourabh Gupta.

Sourabh Gupta is the CEO and co-founder of Skit.ai, the leading voice AI SaaS provider offering an augmented voice intelligence platform that helps businesses modernize their contact centers and customer experience by automating and improving voice communications at scale. Founded in 2016, Sourabh’s vision in creating the company is to elevate customer experiences and lay the groundwork for the future of voice interactions. Sourabh has been shortlisted for prestigious leadership awards in India, including Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2021 and Entrepreneur India’s Tech 25 Class of 2021.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you share with us the ‘backstory” of how you decided to pursue this career path in AI?

Akshay Deshraj and I founded Skit.ai in 2016, just after graduating from the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. At that point, we were keen to know what the ‘next 500 million Internet users’ wanted and the problems they would face. In that journey, we understood that enterprises worldwide spend billions on contact centers, a significant part of which is agent costs. Even with this spend, customers rarely have a good experience, wait times are massive, and businesses and agents are frustrated due to the loss of time and resources. Once we understood this problem, we decided to resolve it by automating a large chunk of non-productive calls via voice AI, allowing businesses to focus their efforts on more value-added tasks.

Today, we are a leading global voice AI SaaS company offering the Skit Augmented Voice Intelligence Platform that helps businesses modernize their contact centers and customer experience by automating and improving voice communications at scale. We have enabled multiple enterprises to transform their contact centers and earned the reputation of being one of the world’s most nuanced conversational voice AI companies. We are a global company with 400+ employees, serving more than 60+ prominent enterprises across industries in multiple geographies.

The company has also been recognized with honors in the CCW Excellence Awards — Disruptive Technology of the Year 2022, Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia 2021, Entrepreneur India Tech Startup of the Year 2021 — AI, and Gartner Cool Vendor 2021 for its remarkable industry innovation.

What lessons can others learn from your story?

Focus and Clarity — We had clarity from the very beginning, and that was to create a voice-first solution. Unlike many companies in this space, we are not into everything but have dedicated our entire resources to creating one of the best Voice AI solutions in the world.

Timed Market Entry — We also captured the gap early or at the right time; the demand for our solution is actual, and we proved that with consistent revenue growth.

Innovations and Values — We are a company that is innovative and agile at its core. We focus on outcomes, not on procedures and protocols. Our audacious work policies help our people be more innovative. And that is important because productivity is just the table stakes. To thrive in such a competitive space, we have to be innovative. Our culture of innovative mindset sets us apart, and it’s not easy to replicate as it comes out of deep-rooted values.

Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now?

I recently relocated from India to NYC to build our U.S. team and shape the company’s new iteration as we go through an exciting hyper-growth phase. This new phase of our journey has been exhilarating; our foray into the U.S. market has been challenging, but fortunately, we have seen early wins in just a couple of months.

We will also work on our proprietary ASR and text-to-speech engines, outperforming even Google ASR on certain narrow and specific applications.

From a product perspective, we are continuing the development of our proprietary telephony, which has successfully augmented our calling capabilities multifold.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

I won’t be able to single out any one mentor or advisor. I have had multiple mentors and advisors who have helped pave the way for our success, and their insights and network have helped us scale the company to where it is today. We appreciate their constant support, as it negates us from adopting a trial-and-error approach to multiple previously solved problems.

What are the 5 things that most excite you about the AI industry? Why?

I think the need for constant improvements and upgrades makes AI exciting. AI algorithms must be upgraded consistently; it’s an iterative process that brings about innovation in the technology and the product.

AI will enhance existing products, help organizations and employees maximize productivity by improving accuracy, and simplify existing processes. This ubiquitous application makes AI the most significant technology.

AI will help in creating new types of jobs. For instance, the Skit Augmented Voice Intelligence Platform helps automate non-productive calls, allowing the workforce to focus on more value-added tasks. This creates better opportunities for human agents to focus on more significant and diverse functions.

AI applications lead to better customer service and engagement. Voice is the most natural form of communication, and Voice AI is helping optimize customer support and deliver a superior customer experience.

The potential use cases for robust and efficient AI systems will help pave the way for more nuanced engines that elevate our understanding of businesses, customers, processes, etc.

What are the 5 things that concern you about the AI industry? Why?

There are 3 major concerns we at Skit.ai keep a tab on:

Stereotypes in real-world data. For example, we might see more males calling a call center, resulting in a gender classifier biased against female speakers.

Model and feature pipelines might come with inherent inductive biases that data might amplify.

Data Privacy & Security — Most AI models are trained on vast amounts of data, ensuring privacy and security of that data should be taken into account.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world? Can you share a story?

Quality Customer Support has forever remained the privilege of only the premium customers who had their dominion over support. But that changes with our Intelligent Voice Agent. A microentrepreneur from any rural area will get the same quality customer experience as a premium corporate customer. Our Intelligent Voice Agent is inclusive, as it understands multiple languages, dialects, and accents.

Since our Voice AI agent operates via phone, Internet connectivity and computer literacy are irrelevant. Its simplicity and ease of use make it ideal for senior citizens. Our Intelligent Voice Agent delivers a state-of-the-art customer experience, irrespective of the language, dialect, accents, ethnicity, gender, type of customer and query, service time, and complexity. Voice AI is truly democratizing a delightful customer experience.

The touchstone of disruptive technology is its ability to empower the masses. The all-pervasive disenchantment with customer support has become so hard-wired in the mind of customers that they use it as a last resort. With Augmented Voice Intelligence, we are well poised to break that paradigm and perception. With intelligent support, Voice AI will make people see customer support in an amicable light. Imagine the call volumes and the impact when a Voice AI agent can solve problems of customers, from any walk of life, instantly, intelligently, with no waiting lines, and in their language.

As you know, there are not that many women in your industry. Can you advise what is needed to engage more women into the AI industry?

At Skit, we are constantly making efforts to improve the sense of belonging, where every employee feels comfortable at work and has an equal opportunity to grow and thrive. Our goal is to create a gender-balanced workforce and ensure Skit.ai always remains a woman-friendly workplace. Our gender diversity committee has enabled several networking forums for women, including a support group to address concerns and regular panel discussions with industry leaders. Currently, 38% of our workforce are women, which is significantly higher than most businesses in this space. As a company, we ensure promoting and retaining a diverse workforce is not just some corporate jargon but a KPI that is mapped to key leadership roles within the organization; that said, the positions at Skit are offered primarily on merit. I believe a more comprehensive implementation of this approach across the industry will help engage more women.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I’m not sure if I would start a movement, but if I had to support one, it would be equal pay, along with diversity and inclusion. At Skit.ai, we ensure we are constantly striving to make each employee feel comfortable to bring their full and unique selves to work, offering every team member an equal opportunity to grow and thrive. We are deeply committed to supporting and advancing all types of diversity within our community. Another goal is to create a gender-balanced workforce and ensure that Skit.ai fully supports women’s inclusion in the workplace.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

Visit our website at Skit.ai. You can also check out my LinkedIn page.

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!