Backed by Intel Startup Program, Senseforth.ai’s artificial intelligence platform is helping enterprises enhance relationships with their customers

With an increasing number of enterprises adopting artificial intelligence and machine learning in their business processes, it is easy to see how beneficial the technology can be across industries.

According to data from the MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group 2021 global study ‘The Cultural Benefits of Artificial Intelligence in the Enterprise’, more than half of companies using AI said that the technology not just helped them grow their customer base, but also introduced them to “adjacent industries” outside of their own businesses.

Senseforth.ai has been at the forefront of developing future-ready AI technology since launching its first conversational AI platform in 2017, crafted for large enterprises to help quicken their ability to drive growth, reduce operating expenses, and improve organisational efficiency.

Pioneering ‘Make in India’

Founded by serial entrepreneurs Shridhar Marri, Krishna Kadiri, and Ritesh Radhakrishnan — CEO, CIO, and CTO, respectively — Senseforth.ai was built with the vision to move India out of its services economy era and into an age with products made in India for the world. “The problem we wanted to solve was how to bridge the customer experience gap. Customer’s expectations, after being exposed to the Netflixes and Amazons of the world, skyrocketed. We have two age groups creating that paradigm shift: Generation Z and Millenials. We’re not used to in-person visits to branches and filling up paper forms. We want everything to be instant,” explains Shridhar.

The company’s customer experience products are all based on their revolutionary, patented natural language processing engine, or NLP, giving their solutions an advantage over other AI virtual assistants in the market.

Senseforth.ai says their products Insights On The Go and Senseforth Voice, the company’s proprietary Voice Intelligence Technology, can be built and customised for clients within 3-5 weeks. The former allows its clients to access data and insights from their business intelligence systems in seconds, in a conversational format. “We’re also enabling businesses to ask data queries in natural language. Data resides in many forms of reporting systems such as Power BI, Tableau, and other BI systems. You need an army of people to extract that data and insights to make sense out of it. What if I could have that data given to me directly on a channel that I already use? With Insights On-the-Go, you can get this data on Teams, Slack, or even WhatsApp,” Krishna says.

Developing a strong foundation

Building its AI model as a startup was no easy task, with the availability of data to process to help train the NLP being a challenge. But what has helped Senseforth.ai stay ahead of the competition is its strong research and development (R&D) arm, which focuses on core AI technologies such as Machine Learning (ML), automatic speech recognition, and natural language generation.

Ritesh says that over the years Senseforth.ai has built and tested AI models for over 350 use cases, and adds that training a virtual assistant, which took mere seconds when the NLP was developed in 2017, is even quicker now. This allows the company to build customised assistants and solutions with a base level of about 60-70 percent intelligence, with the remaining 30-40 percent involving customisation based on industry and organisation-specific requirements.

With one of India’s leading financial institutions HDFC Bank as their first client, Senseforth.ai was able to develop a virtual assistant and delve deep into its product models. That assistant has now expanded to 11 channels such as Alexa, Google Assistant, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, and Shridhar says that the company can build such solutions and deploy it on all of these platforms for any client.

“Many enterprises take the easy route and use simple bots and compromise on functionality or capability. But if you want to launch a complex virtual assistant packed with a lot of capabilities — static as well as transactional capabilities — you can’t do it very quickly. And if it’s not a zero-code platform you’ll have to code it — another level of complexity and cost. Larger enterprises working on similar projects take months or even years, and spend millions of dollars. We do all of it quicker,” he says.

A helping hand

With its focus on conversational AI, bringing Senseforth.ai onboard the Intel Startup Program was a no-brainer. Working with the company on technology and business go-to-market activities, the program facilitated a showcase of their solutions and interaction with potential customers through their annual startup showcase, and is now working on creating marketing assets like media promotions through partners, featuring them in annual coffee table books, and more.

For Senseforth.ai, the objective of partnering with Intel was to provide a better solution at a lower cost. Since voice solutions require a higher amount of data processing, most companies use graphics processing units (GPUs) to process voice data, which is expensive. “If we’re able to provide a similar, if not better, experience on a central processing unit (CPU) which requires low processing power and is more reasonably priced, that would reduce the total cost of ownership,” says Manhardeep Kochhar, Lead - Product Marketing and Alliances, Senseforth.ai.

Intel also backs Senseforth.ai’s focus on improving their product with further enhancement to feature offerings based on real-time customer feedback while collaborating with their partners, including their efforts to optimise overall product cost. Additionally, Intel uses Senseforth.ai’s feedback on Intel products utilised in AI space for product advancements, making it a win-win for both sides.

Making sense of the future

Having built over 165 enterprise solutions, Senseforth.ai’s focus is now shifting towards Web3, exploring conversational AI solutions in the metaverse and is working with partners to build digital humans, in addition to voice tech and the Speech Analytics Solution it is currently working on. The company also raised $14 million from Fractal Analytics in 2021, which it says it will use to expand its market in the Asia Pacific, North America, and European regions, as well as for R&D.

The Intel Startup Program: Enabling startups to scale their game-changing innovations

The Intel Startup Program is Intel India’s flagship program to engage with technology startups who have an IP or innovative solutions that have the potential to create impact on customers and align with Intel's focus areas. The program is at the forefront of engaging with India’s startup ecosystem through high impact collaborations with the industry, academia and government, and runs multiple initiatives that are either vertically aligned or focused on emerging technologies.

It engages with startups that have a unique global or local value proposition to solve genuine customer problems, enabling them with domain and business expertise from the industry and mentorship from Intel.