Meet Vivek Kumar, the brain behind unMazer.ai

We, the content team at unMazer, sat down with Vivek — our Founder, for an informal chat last week. As we wanted the world to know more about him, his vision and his thoughts, we are paraphrasing some of his answers below.

Q1. How would you introduce yourself in one sentence?

I am a part-time geopolitics enthusiast and a full-time tech entrepreneur — founder of unMazer.ai.

Q2. Can you describe your passion?

My passion is to figure out ways to help Indian businesses grow using technology; helping the enterprises ride the growth curve and ultimately benefit the economy.

Q3. What have you been up to before unMazer.ai happened?

After graduating in civil engineering from IIT Kharagpur, I completed MS from the University of Texas at Austin where I fell in love with data science. Following my newfound interest, I worked at the Miami and the Chicago division of WSP USA for three years. One of the most interesting projects I did there was with the Dept. of Transportation — to figure out the economic viability of a bus rapid transit corridor using demographic, cell phone location movement data and statistical modelling. Overall, my professional endeavour included helping the transport department optimize demand for land transportation and explore the viability of mobility investment.

Q4. What exactly is unMazer?

unMazer is a common data platform for offline and online businesses to help businesses grow. We use third-party alternative data such as location pings, mobile usage, customer segments, movement patterns, social media chatters, satellite imagery, hyperlocal infrastructure, policies, surveys and much more to provide relevant actionable insights for businesses. Our mission is to help enterprises integrate data-driven decisions in their workflow to grow & transform themselves.

Q5. What led to the idea of unMazer?

During my time in the US, I had a first-hand experience of how the right data could help businesses increase revenue. With a “data-first” mindset, I have had the experience of witnessing unprecedented growth for both humble eateries and organized chains.

I feel the 2020s is the decade that belongs to India where the country is going to expand multi-fold (despite the current hiccup due to Covid). Growing demand from the companies and the advancement in AI made a perfectly suitable environment to start unMazer.

Q6. What drives you in life?

Technology is a great equaliser and catalyst to level the playing field. I aim to help people make their lives better using technology. India is the place of my birth and will be the place of my action as well as there is a lot to be done here ~ hence this is what keeps me motivated.

Q7. How’s your journey been, from where you started to where you are today?

Honestly, I take pride (and feel grateful at the same time) when I look at the past. Coming from a non-descript small town of Bihar to getting into one of the IITs to complete research and masters on scholarship in one of the best universities in the world to have an office among the skyscrapers of Chicago — I can say that the variety of experience along the way has made me aware of different spectrums of life. Having said that, I have had my share of disappointments, rejections and setbacks in having non-optimal career milestones. The key is to have a consistent displacement in the forward direction!

Q8. What are the core values by which you live? What core values do you want your employees to embed?

I have learnt the hard way that being decisive is one of the most important superpowers one can have. Once the decision is taken, it is easier to optimize the efforts for the best possible outcome. I have seen many, including myself, in the past suffering from what I call post-decision speculation syndrome.

To add to this, I am fortunate enough to have a voice in deciding the team culture early on which I feel is very important for any organisation. I want people working with me to have a certain set of values such as focus, grit, humility and ownership.

You can read more on this here.

Q9. What habits have you inculcated that helped you grow and increase your productivity?

I would say one of the habits that I am trying to inculcate is unrelenting ‘focus’. In the age of social media, IMs, email, meetings; I try to do most of the productive work of the day before the lunch hour as I am an early riser. This shift in the working patterns has immensely helped me to increase my productivity and focus.

Q10. What’s your take on ways to do business?

I think ethics, values and social impact are important and intertwined closely to run most businesses. We spend a lot of time chasing success and achieving key metrics which is just a byproduct if we take ownership in solving customers’ problems.

Q11. What are the lessons this journey of entrepreneurship has taught you?

Entrepreneurship can be tough and a long journey. I am still learning and growing. I learned the following lessons along the way:

• Have the right set of people around you who relate to the vision. Having a team that is as motivated as you is a cherry on the top.
• “Skin in the game” of people involved is necessary.
• It is not just always about work, problems, solution, money, funding. The most important thing, which is critical to success is to have fun along the journey.

Q12. How do you see the Indian market panning out for the technology front?

I believe India is primed to be the country of technology where it is integrated effortlessly into our way of life. We have made good strides in financial inclusion through widespread banking and UPI. Some of the Indian IT companies have been writing software and codes for the world for the last few decades. Many startups and unicorns have emerged recently but the ecosystem is still in its early days. In fact, there has been a trend of so-called ‘build in India and build for the world’.

I believe the next frontier would be something called “local SaaS” where a plethora of companies use tech and software to augment growth.

Q13. What motivated you to enter into this market? Where do you see this industry in the coming 10 years?

The global market cap of the Alternative Data industry has reached US$1 billion in 2020. It is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 40.1% from 2020 to 2027 to reach US$17.4 billion.

Along with the growth of Alternative Data, there are a lot of factors that make it the perfect time to enter the market. India has more than 700 million Internet Subscribers. In fact, most Indians were forced to come on the internet for the first time due to Covid. Urbanisation is taking place with over 530 million urban Indian residents having improved disposable income and more than 54 cities with a million-plus population. About 65 million sq foot of organised retail space will be assimilated in the next 5 years. The real estate sector in India is expected to reach a market size of US$ 1 trillion by 2030 and contribute 13% to the country’s GDP by 2025.

Q14. How is Covid impacting the business market and how businesses are adjusting to it?

Definitely, it has put a brake on economic activity, especially for offline businesses. Businesses are investing more to keep operations running and are less inclined towards experimentation and new growth ideas (hacks!). But I strongly feel that this phase will be over soon and businesses would come back with a bigger appetite to grow.

Currently, businesses are appreciative of the newer ways to bring technologies to unlock unexplored markets and customer base. The interest is unparalleled and this keeps us motivated. COVID-19 crisis had forced a sudden, new way of life upon the world. However, the best way forward is to identify practical ways to enhance business capabilities. Realizing the importance and utilizing technology in business has never been more important.

Q15. What goal do you have for the startup? How would you measure the success of your startup?

A few goals for our startup are:

• Help a major number of businesses to grow in size and expand their market area (100 clients each across 5 industries that make sense for us).
• Inculcate the data-driven approach for business decision making.
• The RoI for our consumer is quantifiable and at least more than 5:1.
• For our north star metrics, we would want to reach a US$100 Million ARR in 5 years.

Q16. Why do you think your product is innovative and will click in the market?

Key innovations such as sourcing, uniqueness, comprehensiveness, simplicity, economics are the reasons we feel that this will click.

We provide end to end data sourcing and licensing, with no hassle. We deliver both data and narrative, helping you gain insights via the interplay of signals from granular and street-level data. unMazer’s single platform helps in extracting data from multiple sources at low cost and deploying those important signals while taking key business decisions.

You can check out our differentiator article here.

Q17. What’s next for Vivek? What’s next for unMazer?

As an immediate plan, we want to breach the 50 customers mark, get into the product-market fit level and possibly look for institutional funding. As far as next for me, I see myself completely devoted to this enterprise and help out businesses unlock their growth.

Q18. What systems would you like to have in place in your personal life and in your startup to achieve that goal?

I am trying to experiment with allocating time for productive work — finding functional heads for the company who along with taking care of the responsibilities in the given domain, also helps out in inculcating the culture of innovation and cohesive ownership. Alongside, establishing a culture and process of inbound leads via social media activity, content marketing and customer education about the possibilities of the technology.

Q19. What are your outside interests?

I like to cook and play sports. Recently, I have picked up squash and slowly getting good at it. As mentioned earlier, I am a geopolitics buff. Articles about the policies, countries re-alignments, securities challenges etc interest me a lot. My other interests are also in the area of cities (happens to be my professional education), sustainability and urban transportation.

To know more, please visit unmazer.ai or write to us at sales@unmazer.ai or leave a comment.