Affine is a provider of high-end analytics services to solve complex business problems
By Srinath Srinivasan
The last couple of years has witnessed growing demand for analytics as a service and also as a product. Leveraging AI and advanced analytics is one such firm, Affine, which offers high-end analytics services to organisations to solve complex business problems. “We are currently focused on Artificial Intelligence algorithms and analytics, cloud—data and analytics using cloud native applications and heavy duty engineering—to build data systems, data lakes and operations,” says Manas Agrawal, CEO and co-founder, Affine.
According to Agrawal, a combination of these three pillars will continue to play a major role in digital transformation and make analytics a horizontal mainstay across business functions in all sectors. As a result, the industry is moving towards ‘productisation’ of analytics. With MSMEs also joining the Industry 4.0 transformation, this approach has witnessed a great demand. Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated this demand further. “We are about to launch our suite of products by the first quarter of FY23,” says Agrawal.
In addition to working on products, Bengaluru-based Affine is aiming to enable the product ecosystem by enabling a DeepTech accelerator programme. “We have our first cohort who will be mentored by our team. We will take their products to market. We will also find investment opportunities via this programme,” says Agrawal. “The best way for us to stand differentiated is the ROI we provide by tailoring services and products to the needs of the clients. In addition to ecosystem enablement, we are also having five Centres of Excellence (CoE) within our company for this purpose,” he adds.
The CoEs focus on faculties such as AI, cloud and data engineering on domains such as manufacturing and gaming. In order to compliment CoEs and to find talent, the company has partnerships with top universities in India and abroad. “The partnerships not only help advance our research but also help us take academic papers to industry,” says Agrawal.
At the moment, however, the company is taking the Covid-19 induced talent crunch in its stride. “We have improved our lateral hiring significantly. The main demand from talent is flexibility and opportunities to go higher up in their career. More than 40% of our middle management have been with us for 7-8 years. They have moved up the ladder within the company,” he says.
Agrawal is betting big on BFSI and manufacturing industries for the next couple of years. “BFSI has been a great adopter of analytics. In FY23, we will see increased demand from manufacturing,” he says Agrawal. With a revenue of over $20 million, the company aims to grow over 70% in the next couple of years.