[Bootstrap Heroes] G-Square brings in a bot and plug-and-play element into analytics

Picture this. You make a phone call to a bank and someone pleasant gives you an update and all the advice you need. At work, all the data you require for an important presentation is at hand, eliminating the need for numerous research platforms and tools. Imagine if it is all present whenever you need it.

Bots have been replacing human faces in everything from chats to financial advice, and analytics isn’t far behind, either. In order to make data analysis simpler, G-Square intends to replace manual data analysis with robo-analytics products, especially in financial services and fintech companies.

The analytics space may have several players, but Gopi Suvanam, Co-founder, G-Square, believes very few of them are product driven.

Filling a gap

“This is the gap we are trying to fill. We do this by providing plug-and-play solutions in the analytics space and automating a range of analytics processes using machine learning,” says Gopi, who had earlier founded another fintech venture.

Gopi and Gurpreet Singh have now known each other for seven years, but it was in 2014, while they were working on analytics projects with some financial services firms, that G-Square was born.

While Gopi has over 12 years of experience in financial analytics, Gurpreet has been in the financial services industry for 19 years. Having turned consultant and entrepreneur in 2011, he has worked with institutions such as ABN AMRO Bank, Dresdner Bank, ICICI Prudential AMC, EFG, and Mirae Asset Global Investments in the past.

Recognising the client need

During their work experience, they felt that clients spent tremendous amounts of time and energy on processing information that could be automated easily. They also realised that most business users prefer analytics delivered to them in simple English rather than through complicated math and graphs. Most importantly, all this needs to be delivered in a timely fashion.

They felt that there was a huge gap in product-based analytics solutions, specifically in the financial services and fintech domain. In order to solve the problem they had identified, they bounced ideas off former clients they had maintained strong relationships with.

They shared some use cases on the analytics products they had planned and got very good responses. Explaining the evolution, Gopi says:

So sometime in 2014, these thoughts led us to developing plug-and-play analytics solutions for business users using a combination of machine learning, natural language processing, and big data technologies. Although we use sophisticated technologies in the back end, the business user gets simple and actionable insights delivered to her in a timely fashion.

Building the team

They hired a few young engineers and data scientists who were hungry both for learning and growth.

On the G-Square advisory board are VK Bansal, Chairman — India Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley and Subinder Khurana, who has advised and mentored several current and future star startups, including Druva Software, Power2SME, AuthBridge, Handshake, and JustMyNeighbour. He was earlier President and MD, marketRx India.

The plug-and-play solution

G-Square now has a suite of products in the sales and risk analytics space. The sales analytics product Salesrator has three sub-modules: Narrator, Clientrator, and Channelrator. Narrator is an automated tool that derives insights from data and presents them in smart dashboards and narrations in English.

Clientrator provides cross-sell and up-sell opportunities on a real-time basis to business users. It also identifies customers’ attrition risk.

Channelrator analyses sales channel (internal or external) performance and provides actionable insights on the same.

They have another tool, Bigdator, which helps in processing tons of structured and unstructured data to come out with insights, sentiments, and personas to throw useful insights for businesses to understand customer preferences and take important decisions.

“Our risk products (Derivator and Riskrator) provide derivative traders and equity investors analytics for making the right decisions,” says Gopi.

A growing market

However, the task isn’t easy. One of the biggest challenges is getting the internal teams to start using the products. They are generally resistant in accepting new products and are not willing to consider external expertise despite lacking internal capabilities.

Gopi adds that unlike in the case of a B2C product, the decision-making process for a B2B product is spread out and has several stakeholders. Each of them has his/her own perspective, which delays the sales and execution cycle.

Research firm IDC predicts that the market for big data technology and services is growing at a 23.1 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR) to reach $48.6 billion in 2019.

Also, according to YourStory Research, there are close to 50 Indian early-stage startups in the fintech and robo-advisory segment. A Deloitte research paper states that the top 11 firms in this segment globally have seen explosive growth since market entry, managing close to $19 billion assets under management (AUM) in 2014.

The G-Square team claims that their revenue from the first year to the second year has tripled and this year they are again on course to triple the same.

Revenue growth

At present, the team works only with Indian clients, but an offshore product and services business will soon be launched. “We expect 300 to 400 percent growth in revenue over the next one year as product sales is picking up now and offshore revenues are also kicking in.”

The team claims to have implemented Narrator, the flagship product, with three clients, and is in advanced discussions with another four clients.

Also, Gopi believes that where a traditional analytics service provider takes several weeks, even months, to come up with insights from data, their products can start throwing up insights from the day they are installed. They work along a subscription-based revenue model.

Bootstrapped, G-Square has been recognised as ‘the emerging analytics company services startup of the year’ at Analytics India Summit held in Bengaluru in September.

“We want to be a global analytics products provider. We continue to invest in product development, increasing our client base, and making significant inroads in the international markets,” says Gopi.

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