With responsible AI, Ongil.ai is helping enterprises harmonise data

Enterprises often face significant challenges with the manual collection, harmonisation, and processing of data—especially if they are dealing with big data—as well as the time-consuming task of building dashboards and reports. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) can help with data-driven methodologies to decrease operational expenditures and make the firms more competitive.

“This process traditionally takes days to reach a conclusion. However, with the integration of AI, what used to be labour-intensive and time-consuming tasks spanning several days can now be accomplished within minutes,” Ajith Sahasranamam tells YourStory.

OngIL, headquartered in Chennai, provides businesses with AI-driven solutions for agile and data-informed decision-making with an aim to empower more dynamic business processes.

The instant messaging platform claims to help senior management across industries to speed up analytics tasks by up to 95% using data collection insights generated with features like real-time visualisation and predictive analytics.

Founded in 2017, the startup was among YourStory’s Tech30 list of most promising Indian startups of 2023 announced in the Bengaluru edition of startup-tech summit TechSparks. Ongil.ai has raised around $400,000 to date from angel investors including Lakshmi Narayanan, former Vice-Chairman and CEO of Cognizant. 

Data-based analysis

Sahasranamam notes that contemporary AI frameworks predominantly depend on extensive data and computational resources, granting significant influence to large technology corporations in the AI landscape. 

“Consequently, AI advancement becomes confined to the preferences and objectives of these tech giants. Algorithms employed in fields such as supply chain management, climate technology, and education may not achieve optimal performance because they are originally tailored with a focus on use cases like image categorization, email spam filtering, and product recommendations,” says Ongil.ai Founder and CEO Sahasranamam, who also has a PhD in Computational Neuroscience.

Sahasranamam started Ongil.ai to decrease the use of computational power while processing data. It also aims to make AI more democratic and beneficial for businesses through predictive analysis, anomaly detection, and what-if analysis using natural language processing, deep learning, and optimisation algorithms.

Ongil.ai also employs concepts including causal modelling and probabilistic programming. 

“Additionally, we are working on incorporating spiking neuron model driven neural networks, which will make our models more flexible, less demanding in terms of computational resources, and compatible with neuromorphic hardware. This makes our product suitable for low-power use cases,” he adds.

Ongil.ai has partnered with enterprises including Unilever, 3M, ABInbev, Hello Travel, etc. The founder claims that Unilever has seen a 7X increase in its data harmonisation efficiency after using Ongil.ai and for ABInbev, the time to insights has been reduced from three days to less than five minutes.

The startup offers a monthly subscription along with add-on charges for additional features like prediction, what-if analysis, and sentiment analysis for an extra fee.

“We also do customisation which is charged separately where customers who require specific customisations to the platform,” he adds.

The startup, which employs up to 19 people, reported an annual revenue of $210K last financial year, which is projected to close at $300K this year.

The vision

The market for AI is expected to reach $7.8 billion by 2025 in India. According to the State of the Education report (SOER) 2022, the domestic AI market will grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.2% between 2022 and 2025. 

Talking about the future, Sahasranamam says the company is transitioning from supporting general business operations use cases to focusing on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) and support enterprises to make positive social impacts.

“Though not in India but in many other countries enterprises have to declare their social impact besides their general fillings and Ongil.ai can help that data drive efficiently,” he notes. 

Ongil.ai is currently operating in South East Asia, Japan, and the US, and Sahasranamam plans to strengthen its presence in the American market in the near future. 

“Given our responsible AI framework, we are subsequently looking to expand in the EU market,” he says.

Ongil.ai is also looking to raise funds. “We want venture capitalists who share our vision of revolutionising AI in businesses by creating new algorithms and hardware which is challenging to find.”

(The copy was updated to revise the revenue numbers as requested by the company)