How data can help your company 10X Growth?

Welcome to The Did You Know Podcast by Varisource, where we interview founders, executives and experts at amazing technology companies that can help your business save a lot of time, money and grow faster. Especially bring awareness to smarter, better, faster solutions that can transform your business and give you a competitive advantage

https://www.varisource.com

Welcome to the did you know Podcast by Varisource, where we interview founders and executives at amazing technology companies that can help your business save time and money and grow, especially bringing awareness to smarter, better, faster solutions that can transform your business. 1.3s Hello, everyone. Happy Monday. Welcome to another episode of the did you know Podcast from various this is Victor, your host here today. I'm excited to talk to you guys about the topic of data and I have Manuj, who is the CEO and founder of a company called Tetra Noodle. So Tetranoodle is a data science and AI consulting company. Welcome to the show manuj.

Thank you so much. So excited to

be here. Thank you. Yeah, I feel like every time I turn on my LinkedIn, I see you're. So you're posting a lot of amazing content, man. I think that's how we first got in touch, is the power of LinkedIn. Just following your content, you post a lot of really awesome topics that we're going to talk about today. 1.1s But yeah. Why don't you give the audience a little bit background about yourself and your company?

Sure. Well, just to give a brief history, I was born in India, started working in a factory at 15 for $2 a day. Need to change my life. And I found my passion in computers and programming. And ever since, I've been working with startups, with Fortune 500 companies to build systems which basically help grow businesses, help impact humanity. I've done a lot of work in healthcare, did a lot of work in education. So our company basically looks at problems in unique ways and solves them using technology, using our knowledge of human psychology, neuroscience. We try to do things unconventionally and get the results faster and more efficiently for our

clients. Yeah, there's at least a million questions I'm going to ask you about that, which is going to be the bulk of our conversation today. 1.4s But first of all, the company name, right? Tetra noodle. When I first heard it, I can't tell it's an AI company. Right. Walk us through this unique name, kind of where it came about and what does it mean, I guess.

Yeah, sure. Well, I wish I had a really great branding story behind it, but it's actually the complete opposite because I'm not a marketing and branding guy, especially back when I started the company. Started in the year 2001 after the.com bust. And back then it was called Spider Communications. And the idea back then was that the web was pretty new, so Spider and the website went well. But after some time around 2010 and onwards, people started to talk to me and say, hey, is this a phone company? What is communication all about? So I said, okay, we need to change the name. But still, I was not really good at branding. And one day I was sitting with my friends in a restaurant called Noodle Box. We used to go there every almost like two or three days a week. And I'm like, I can't think of a name. How about just call it Noodle Box or Square Noodle or something like that? And they go, oh, well, that's a catchy name. You should use that. I'm like, seriously? I was just doing and they said, no, no, go with it. So I don't know whether they joke with me or not. I just said, okay, I'm going to go with that name. So that's the story behind it. 1.2s That is awesome, man. And again, people work with us and our companies, but a lot of times they don't get to hear and see the background of how things came about. And that's what I love about these interviews, just like learning about these cool stories. So, OK, you got the name. So, you know, before we kind of get get into the 1.7s data problem and everything, 1.4s tell us, because 1s a couple of months ago went to the Himalaya Mountain, and that obviously one of the biggest, tallest mountain in the world is like no normal people just wakes up one day and say, hey, let me go climb this mountain or do this thing. So were you always like a mountain climber and this was like just like,

what made you like, you know, what a plant? Or was it like, you know what, I need some time. And you just went, yeah.

See, the thing is, when we talk about data, we will talk about this. Also track data on personal life as well, our life. If you start taking notes every day, if you start taking stock of where you are, you will see life itself is a series of ups and downs. It's like a wave pattern. And so when I want to achieve something, sometimes you have to adopt unconventional methods to get there. And so I'm coming out of a long term relationship and I'm building a business. So in order to do that, in order to gain that energy and obviously coming out of COVID I needed to reset myself. And Himalayas is a place where you find a lot of positive energy. So also, just to mention, I actually did not climb all the way. So 1.3s there was a comfortable motor, like a car that took me quite a way high and then I had parked up from there, so I went up to 15,000ft or so, so 13,000 of that was just on a comfortable drive. So I don't want to give a false version that I climbed

all the way to one of those guys in the movies, okay?

It was very adventurous, like off the grid. I didn't have any cell phone reception or anything, so it was very adventurous regardless. And the idea is that when you go to these places, there's a certain type of energy you find you can experience. And the other aspect was that there are a lot of monasteries in that area. So I visited about seven monasteries which were more than 1000 years old. So you get a lot of different kinds of energy, learn a lot. I went by myself, so there's a lot of quiet time as well. So it gives you that's positive energy before you want to make a big push towards your goal. So that was the idea behind it. But. 1s But it was very, very adventurous, very soul, nourishing? And I plan to do it multiple times. In fact, 1.7s the number of people who have reached out to me since then, I'm thinking I may want to launch like a mastermind of entrepreneurs, take them to 2s

I love that. That is really cool. Yeah, that actually sounds like a great place to have a startup mastermind. But again, first of all, you and I both love data or at least again, this word is just so magical. When we built their source, we thought a lot more than just a software, more than just a feature, more than solving problems. It was around a lot of for us was understanding that technology is a top three spin for companies but they didn't even have the data to know what they have. 1.9s It just sounds crazy that you would spend top three of your budget spend of the entire company, entire business on this category and you have zero data. You have no data on even what you have forget what's a cheaper, better, faster solution like you don't even know when you're contracts are coming up you can find these customers but the fact that is that the fact that they're making decisions without these data it was really mind boggling for me. Mind opening. But I guess with you where did this journey start? Where? It hit you on this data? Was it like your previous career was a summer. You were at. You were just like, wow, like, you knew that data was a problem, but to say you're going to go start a business to solve this problem, what happened? 1.6s

I've been working with Data for like, last 30 years. Being in technology, data is everything. But what happened was around year 2010 or so, I had my first born child, and he won't connect with me. So that led me into suicidal thoughts and depression. But once I understood that there was something wrong with me, I went into meditation and learned a lot about human mind, how our psychology works. And since I was already working with Data, I was already working with artificial intelligence. And when I learned about the human mind, how our psychology works through meditation, I saw a lot of parallels between how artificial intelligence works and how our human mind works and how they interact with each other. You know, AI affects our mind and our mind affects AI. It's very interesting game that happens between the two of them. So that is when I realized that we can utilize this continuum between technology and the human mind to help companies, to help them see some hidden patterns in their business, to see, as you said, what category will resonate better with the clients. Because right now, everything is done on gut feel or our personal biases. So if an executive is looking at three options, he or she may pick the option that resonates with their personal background. Most maybe they like a particular color, maybe they like a particular category, maybe they like a particular demographic or location. They'll pick that. But that's just their personal bias. If they look at the data, the data will tell them a very different story. And so when I saw that most people are not doing it, and not only even if they're doing it, they're not like, really drilling down and understanding other human beings based on data, that's when I thought, okay, there's something really powerful here.

So one of the things that 1.8s one of the messages you guys have is that you're solving the people and process technology problems using data. And I think one of the challenges about data is that it is so important. If you ask every business owner, decision maker stakeholder, they'll say, yeah, data is important. 1.6s But yet at the same time, you look at they don't have access to data. They don't know how to even if they have data, they don't know how to leverage the data. So it is a very important problem. But yet even if people had data, they don't know how to apply, how to maximize it. And so when you say you're going to solve, you know, you guys, they're solving people process technology problem using data. Can you walk us through for a couple of minutes? How do you guys do that? And how do you see data in companies today? Why do they struggle with either having data or even if they have data, they don't even know how to best utilize it?

Yeah, so that's a great question. So not having data is part of our sort of way of traditionally doing business where paper records are maintained and people just used to have verbal communication. And even if people in companies, there are systems like CRM systems, ERP systems, but as we all know, as experienced business owners or executives, not everybody is going to enter the data exactly at the right time with the accuracy that we expect. There's going to be empty fields in there, there's going to be wrong data coming in. So we are sort of maturing as a society on how to capture data. We are getting used to it. Things are improving, but they still they are not there yet. So in that scenario, what we do is we look at whatever is available and we say, okay, what can we use? Because we can never go to that perfect state of existence where we say, we will do something. We will give you the results when everything is perfect. That doesn't work in real life. So we'll say, okay, let's look at what you have, and if you don't have enough data, let's look at alternate sources of data. Maybe that data exists outside of your organization. A lot of government organizations, public free data or publish free data. Now, local municipalities or there are multiple ways of getting that data. And even if there is no data existing anywhere, we say, okay, what is the problem you are trying to solve? So let's figure out how we can collect fresh data by going to the people who are stakeholders in this game. So there are multiple, multiple ways of getting that data. And. 1.5s One sort of internal joke that data scientists have is any data project is actually of the work is collecting and cleaning the data. The only real interesting part of looking at algorithms and all that like things that excite engineers. The 80% work is just like menial work, figuring out where do we get the data and whether the data is clean or not. And now the next step is how to utilize that data. And that is the education part because most people decision makers don't have a background in technology and that's why they're oblivious to the amount of power they are sitting on. I'll give you a quick example. 1.4s Before the automobile was invented, the Middle East was a very dry area with hardly any prospects, no economic growth there, because there was nothing of substance, nothing of use there, right? As soon as the automobile was invented, the whole world needed oil. And when they found oil in Saudi Arabia, all of a sudden that country became one of the richest countries in the world. So it's the same analogy where a lot of people are sitting on very, very valuable data and they don't even know that until unless somebody wakes up one day and say, hey, there's a lot of value we are sitting on, how can we extract that value out of that data? And then that's where people like us comes in. We like drill the hole in their well of data and then bring out that oil that as an invaluable resource. So the idea is to at least get a little bit familiar about what the value of data is and then talk to people like us and say, hey, we are facing these challenges, we are facing stagnant growth, we are facing people not coming back to us and paying more. Those types of problems we are trying to solve, like employee engagement, all kinds of problems where humans are involved, they can really give you those deep insights and help you solve of problems. 1.1s

Yeah, I love that analogy. I think that's really going to stay with me forever. That the oil field example. Everybody can be Saudi Arabia is what you're saying. They have internal oil field in your business. 2s You know, obviously when we talk about data, a lot of times the bigger companies understand it and they value it and they have data scientists. Let's talk the enterprise. When you talk about SMP and mid market, they're so busy running the business, right? Like they just don't even have the manpower to think about data and leverage data. And they think that's not for them, meaning they don't have enough data. They can't benefit from it because it's for the enterprise, for the big companies that have trillions of data or whatever. But talking to you, I think what I love is that because from a very source perspective, we're always trying to partner with companies that can bring ROI and value not just to the big companies, right? Who has the resources? But there are so many solutions available for SMB and mint market, they just don't know. So can you talk about how if a SMB or mint market was listening, but they don't have the resources, they don't have the data scientists, they don't have those tools, they don't have those things. How can you still help them? 2.5s

The interesting thing is that a lot of people think that larger companies have a lot of resources, but that's another misnomer that even if they have a team of data scientists, sometimes they don't know what exactly they're looking for. The idea is to work backwards and say, okay, that's the result we want. And how do we get there? Talking about SMBs, once again, we don't need to think that, hey, we need tons and tons of data. So earlier we were talking about, let's say you are launching a product in three categories. You have an option of three categories. Let's say we just talked to 20 people and say, hey, what category of this product will you invest in? So let's take an example of a beauty company. They are trying to launch a soap or shampoo and a toothbrush or toothpaste so they can go out there and do a little bit of research by just talking to 20 people in their target demographic. Even if they just do that, they will get so much insight that they may not have thought of because the environment in the marketplace is changing so rapidly that just getting that much of data, which is easy, by the way. In one day you can talk to 20 people, you will get a lot of insight and that will inform you on which way you should proceed. So the idea is not to think that you need mountains of the idea is to change your mindset, that you don't know enough until you collect some data to get you that insight, which will lead you to the next step and the next step. And the next step. 2.4s

Yeah, that makes sense. So when you and I spoke, you gave me a lot of really amazing examples of different types of companies. How kind of use cases where, again, I think that's important because a lot of times people don't even know what questions to ask when it comes to data. They don't even know what questions to ask or where to even apply it to even get started. Right. So can you give maybe like one or two examples of how customers you work with or examples that use cases you really saw some drastic benefit, or how they leveraged data? Like you said, that beauty. A product decision is an example. Sure, they can go and do a survey, but what other maybe even higher level or more impactful decisions that, you know, every company is going to have to think about that they can apply? For? Sure.

So there was one case study where we were helping a Fortune 500 company, and they sell a lot of other stuff, but they were focused on, in this particular case, selling professional courses to 3.7s middle career professionals. And these courses were highly technical related to machine learning and AI. And when they came to us, their enrollment was going down. Now, we could have said, hey, let's put more marketing dollars. Let's push more of these courses. But we said, hey, wait a second. Let's see who you are targeting. And when we found out they're targeting like people 25 to 35, we did a quick survey and we found out that, by the way, this was in the middle of 2020 when the lockdowns were in full force. So we found out that people were bored of sitting at home. 1s They didn't want to learn dry topics like computer science. And what they really wanted was they wanted to have fun. They wanted to connect with other people because we were all sitting bored at home, locked up. And moreover, 1.1s there was a lot of cultural upheaval in the world, so they wanted to learn about other cultures. They wanted to connect with other cultures. So now, armed with this information, what we did was we created an event, online event, where we invited some Bollywood celebrity, other artists from different parts of the world, from different cultural backgrounds, and we asked these artists to learn a little bit of computer science. So we marketed that event in such a way that we said, hey, look at your celebrities. Come and see them learn computer science. So that was very intriguing to people that we were targeting. And the result was that within two weeks, this company got ten x increase in their enrollment because we packaged the whole product in a very different way that resonated with the target audience. So does that make sense? 1.2s

Yeah, that makes sense. Again, it's kind of like getting data, but also understanding how to leverage data and changing your positioning, everything. 1.1s That's awesome. Do you have any other use case that you really like that you want to do?

Yeah. So another one is that in higher education field, in universities and colleges, what happens is there's a huge problem that 30% of the students, they drop out of the degree program they enroll in within the first two years. And the reason why this happens is because the students enroll in degree programs based on recommendations from friends and family and career counselors. But generally, what happens is that they find out that career counselors and friends and family, they are looking at it from their own perspective, like, I'm advising you to join this degree program so that you can have a better job. But when they enroll in these courses, they find that this is of no interest to them. I wanted to be a painter and somebody asked me to join a science program and vice versa. So they drop out. So in order to solve this problem and by the way, this problem is $460,000,000,000 problem for higher education institutions. So in order to solve that problem, we started collecting a lot of historical data on each of the students. So we collected data points from hundreds of thousands of students. And we created algorithms to figure out, given a particular student and their interest and their historical performance in school and everything, what particular course they will like or what particular course they can complete. So based on that, we created these algorithms. When a student enrolls in a university, they will be given choices recommendations on courses, just like Netflix recommends shows to us based on our past history and the interest and all that. So this is something that worked really, really well, that students were able to take these courses. And not only that, they were very much interested in taking even more courses to complete their degree program. And this program basically brought down dropout rates drastically. 1.3s Moreover, this is a patented technology. And so actually, Bill and Melinda Gates foundation invested in it. Bill Gates talked about it multiple. Even Barack Obama, the President of United States, he talked about this program in multiple of his speeches. 2s

Wow. Yeah, I love these use cases. I know we can talk for hours about so many uses cases with data, right. And the same thing on the vertex side, we see that as well. So you've seen a lot of types of data. If you had to name maybe the top two or three types of data that you, you think every company should get. Every company has different industries and requirements and needs. But there's still a lot of similarities too. Meaning a lot of companies have employees and customers and partners and suppliers and they all have the same kind of structure. So if you have to say, what is the top two or three, maybe most important data that you think every company should at least be mindful of or to keep track of or to think about, what would those kind of two or three being?

One, I believe the most important thing, any company, the most important capital that any company has, a human capital. Right. So one thing is we should always get more data about our employees, their well being, what are they thinking? What are their concerns, what is happening in their life? 1.4s Just to get a sentiment of that. And then the management and the executive team should really look into that to make sure their teams are happy and fulfilled. The next set of data is about our customers, the transaction history, like from our CRM, from our ERP systems, from Invoicing, from accounting ledgers. That type of data gives us insights on the consumer or the customer behavior. What is happening? Like, are the customers churning or are they spending more? Are they liking the products that we are selling them or not? So, that kind of customer behavior helps us to stay on top of things. And the next type of data is environmental data around us, like outside the company. Because what happens is, as we launch products, as we are successful, I see many companies get complacent. They say a good example is Blockbuster. They were in business for such a long time, they got complacent and they said, oh, Netflix no threat to us. No, not a problem, we will deal with it. Since they did not look at the data outside of their company and saw the sentiment was shifting in favor of Netflix, in favor of convenience. So when you start to look at that data outside of the company, that will inform you what changes you need to make inside your company to be able to sustain yourself, to be able to grow and all that. So, employees data, customer data, and outside environment data, these are the three most important we can get into. Like, what is the format of the data? It is video, audio, text, images, all that is possible to be processed these days with the tools that we have. 2.6s

Yeah. So as we wrap up on this conversation, this Data consulting and just date in general, such an amazing topic. We definitely want to make sure more people engage you to figure out how all their companies can and engage with Data. So we're super excited to partner with you. So my last question for every guest is whether it's personal or business, but what would be because we have obviously executives and stakeholders from procurement, It 1s finance and just sealevel executives, business owners listening. What would be one advice, whether it's a personal or business advice that you would have 1.2s for everyone, you think 1.1s

one advice will be 1s learn to understand other humans and what their priorities are. And Data can help you do that. One quote from Zig Ziggler that I live my life by is you get what you want in life when you help other people get what they want in life. Now, the only thing is we generally some don't know what other people want in life unless and until we utilize Data wants you to utilize Data, you understand what they want, you give it to them and you get what you want. I mean, that's a simple equation. 1.4s

Yeah. 1.3s Working with you, talking to you, the Noodle makes me hungry. But then I learned so much on how we can improve our business. So no really appreciate your time Manuj and excited to do more content collaboration with you.

Absolutely. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. 1.4s

That was an amazing episode of the did you know podcast with various hope you enjoyed it and got some great insights from it. Make sure you follow us on social media for the next episode. And if you want to get the best deals from the guests today, make sure to send us a message at sales@varisource.com

Spend Advantage Podcast

How data can help your company 10X Growth?

Listen to this podcast on