CXOToday has engaged in an exclusive interview with Ketan Karkhanis, CEO, ThoughtSpot
ThoughtSpot, the AI-powered analytics company, with a significant presence in India, has been at the forefront of AI-driven transformation in data analytics, helping enterprises move away from legacy platforms to embrace the power of generative AI. Their latest innovation Spotter is an autonomous AI agent that acts as your AI analyst to enable you to interact with your enterprise structured data in a conversational. CXO Today met up with ThoughtSpot’s CEO, Ketan Karkhanis, during his recent India visit. Here are some highlights from the conversation.
- How is ThoughtSpot’s India R&D center contributing to the company’s global innovation efforts?
India is a force multiplier for ThoughtSpot, and it has been an important part of our story since our founding. The investment intention that we made in 2022 was positioned to develop, lead and increase our footprint in the region to take advantage of the technological innovation and strong talent pool. We have tripled the size of our team with growth in all parts of our business including go to market, our core function and R&D.
Specific to R&D, the team continues to grow and deliver unprecedented innovation. We hold 64 global patents with over 40 pending applications, these innovations are largely driven by our product and engineering teams in India. As a whole, delivering innovation to our customers and helping them future proof their businesses is a key driver of our success, and our team in India is a strong contributor to that.
- What are ThoughtSpot’s hiring plans for India in the next few years? What kind of skillsets are you looking for?
The talent pool is complemented by a vibrant culture that fosters agility and creative problem-solving – essential elements for innovation that we are focused on continuing to build and nurture across our entire team. Of course, R&D will continue to be a focus area of hiring as we look to expand our engineering and product teams in our offices in Bangalore and Hyderabad. As I shared earlier, India is a powerful force multiplier for our business and will continue to be critical to building on our innovation momentum.
- Can you provide an update on the $150 million investment announced for India in 2022? What are the key areas where this investment has been deployed?
As mentioned earlier, we have tripled the size of our team across India and are nearing 500 employees in the market since September 2022. The R&D team, responsible for product development and innovation, has more than tripled in this time alone. And with the growth in our team and acceleration of bringing new product innovations to market, we have also tripled our patents worldwide in this same period. As we continue to deliver new innovation and value for our customers around the globe, our presence in India will continue to grow.
- Can you tell us about Spotter? What are the key features and benefits of ThoughtSpot’s new AI analyst product?
Spotter is our autonomous AI agent that acts as your AI analyst. Spotter enables our customers and users to interact with their enterprise structured data in a conversational, and iterative human-like way, delivering precise, interactive answers to any query, regardless of where the data resides or its complexity.
There are a number of significant changes we have introduced in Spotter. First, it is not your normal app or a feature in the app. We are inspired by and are building the skills of an analyst into Spotter. Spotter leverages knowledge of your business and applies reasoning skills to augment generative AI with a goal to deliver analyst-like reasoning and accuracy to data questions. A significant change from our existing natural language capabilities is how Spotter will retain the context from the first query and allow the user to make another request on top of that answer, creating a flowing conversation leading to deeper insights. Conversations are now a first class analytical object. This significantly expands ThoughtSpot’s previous NLP capabilities by taking it to the next level delivering unmatched precision, power, and relevance.
This is our latest innovation that puts humans at the center of decision making because we strongly believe that AI should be for everyone, not just the experts.
- As the newly appointed CEO, what is your vision for the company? How do you see ThoughtSpot’s product offerings evolving in the next few years?
I am very bullish on ThoughtSpot’s market position which is driven by our customer obsession and culture of innovation. My number one priority is the success of our customers. We want our customers to succeed with AI, and for their AI investments to lead to ROI for their business. AI is the new BI. And when we help our customers take their most valuable asset – their data – and give them the right tools can help them derive game-changing decisions, we’re one step closer to realizing our mission of creating a more fact driven world. We will continue to march along this path and make data accessible to users in their workflows, and power the autonomous business of the future.
- How does India fit into that vision?
I recently returned from my first trip visiting our team in India, and let me tell you, I was fired up! The level of innovation, energy, and creativity they bring to the table is truly inspiring. Their problem-solving mindset, combined with a deep understanding of technology and the needs of our customers, allows them to push boundaries and drive real progress. India will continue to be pivotal in driving innovation and realizing our vision.
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