The 10 start-ups with Innovative Solutions in 2018

www.insightssuccess.com November 2018

1 The

STA

with Innovative Solutions 2018

Company of the Month

Industry Pointers Critical Importance of Digital Marketing in the growth of Start-ups

Dr. Lance Zhou CEO Karma Automotive

Chalk Talk Yes, Internet of Things is Reshaping the World

Start-ups: Fuelling the Wildres of Innovation

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tarting a business is not everyone's cup of tea. Running a Start-up is not all sunshine and rainbows. It has its own ups and downs but the journey in the end can be glorious to some people who possess the necessary skillsets and entrepreneurial templates to thrive even in the toughest challenges. To run a successful start-up requires one to have essential traits, appropriate temperament, and resources.

Running a successful start-up is more like a mental and psychological game than a physical one.

Start-ups have the potential to come up with innovative ideas to solve the unsolvable or existing problems in the world. Wherever there is a problem there is an opportunity for businesses. True entrepreneurs see the problem and they try to come up with ideas to deliver solutions to the problems in the world. This is where essentially we can say that start-ups have the kind of potential to make the world a better place by implementing their creative and innovative ideas.

Running the start-up all starts with an innovative idea which has the potential to make a difference in the world. But an idea isn't worth anything until it is put into action. Talk is cheap. Nobody cares about what one plans to do, until he or she does it. One should be more interested in letting their actions speak more than their words. One needs to have a firm belief in the potential of one's idea and should be ready to put in whatever it takes to implement the idea. A Start-up with an innovative idea and its proper execution can create a massive impact in the business world.

Aspiring entrepreneurs should always keep in mind the relevant quote “Seduction of safety is much more dangerous than the perception of the risk.” According to this quote taking risks is more helpful than being in the comfort zone. One should internalize that comfort of safety is dangerous in comparison to perception of risks in starting the start-up. One has to take calculated risks and grab the opportunities in a business world to run a successful start-up. Evolving technology has potential play a great role in successful running of the start-ups. Entrepreneurs or start-up owners should be able to tap the potential of

a creative idea, the evolving technology and all the available resources to add value to the world.

Disruptive ideas, the capabilities of technology, and essential resources, have the potential to make start-ups the part of the solutions to the problems in the world. One needs to have passion to materialize something one truly believes in. Having right people on the board also makes a great difference.

Considering all these traits, Insights Success has shortlisted “The 10 Start-Ups with Innovative Solutions in 2018.” We have projected a few businesses which have strengthened their foothold in several industries, and are helping people with their unique solutions.

The Company of the Month of this issue features an interview with Karma Automotive, which serves globally with its exquisite design, engineering, assembling, and marketing solutions of luxury electric vehicles. It is equipped with a team of experts and researchers who maintain the organization's leading position along with its quality and standards with their skills and wider knowledge of their job. The company is committed to elevating and growing the luxury mobility experience for its customers. Its professionals believe that the important element of Karma is their personalized customization.

We've distinguished various other organizations which facilitate the world with their unique solutions. This list includes Audioburst, which offers a platform that connects listeners to audio content; eightfold, which aims to transform the hiring and talent management work for the benefit of companies and job seekers; Luna Lights, which has developed an automated lighting system that uses behavioral analysis to help older adults stay safer at night; MindBridge Ai, which is an AI Auditor platform that detects anomalous patterns of activities, unintentional errors, and intentional misstatements; Play2Speak, which is a Spanish EdTech which envisions to bring immersive learning experiences to students; Restb.Ai, which is a company that leverages Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) in order to create a precise, intelligent product that learns to recognize real estate specific features and insights from real estate images; Flipt, which is an AI technology company that connects real estate agents and brokers with likely home sellers first, before they visit the portals and receive postcards, giving brokers and agents long term competitive advantage.

Additionally, this magazine features articles by our in-house editorial team and industry pioneers which incorporate the importance and future possibilities of and for start-ups.

Let the pages turn!

Sharad Chitalkar

Company of the Month

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Karma Automotive Reforming the World of Luxury Automotive Space

Articles

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42

Industry Pointers

Chalk Talk

Critical Importance of Digital Marketing in the growth of Start-ups

Yes, Internet of Things is Reshaping the World

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36

46

Finance 'n' Tech

Leadership Viewpoint

Maestro's Perspective

How Is Technology Going To Transform The Financial Sector

Blockchain: the next opportunity for better, safer, smarter Cities

Choosing the Right Translator for Internationalization

16 Audioburst: Library that Stores Voice

22 Eightfold.ai:

A Holistic Approach towards Talent Acquisition and Management

26 Flipt:

Revolutionizing the Real Estate Industry using AI

28 Luna Lights: Reforming the Healthcare Industry

34 MindBridge Ai: An AI Powered Auditing Solution Provider

40 Play2Speak:

Helping to Reach Language Fluency Goals Faster

44 Rest.ai: Reforming the Real Estate Business

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1 ST The

with Innovative Solutions 2018

Company Name

Management

Brief

Audioburst audioburst.com

Amir Hirsh Co-founder & CEO

Audioburst is an AI-based Voice Search platform that connects audio content and users.

Data Nerds datanerds.com

Joshua Fraser CEO

Data Nerds aims to make real estate simple by offering a suite of products for both consumers and businesses – powered by one of the largest property databases online.

eightfold eightfold.ai

Ashutosh Garg Founder & CEO

Eightfold is the first Talent Intelligence Platform, built for enterprises, to address Talent Acquisition and Management in a holistic fashion.

Flipt joinflipt.com

Andrey Nokhrin CEO

Flipt is an AI technology company that connects real estate agents and brokers with likely home sellers first, before they visit the portals and receive postcards, giving brokers and agents long term competitive advantage.

ioLight Ltd iolight.co.uk

Andrew Monk Founder

ioLight has invented a portable microscope, with a resolution of better than 1μm, which produces beautiful pictures of animal and plant cells and displays them directly onto your tablet or mobile phone.

Karma Automotive karmaautomotive.com

Dr. Lance (Liang) Zhou CEO

Karma Automotive is a new brand in the ultra-luxury automotive space; a space where there hasn’t been a new brand in nearly a hundred years.

Luna Lights lunalights.org

Donovan Morrison Co-founder & CEO Matt Wilcox Co-founder & CTO

Luna Lights is an automated lighting system that utilizes cloudbased data analytics to prevent and detect falls in the older adult population.

MindBridge Ai mindbridge.ai

John Colthart General Manager

MindBridge Ai is an auditing solution that leverages advanced machine learning and AI techniques to augment human capacity and cope with the enormous amounts of financial data that exist within organizations.

Play2Speak play2speak.com

Giuseppe Fantigrossi CEO

Play2Speak is a Spanish EdTech with a vision to bring immersive learning experiences to students.

Restb.ai restb.ai

Angel Esteban Soto Co-founder & CEO

Restb.ai leverages Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) to create a precise, intelligent product that learns to recognize real estate specific features and insights from your real estate images.

Editor-in-Chief Managing Editor Executive Editor Assistant Editors Contributing Editors Visualiser Art & Design Director Associate Designer Co-designer

Pooja M. Bansal Anish Miller Kaustav Roy Jenny Fernandes Kedar Kulkarni Ishan Mittal Hitesh Dhamani David King Amol Kamble Sanket Zirpe Savita Pandav

Art & Picture Editors Paul Belin Jayant Khanna Senior Sales Manager Passi D. Business Development Manager Peter Collins Marketing Manager John Matthew Business Development Executives Steve, Joe, Logan, Sagar Sales Executives David, Kevin, Mark, Mayank Technical Head Jacob Smile Technical Specialists Amar, Pratiksha Digital Marketing Manager Marry D’Souza Online Marketing Strategists Alina Sege, Shubham SME-SMO Executives Prashant Chevale, Uma Dhenge Research Analyst Patrick James Circulation Managers Robert, Tanaji Database Management Stella Andrew Technology Consultant David Stokes sales@insightssuccess.com

November, 2018 Corporate Ofces: Insights Success Media Tech LLC 555 Metro Place North, Suite 100, Dublin, OH 43017, United States Phone - (614)-602-1754 Email: info@insightssuccess.com For Subscription: www.insightssuccess.com

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Automotive:

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n an interview with Insights Success, Dr. Liang Zhou, CEO of Karma Automotive, shares insights on Luxury automotive space.

Also, he broadly discusses the company’s contribution towards the industry its establishment in the market.

Below are the highlights of the interview conducted between Dr. Lance and Insights Success: Give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness and its vision.

Karma Automotive designs, engineers, assemble, and markets luxury electric vehicles, all from its Southern California base of operations. Founded in 2014 and employing nearly 1,000 people worldwide, Karma is committed to elevating and growing the luxury mobility experience for its customers, drawing on global relationships and technology partners to achieve this.

Karma will continue to deliver distinct luxury electric vehicle experiences through innovative design, technology and personalization. We will remain true to our unique luxury segment defined by exclusive design and craftsmanship, intuitive and integrated high technology, an owner experience

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Reforming the World of of Luxury Automotive Space

with unrivaled treatment, and customization that allows every Karma vehicle to be unique.

Our future is strong and well-funded.

We have the right people in place to achieve our goals, a solid product plan that spans the next decade, a state-ofthe-art customization and innovation center where our vehicles come to life in Southern California, and relationships with the right partners who can help us accelerate technology and product development.

What are the cutting-edge products/solutions offered by Karma Automotive?

Karma Automotive champions bold design and delivers electric vehicles that are both voluptuous and sensual; products that elicit a visceral and emotional response for our owners.

Few cars in the world can match the performance, luxury and efficiency of the Karma Revero. Named Green Car Journal’s 2018 Luxury Green Car of the Year, Karma Revero is a luxury electric vehicle powered by dual electric motors that embodies the company’s goals of offering leading automotive design, technology, customization, and an outstanding customer experience. Revero is hightech, rolling art that delivers | November 2018

Company Of The Month

unmatched luxury and technology to owners who appreciate the journey as much as the destination.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.

Personalized customization is among the important elements of our Karma brand, and along with luxury, technology, specialized customer treatment, we are laserfocused on elevating it to an art form inspired by California.

Karma has created a sustainable business with a comprehensive organization including in-house development and design, complete in-market assembly operations, technology partners, marketing organization and a dealer distribution network. Our immediate goal is to enhance and grow Karma’s brand value and develop partnerships with those who can use our low volume platform as a test bed to help commercialize emerging technologies.

Karma’s customization strategy is comprised of various levels of individuality, like our recently announced low volume Aliso Edition. Aliso embodies Karma’s dedication to offering luxury enthusiasts an opportunity to own a customized, collector vehicle. It’s a specially-crafted luxury electric vehicle for a very select few who seek a truly unique product, and something we believe can be a model for how Karma approaches other unique custom editions and contribute to the sales growth of the company.

Only 15 Aliso Editions will be produced, all individually numbered with unique interior and exterior badging, special exterior paint, interior leather-trim colors, and custom carbon fiber wheels. Starting today, Aliso Editions will be available for sale from select Karma Automotive’s dealers located across the United States and Canada.

|November 2018|

We plan to grow our U.S. sales and build a solid foundation of success in North America before launching into other global luxury automotive markets. We will continue to add employees, recruit the best luxury brand dealers, and utilize our customization and innovation center to assemble our vehicles in Moreno Valley, Calif., to support our growth plans.

What are the challenges faced while providing innovative solutions and how is Karma Automotive serving to tackle them?

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About the Leader Dr. Lance (Liang) Zhou was named Karma Automotive’s Chief Executive Officer in December 2017 after serving more than 25 years in the automotive industry, most recently as CEO and President of Beijing Foton-Daimler Automotive, in addition to Daimler Global VP (Level I of Daimler AG). Zhou began his career as an engineer, progressed into sales and marketing, and then into general management, where he held a variety of progressively responsible executive positions.

Prior to joining Daimler, Dr. Zhou was with Naveco, a joint venture of Iveco of Fiat and Nanjing Auto, where he was Chief Executive Officer and served on the venture’s board of directors. Dr. Zhou earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University and a PhD from Nanjing University of Science and Technology. Zhou has an outstanding record of success in creating new business, driving growth, and over-delivering results and is recognized by the auto industry as a strong business leader who is resultsfocused, determined, systematic and pragmatic.

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The luxury electric vehicle market is becoming highly competitive, and demands constant innovation, particularly in the area of high technology. It also demands dedication to building the long-term value of our brand versus chasing monthly sales targets. We will remain true to our unique luxury segment defined by exclusive design and craftsmanship, intuitive and integrated high technology, an owner experience with unrivaled treatment, and customization that allows every Karma vehicle to be unique.

What according to you could be the potential future of your relative industry and how does Karma Automotive envision sustaining its competency?

Karma is different from “automotive startups” we are often compared because we have a fully operational enterprise. We have a full value chain from suppliers to dealers to customers, which gives us the opportunity to look at the industry and adjust our strategy to meet market demands.

Our future is strong and well-funded. We have the right people in place to achieve our goals, a solid product plan that spans the next decade, a state-of-the-art assembly plant in Southern California, and relationships with the right partners who can help us accelerate technology and product development.

Give us a few testimonials of your clients that accurately highlight Karma Automotive’s position in the market.

“Really the epitome of my collection I think is the new Karma Revero. I love art and the Revero is art and it’s a piece of art that I can drive.” - LARRY TRAMMELL, Customer “It’s a work of art to see a beautiful car, and then to be able to drive it. It’s a work of art that has a practical application.”PATRICIA LAUCELLA, Customer

| November 2018

“As a steward of high-tech rolling art, Karma Automotive champions bold design and personalized customization to deliver luxury electric vehicles that are both voluptuous and sensual; products that elicit a visceral and emotional response for our owners.�

Dr. Lance (Liang) Zhou CEO

|November 2018|

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Library that Stores Voice

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n an interview between Insights Success and Amir Hirsh, the Cofounder and CEO of Audioburst, shares resourceful insights about Audioburst’s journey, its products, and the motive of the organization to revolutionize and organize the world’s audio content.

Highlights of the interview, between Amir and Insights Success, are elaborated as follows: Give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness and its vision.

Audioburst is a revolutionary AIpowered voice search platform that connects listeners to audio content.

Audioburst is introducing an entirely new way for consumers and businesses to interact with live or recorded audio content across platforms and devices in real-time and in its original voice format. With the mission of organizing the world’s audio content, every day, the Audioburst AI platform listens to, understands, segments and indexes millions of minutes of audio content from top radio stations, TV and podcasts. Audioburst is powered by

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advanced NLP and NLU technology, and a proprietary AI platform that indexes audio segments into searchable “bursts” in real-time.

We envision a world where voice and talk content is seamless and moves with you from room to room and location to location, where we enable real conversations and answers across all devices in your life through our advanced technology and powerful partnerships.

We incorporated our one-of-a-kind AIbased listening and indexing technology into the Radioline app experience, which currently boasts more than 70,000 of the top free news, sports, talk, and music radio stations and podcasts from around the world.

The new in-app experience includes new types of audio content, topical and personalized playlists that learn your interests over time and an on-demand listening experience based on Audioburst’s famous original voice “bursts.” We're also working with Bose on a wearable and Harman in the auto space and are excited to talk more about these soon. These are just a few of our partnerships.

What are the cutting-edge products/solutions offered by Audioburst?

Our product is incorporated into dynamic and personalized listening experiences for users across in-car infotainment systems, voice assistants, mobile apps, IoT gadgets, and smartphones, from brands including Samsung, ByteDance, Nippon Broadcasting, Radioline, Bose and Harman.

Our technology automatically indexes and segments your shows to create snippets, or what we call, “bursts.” We then surface the best moments from your shows to new audiences on mobile apps, smart home devices, and in-car entertainment systems. And with Audioburst Analytics you can track user engagement and the distribution of your content.

Audioburst’s extensive library of shortform audio clips is centered on metadata tagging, making your content searchable by keyword. Bursts always link back to the source, making sure new listeners know where to find you.

Content creators also get access to our | November 2018

1 ST The

with Innovative Solutions 2018

Audioburst is passionate about connecting listeners to content that inspires and excites them.

—Amir Hirsh Co-founder & CEO

Creators portal, a powerful product where you can edit your content and promote your brand on social media channels.

Give a detailed description of the featured personnel’s influence over the company and the industry.

Amir Hirsh is a serial entrepreneur who has founded and spearheaded several successful startup exits. Prior to founding Audioburst, Amir founded Sendoo, an innovative messaging mobile service; Collective, the first Social Media Marketing Platform (Acquired by IAI); Blue Security, the only anti-spam deterring service (backed by Benchmark Capital) and Riptech, the first commercial MSSP (Acquired by SYMC for $145M).

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.

industry. As we’ve developed over the years, we’ve refined our technology to make voice search a more seamless and integrated experience across devices and partners, and grown our database of voice sources. The industry and adoption continues to grow at a rapid pace and with that, so will our product features and advancements.

What are the challenges faced while providing innovative solutions and how is Audioburst serving to tackle them?

What according to you could be the potential future of your relative industry and how does Audioburst envision sustaining its competency?

I think we’ll see a move towards screen independence in the audio and voice search space. Screens will always exist-in-car, on TV, etc., but in the future, they won't be a requirement in order to engage with the technology and search functionality. Our technology is built on this premise and we’re excited to see how consumers interact with devices in the future.

Market education continues to be a key challenge imply put: people aren't used to speaking to devices yet, as it doesn't feel natural or even helpful at times.

We're working hard alongside our partners to increase familiarity and exposure and in turn, growth.

Consumers want technology that helps them, and we’re excited to share that Audioburst enables true interaction and the ability for users to ask real questions and get real answers.

When Audioburst was first founded, voice search was still a relatively new | November 2018

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About the Author Koichiro Yoshida is the President and CEO of CrowdWorks. He founded CrowdWorks Inc, in 2011 which provides the Japan’s largest crowd sourcing service and has taken lead in offering.

The company was listed on TSE Mothers in 2014 and provides services to over 1.87 million crowd-workers which includes, 12 government institutions and 240,000 companies as of June,2018. In 2015,he was awarded to Workstyle Innovative Award in Japan’s Venture Company Award of Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry proposed

by Shinzo-Abe Prime Minister.

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| November 2018

Finance ‘n’ Tech

F

How Is Technology Going To Transform The Financial Sector | November 2018

intech (Finance + Technology) is one of most significant trends in the world. Transformational technologies, such as smartphones, smartwatches, blockchain, P2P network, cryptography, machine learning and optimization algorithms will rapidly and drastically convert the current financial world. In my opinion, there are four mega-trends in this area: 1) Cashless Society, 2) Rise of the Consumer Credit Economy, 3) Cryptocurrency and Financial System Reform via Blockchain Technology, and 4) Trade Automation using Machine Learning.

Cashless Society Firstly, digital payments using smartphones and smartwatches are expected to further accelerate. In Japan, contactless payment systems such as SUICA and PASMO are widespread, but using smartphones for payment will become the norm. I am convinced that in the near future, you won’t need to use a real credit card, but you can pay for your dinner by simply using a smartphone at the restaurant, and you can transfer money to your friend using your smartphone. Alipay and WeChat Pay have already started to reform the way money is used, and China is now shifting to a Cashless Society. In the U.S., Venmo and CASH App are used for transferring money to each other, making cash unnecessary.

Japan will also adapt to such, where there will be an enormous opportunity for business. In the next few years, many startups will produce products that will lead to a cashless society.

The Rise of the Consumer Credit Economy Second is the “Consumer Credit Economy”. With the spread of the Internet and SNS, there is a significant change in how individuals work, and how one obtains credit. In the last century, corporations had considerable authority, and personal trust depended on the type and size of the companies they engaged with. But now, data of an individual’s skills, expertise and career are stored on the Internet and SNS, and in some cases, the number of followers on Twitter / Instagram and friends on Facebook may be more important than what kind of company you work for (there are people who have many followers called “Influencers”). In addition to this trend, individual workers

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such as users of Crowdsourcing platforms (e.g., CrowdWorks), can earn more than those who work for a company. In the U.S.,“Freelancing in America 2017”, the survey conducted by independent research firm Edelman Intelligence and commissioned in partnership by Upwork and Freelancers Union showed that the number of freelance workers is 57.3 million last year, an increase of over 4 million since 2014. In addition, based on the survey, it is predicted that the majority of the U.S. workforce will be freelancers within a decade (by 2027). With acceleration in such direction, the way of personal credit will change. In the last century, individual workers, freelancers, and small business owners had difficulty to get credit and loans from financial institutions. However now, on Kabbage.com, small business owners can get quick access to working capital by SNS information. In China, Sesame Credit, a subsidiary of the e-commerce giant Alibaba, uses data to create a score for each person based on how trustworthy they are, and high-scored users can gain various benefits such as social security and welfare, the right to be admitted to expensive private schools, and smooth clearance of Chinese customs. As these examples show, a flexible social system optimized for each individual starts to emerge. Of course, countless companies will invent some revolutionary financial product such as insurance and lending services for individual workers in the next few years, and many Fintech startups will intensely endeavor to produce such products.

Cryptocurrency and Financial System Reform via Blockchain Technology The third is blockchain and cryptography technology. As you know, blockchain is a necessary technology, the core of which is an “open and distributed ledger” and cryptocurrency is one of the hottest applications of blockchain. Cryptocurrency, represented by Bitcoin, has a tremendous impact on the economy, and is creating a new ecosystem. The combination of cryptography, P2P network and blockchain is very compelling, and it may eliminate the existing model of currency and the way money is transferred. The market value of Bitcoin is now over 10 billion US dollars.

audit, credit investigation, and transaction management.

With blockchain, the system records all data in a block, and the applicants of the network monitor each other’s data correctness, making blockchain secure by design and exemplifies a distributed computing system. With this kind of distributed system, the overhead fees currently charged will be close to zero. There are many possibilities, such as most business processes of the traditional financial institutions would be automated and decentralized by blockchain, and some blockchain companies like Bitfury and bitFlyer would begin to provide blockchain technology to existing banks and financial institutions. In addition, I am convinced that a future would come where venture companies and startups will invent new insurance products (such as automated credit surveys), and unique real estate transaction structures using blockchain.

Trade Automation using Artificial Intelligence The last is the rise of Artificial Intelligence, represented by Machine Learning / Deep Learning. “AI” has started to change the structure of the financial industry. For example, Goldman Sachs, one of the world’s largest financial institutions, has reported that they have automated trading

by Machine Learning and drastically reduced the number of traders in the company, and now there are only two persons who work as traders. In Silicon Valley, some “AI hedge funds” have begun to appear recently, where AI completely judges an investment without human intervention. As these examples show, AI can drastically improve productivity of trading businesses that are based on algorithms, eliminating need for human intervention to a bare minimum.

High-speed trading (HFT) has become a popular topic of conversation, made possible with increased computer performance and algorithm evolution, is exceeding speeds beyond human ability. Machine learning has enormous potential to transform the financial business structure.

As I described above, there are many possibilities where transformational technologies are revolutionizing the financial industry, and I’m extremely optimistic about the future. I look forward to a great future, and our lives will evolve for the better.

But blockchain technology represented by Ethereum is not limited to cryptocurrency, but to various fields such as

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| November 2018

A Holistic Approach towards Talent Acquisition and Management

A

team of dedicated professionals who can convert the vision of the organization into reality is what every company seeks for. However, establishing and managing a team of such talented employees is not a walk in the park. It requires a holistic strategic approach towards talent acquisition and management fueled with the comprehensive knowledge of the industry. Founded in 2016 and headquartered in Mountain View, CA is Eightfold.ai transforming how hiring and talent management work, for the benefit of companies and job seekers. Its Talent Acquisition solution instantly finds and ranks qualified talent for any job, which is much faster and more accurate than legacy sourcing and screening methods.

In an interview with Insights Success Eightfold’s Founder and CEO, Ashutosh Garg shed a light on the remarkable benefits of the unique platform and also recalled the interesting story behind the inception of the organization.

Below are the highlights of the interview between Ashutosh and Insights Success

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Give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness and its vision.

Eightfold’s mission is to transform how hiring and talent management work, for the benefit of companies and job seekers. We see a lot of issues today. Job seekers have a very hard time highlighting their skills, and recruiters get too many resumes to consider them all. Resumes and job descriptions in general are too hard to use. Current employees can’t easily find out what’s next in their career at their company, so they leave. And there is still a lot of unconscious bias in hiring, which is one reason that diversity isn’t increasing as fast as anyone would like.

for any job, which is much faster and more accurate than legacy sourcing and screening methods. Eightfold’s Personalized Career Site lets candidates visiting a company’s job site discover which jobs they are a strong fit for, so they don’t have to search and scroll through long lists of jobs.

When we saw all of these issues, we realized that artificial intelligence could provide a solution. So we invented technology that we call the Talent Intelligence Platform to put an AI engine into each company’s hiring process.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.

One thing we’ve learned is how universal these challenges are.

Companies and candidates are ready to consider new ways of doing things, and when they see what AI can do for them they get very excited about the possibilities. This has let us know that we’re on the right track.

What are the cutting-edge products/solutions offered by Eightfold?

We offer several AI-powered solutions.

Our Talent Acquisition solution instantly find and ranks qualified talent

We have a Talent Diversity solution that masks personal characteristics of candidates, which stops unconscious bias and leads to more hiring of underrepresented groups. And our Talent Management solution supports internal mobility by showing a company’s employees what new roles they should consider next.

| November 2018

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with Innovative Solutions 2018

Our platform provides visibility into each of the recommendations, so both the candidate and the employer understand why they are a good fit for a specific role —Ashutosh Garg Founder & CEO

What are the challenges faced while providing innovative solutions and how is Eightfold serving to tackle them?

One challenge we see is that many people don’t understand what AI is, how it works, and what it can and can’t do. So we try to educate our customers and the wider community about these topics. We want everyone to understand that modern AI is a data analysis technique that helps humans with decision making. It doesn’t work without people, and doesn’t replace people—AI is just a very powerful way of crunching numbers.

What according to you could be the potential future of your relative industry and how does Eightfold envision sustaining its competency?

AI is a big part of the future of talent management and hiring, and we are proud that we can be at the forefront of this change. There is simply too much potential for this future not to occur.

We will continue to be leaders in the technology so that we are always | November 2018

providing the most valuable AI solutions for talent, and we always listen to what our customers tell us so that our solutions meet their needs.

Admirations by Clients “As the whole market changes, what we need from our employees and what they want from their jobs has changed.

So it’s really important that we have the tools internally to empower them to help them find their path.” – Meg Blight, VP of Innovation at BT “For me not everyone is called to be a caregiver. So if Eightfold can help us provide those caregivers who might be able to provide the right support for our clients we’re all for that.” – Vanessa co-founder, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Care Indeed

created a culture that celebrates success in pursuit of each person’s interests. He has a mentorship program called Cultivate in which he encourages every employee to share career advice.

Within Silicon Valley—and beyond—Ashutosh is recognized as an influential figure in the application of AI. He has thousands of citations for his PhD research, and his success building AI technologies at IBM, Google, and BloomReach is wellknown. So his approach to transforming talent management has received a lot of attention, and his history of success gives him credibility.

Leadership Insight Ashutosh sets a tone for Eightfold that reflects the company’s mission. We want to make hiring better so every person can pursue their most fulfilling career path. Internally, Ashutosh has

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Flipt

Revolutionizing the Real Estate Industry using AI

I

n an interview with Insights Success, Flipt’s CEO, Andrey Nokhrin highlights the remarkable benefits of the unique platform that Flipt has created and how it helps to grow the real estate businesses using AI technology by connecting them to the potential sellers and also recalls the interesting story behind the inception of the organization.

Below are the highlights of the interview between Andrey and Insights Success: Give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness and its vision.

There are over 5 million home sellers in the US and Canada, and 2 Million listing agents that can’t efficiently find each other online. Flipt is on a mission to use housing and social data to make real estate home selling more transparent, faster, and efficient.

Residential home selling is a daunting process! It’s slow, inefficient and time consuming, and very expensive. An avg. Realtor closes only 3 transactions per year according to the National Association of Realtors. The main reason why real estate agents do so few transactions and have to charge so much is because real estate home advertising to prospective sellers is wasteful, expensive, and doesn’t bring a lot of business. Advertising to real

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estate home sellers hasn’t changed significantly in nearly 100 years.

Flipt aims to create the best online experience for home sellers. To achieve this, Flipt has created an artificial intelligence technology to better connect top real estate professionals with homeowners who are likely to sell. Since 2015, Flipt has connected over 230,000 motivated sellers with 2000 agents in 44 states and Canada.

At Flipt, we’ve gathered a world-class team passionate about real estate, technology, and marketing to transform the real estate industry. We provide easy to use and effective solution to connect home sellers and top local real estate professionals on the web and mobile.

What are the cutting-edge products/solutions offered by Flipt?

Flipt uses AI to enable real estate agents to connect with home sellers before they visit a real estate portal or receive a postcard. It allows great listing agents to get a competitive edge to reduce the waste with postcard marketing. Instead of blanketing whole neighborhoods with the same postcard, not knowing whether someone looked at it and understanding ROI results from the campaign. Flipt targets only likely home sellers going through life changing events in the desired

neighborhood, and provides a report on how many people saw, clicked and requested info from the ad. Think of it as a smart digital postcard.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.

We have pivoted the company a couple times to find the right product market fit, initially starting with a commercial product, then an investor product, a self-sign up model for agents. And finally we have come to a conclusion that our product works best and is really tailored for the top 20% agents but require more account management and optimization to get the most value out of Flipt.

What according to you could be the potential future of your relative industry and how does Flipt envision sustaining its competency?

Flipt focuses on creating the best experience for home sellers specifically (not buyers). In the near future a positive effect on early investments in AI, data, and technology can be seen.

Flipt’s existing client base + partnership/traction and over 230 fivestar reviews, shows that it would sustain its competency in the future.

Give us a few testimonials of your clients that accurately highlight Flipt’s position in the market.

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A smart digital postcard powered by AI technology and social data, which allows agents to connect with home sellers at an early stage of the process.

—Andrey Nokhrin CEO

“I truly love the product for building my pipeline, it’s a game changer for me. What really sets them apart is their customer service reps. I’ve had the pleasure of dealing with Gabrielle and she has been more than supportive in getting my lead follow-up in place.” – Dominic Pietrangelo, Keller Williams, Los Angeles and West Hollywood, California

About the Leader Andrey is a former real estate broker with a technology background. He sold his full service brokerage in 2012, to pursue an opportunity to innovate the way home sellers connect with listing agents and launched Flipt in 2014.

Flipt was recognized by the National Association of Realtors as a top technology in real estate.

Many of Andrey’s articles that were published are also in the list including How AI could kill traditional ad models on 08/10/2018, What we have learned from #DeleteFacebook on 25/04/2018, How Sellers’ Needs Differ

By Generation on 18/08/2017, Real estate circle prospecting done right on 26/10/2017, How to work with potential home sellers on 31/07/2017.

“I have been with Flipt for about 6 months and have had one listing and one purchaser close so far. I’ve received an ROI of over 400% and have valuable information to hopefully get more listings in the next 6 months. I would recommend giving Flipt a try.”

– Michael Freeman, RE/MAX, Williamsburg, VA

Andrey completed his BA in Applied Math and Business. He is a technology entrepreneur who has interest in real estate and achieved various honors.

The list of his accolades includes Microsoft Techstars 2013 grad, Young Entrepreneur of the Year Nominee by Geekwire 2014, Realogy FWD Finalist 2015. CEO of Flipt, dubbed “Top Technology in real estate” by National Association of Realtors in 2016.

Andrey’s recent speaking engagements consist of AI at ROCK THE MARKET conference to 2,000 top NAR members in Miami September, 2018. He gave an interview before speaking at the Annual National Association of Realtors meetings in Chicago “Top Technologies in Real Estate”. Andrey wins Geekwire Startup Day Pitch contest on stage with a panel of 6 top VCs.

“Great Customer Service, Good leads.

Not all the prospect leads are good but a few will be converted into listings.

Also, Helen and Gabby have been great. I decided to purchase more spots to diversify my limited zip code. Very grateful that they are looking out for me.” – Grace Thomas, Keyes, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

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He has expertise in several areas including AI & data to grow real estate business, Competitive advantage with home sellers, Generational Shift Millennial Home Sellers, How sellers’ needs differ by generation, and How to fix new-agent on-boarding.

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Reforming the Healthcare Industry

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n an interview between Insights Success, Donovan Morrison, Cofounder and CEO, and Matt Wilcox, Co-founder and CTO of Luna Lights, share their resourceful insights about Luna Lights’s journey, its products, and the motive of the organization along with the aim towards revolutionizing the healthcare ecosystem.

Highlights of the interview, between Donovan, Matt and Insights Success, are elaborated as follows: Give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness and its vision.

At Luna Lights, we believe, older adults can maintain their health and independence as they age without needing to make major lifestyle compromises. To achieve this, we’ve developed an automated lighting system that uses behavioral analysis to help older adults stay safer at night.

We want to establish Luna Lights as a leader in night-time safety and as a standard of care in assisted living communities across the country. We’re thrilled about creating solutions that not only benefit the long-term care space, but that, older adults embrace and want to use.

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What are the cutting-edge products/solutions offered by Luna Lights, Inc.?

Luna Lights consists of an ultra-thin pressure sensor that detects when a user gets out of bed and immediately turns on small, wireless lights around the home. When the user returns to his or her bed, the sensor turns the lights off automatically. Additionally, a software component collects data regarding the frequency and duration that an adult is out of bed at night. Our system sends a text notification to a caregiver if an older adult is out of bed for an unreasonable amount of time. It also allows caregivers to identify trends in nighttime trips and see which individuals are most at risk for falling.

Give a detailed description of the featured personnel’s influence over the company and the industry.

We’ve spent the last few years building Luna Lights and growing the business into what it is today. Through immersing ourselves in the industry we’ve come to fully understand the space, the stakeholders, and their pain points. We designed and developed the system, raised a round of capital, navigated a manufacturing run, and have deployed Luna Lights in senior living communities across the nation.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.

We currently have twenty senior living community partners. Based on early results we’ve provided for at least a 30% reduction in the nighttime fall rate for our senior living community partners with as high as a 90% reduction. We’ve been able to connect variations in nightly activity with a host of underlying health conditions.

We’ve closed a round of funding, expanded our sales reach nationally, received issuance of our first patent, and were recently named Rising Star Startup of the Year at the Fourth Revolution Awards.

One lesson we take to heart is that if you don’t know something, seek guidance. There are an incredible number of experienced individuals in every field and seeking their perspective can save you from costly mistakes.

What are the challenges faced while providing innovative solutions and how is Luna Lights, Inc. serving to tackle them?

Falls are the number one cause of injury for older adults and over half of all residents in assisted living | November 2018

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At Luna Lights we believe safety should be simple, and we strive to help older adults age gracefully and independently.

—Donovan Morrison Co-founder & CEO —Matt Wilcox Co-founder & CTO

communities will experience a fall in the next year. Nighttime falls are of great concern in these communities because there is the least staffing and lowest resident visibility. Many older adults refuse to use wearable monitoring solutions at night and sensor technologies are often expensive and complex, so there aren’t any current solutions that effectively address the issue.

As in other healthcare arenas, reducing readmissions is a big area of focus for senior living communities. Keeping the residents safer and reducing social isolation are two factors that are important for senior living communities that don’t want to lose hospital and health system referrals.

We help address both of these through providing greater connectivity between residents and care staff.

By combining tracking and illumination, Luna Lights provides a predictive and preventive experience that is currently unavailable on the market. Luna Lights simplifies the data collected in order to target the elderly population and uses the data in a very specific way: to warn family members and caretakers of potential health problems or falls.

In many cases communities are starting to move from paper and pencil charting to incorporating the technology in their communities, so we’re excited to be at the forefront of this movement.

Integration will be important as multiple technologies are displayed and channeled through one system, and we’re excited to partner with other groups looking to provide comprehensive offerings.

What according to you could be the potential future of your relative industry and how does Luna Lights, Inc. envision sustaining its competency?

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Friendships memory care unit.

Families are comforted, knowing that staff is able to respond quickly when residents are up and moving.” – Leondra Blaser, RN, Assisted Living Director at Friendship Manor in Rock Island, IL “Luna Lights has helped us reduce overnight falls in our resident population and provides another tool senior living operators can use to mitigate fall risk and help keep residents safe and healthy.” – Brian Geyser, APRN-BC, MSN, VP, Clinical Innovation & Population Health at Maplewood Senior Living

Testimonials over Delivering Optimum Quality “Luna Lights is an important part of our resident safety strategy in New

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Critical Importance of

Digital Marketing in the growth of Start-ups

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Industry Pointers

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unning a start-up is not as easy as it may seem. It requires giving attention to many things. One needs to perceive the evolving trends in the business world and adapt the business strategies accordingly so as to reach out to a larger audience. One should also have an entrepreneurship sense and competence to thrive in a constantly changing business world.

We live in an ultra –competitive world. If one does not evolve our strategy to reach out to people according to the changing trends then force of the time has the capacity to make one obsolete. That is the reason it is essential to adapt to the changing world and changing technologies. By being part of the solutions to the problems in the world one can make the world a better place.

The digital world we live in today, traditional marketing strategies are almost becoming obsolete. Today, customers use online platforms to get information on practically everything. Digital Marketing helps the startups to have their online presence and market themselves in a better way.

Digital marketing is important for start-up nowadays because it is a kind of successful business strategy to shine out. It is the very efficient route to reach out the larger audience by showcasing the services and products in the best possible manner.

The most valuable benefit of Digital Marketing for the startups is that they can maintain good communication with their target audience by regularly informing them about the events and happenings in their company at a very minimal cost through online platforms. The positively built image of the products and services of the start-up in the | November 2018

online world makes it possible to reach out to the maximum audience.

Digital marketing is vital for building brand image, creating traffic, more sales and gaining loyal customers. The sphere of digital marketing is much larger than traditional marketing strategies and most importantly it is cost-effective.

Digital marketing is a disruptive technology which provides the complete customer service starting from the product description to customer support.

Accomplishment of Businesses is in converting generated traffic into subscribers. Conversion rate is the most important parameter of Business success. Digital Marketing plays vital role in great conversion rate. This is the reason most entrepreneurs are giving priority to digital advertising tools to have maximum conversion rate.

Digital marketing uses a variety of information coupled with organized tools to analyze customer liking and their behavior, which helps to perceive new trend, see new opportunities and gaining future insights.

Various Digital Marketing platforms or technologies include Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Social Media Optimization (SMO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Content Management System (CMS), Email Marketing, Social Media Networks, Content Marketing, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Apps and Classic Apps, Blogs and different video channels. All these platforms operate in Internet Medium. There are other

classic methods of Digital Marketing such as TV advertisement, Radio Medium & SMS. All these various Internet and Classic Digital Marketing platforms create rapid and viable communications with the maximum and desired audiences and helps in ensuring higher conversion rates. Due to these higher conversion rates it becomes possible to generate great revenues. These various platforms have the great potential to ensure good communication with consumers.

Digital Marketing opens growth options for small and medium businesses also in very good proportion. The digital marketing modes are more customizable and cheaper. The presence of one’s brand and service on various platforms gives the option to consumers to rate business services as per their experience level. The favorable feedback given by a satisfied consumer helps in generating new customers and increasing more conversion rates. This is the most important benefit of online presence of one’s brand.

Strategic digital marketing helps start-ups growth in many ways such as: Ÿ Global Trade Possibility Ÿ Cost-effective Marketing Ÿ Image and Brand formation

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Fast Communication More Online Visibility, Name, Fame Ÿ More contribution and more impact Ÿ More Revenue, Status, Reputation, Growth, Prestige Ÿ Ÿ

Essentially Digital marketing strategy helps in new customer acquisitions, brand visualization, growth, more revenue-generating possibilities, better customer service, and cost-effective global presence.

Digital Marketing is the heart and soul in the growth of the start-ups and is the best way to reduce costs on marketing without reducing the outreach of the products and services. Therefore, when a start-up creates its business plan, it must include a solid digital marketing strategy.

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The future of digital marketing appears incredibly bright at present.

This battle to promote one’s own brand is possible in a more impactful way by using Digital Marketing.

Digital Marketing can help different brands create big impact on consumers.

To survive in an ultra-competitive business world is only possible if one can plan and implement an effective, unique and pragmatic digital marketing strategy for one’s business to make a huge impact on the maximum customers.

Appropriate understanding and proficient inclusion of best digital marketing processes and such trends has the capacity to ensure the sustainable, holistic and economic growth of start-ups and even already existent businesses. | November 2018

MindBridge Ai An AI Powered Auditing Solution Provider

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What are the cutting-edge products/solutions offered by MindBridge Ai?

Highlights of the interview, between John and Insights Success, are elaborated as follows:

Ai Auditor is the first point solution developed on our platform, released in 2017, we’ve on-boarded over 175 customers to date. Within minutes, an auditor can review trends, anomalies and risk-scored transactions, enhancing their judgment and reducing risk while empowering them to deliver AI driven insights to clients. This is a world’s first in audit, the use of AI combined with traditional analytics with 100% transaction analysis. We provide razorsharp focus on potential issues, ensuring confidence that they didn’t miss any material miss-statements.

n an interview with Insights Success, John Colthart, General Manager, Audit & Assurance and VP Growth of MindBridge Ai, shares his resourceful insights over MindBridge Ai’s journey, its products, and the motive of the organization to revolutionize the world’s financial transactions.

Give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness and its vision.

MindBridge Ai is a venture-backed Fintech company based in Ottawa, Canada. Through the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies, our platform detects anomalous patterns of activities, unintentional errors, and intentional misstatements. Using our Ai Auditor platform, organizations can minimize financial loss, reduce corporate liability and focus on providing higher value services to their clients.

A recent paper authored by the ACFE estimates nearly $4 trillion is lost annually due to human error or intent in financial data. We are on a mission to uncover any and all anomalies that are leading to this loss.

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Our platform is solving problems in many industries or regulatory environments. Recently the Bank of England published observations on our second project with them. Our extensible platform is poised to tackle an unlimited number of markets.

Tell us a little about your role at MindBridge Ai, and what do you see in the future for audit?

My responsibility is to guide Sales, Marketing, Product Management and Success. This means that all our market offerings and processes are led by me, and that I am responsible for all revenue generation for the firm.

Coming from a multi-disciplined background that includes technical sales, consulting, product marketing, design and even dabbling in coding allows for a broad perspective on tuning MindBridge Ai’s business.

While the industry is striving to understand its future and what the “firm of the future” looks like, I have dialogue at leading industry events talking about the future - from process, technology and even a career perspective. The auditor of the future will be very analytics and design oriented, with the necessary accounting depths, focusing on value creation for clients while moving audit to a more continuously offered service.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company.

How do you reshape an industry that is thousands of years old? That’s what we’re talking about with regards to the accounting profession; even audit specifically is younger but still 700+ years old. Challenges are abundant when leading professionals on a transformative journey, powering them to assess more data than ever, all powered with new technology like AI to identify risk.

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At MindBridge Ai we are about changing the world, making it a better place by building revolutionary new solutions to analyze financial data.

—John Colthart General Manager

We are also challenging the 40-year old Computer Assisted Audit Techniques and Tools, while pushing the envelope on the interpretation of audit standards on how to use new technologies that simply weren’t available when some of them were written.

We’ve learned a tremendous amount from our clients, it truly is a partnership. We must also leverage and learn from the half a billion data transactions that we have analyzed to date.

We’ve been the recipient of numerous awards, from Top New Product of 2018 by Accounting Today Magazine, to winning the Central Banking FinTech and RegTech Global Award for Best Machine Learning Solution for Regulatory Compliance.

What are the challenges faced while providing innovative solutions and how is MindBridge Ai serving to tackle them?

We continue to enrich our AI platform by collaborating with clients on new | November 2018

and interesting data problems; ultimately creating new algorithms and new ways tune our analysis components to drive newly discovered value to our clients and theirs. More data and more complexity is coming, this will continue to be a challenge that the MindBridge Ai team will continue to battle, and win.

What according to you could be the potential future of your relative industry and how does MindBridge Ai envision sustaining its competency?

We envision that Audit and Assurance will be drastically different than it is today; the firms of the future will be analytics and AI-enabled, creating new offerings to unlock potential for clients.

Audit will still be a function at these firms but there could be a future where the corporation itself will analyze 100% of the data in their ERP systems and external audit will do a deeper review into other systems of the business, say the CRM system, and tie that into analysis. MindBridge Ai will continue to lead the space, driving deeper audit data analytics, including

more sources, while leveraging thousands of engagements to update algorithms, ultimately bridging more gaps used to assess the health of the organization.

Client Testimonials “For the first time in 25 years, I knew I had a relevant sample.” – Samantha Bowling, Audit Partner, Garbelman Winslow (GWCPAs) “The best way to find a needle in a haystack is to burn the haystack.

MindBridge is the lighter.” – Jonathan Kraftchick, Managing Director of Training & Development, Audit & Assurance at Cherry Bekaert LLP

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Blockchain: The Next Opportunity for Better, Safer, Smarter Cities

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oday, about 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, but this share is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. Combined with the overall growth of global population, this could add another 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050, with close to 90% of this increase taking place in Asia and Africa, as reported by the United Nations’ 2018 Revision of World Urbanization Prospects.

Since the world continues to urbanize, a wiser and farsighted management of urban resources is more and more needed, especially in low-income and lowermiddle-income countries where the pace of urbanization is projected to be the fastest. Smart technologies and smart urban platforms can support City managers in tackling the increasing demand for energy, infrastructures, affordable housing, well-connected mobility systems, healthcare and education, as well as quality of life and jobs.

To understand how smart technologies work, we should picture Cities as distributed communication systems, where urban objects – think of streetlights, meters, parking lots, waste bins, Wi-Fi hotspots, video

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About the Author: Gianni Minetti Passionate and eclectic technology expert, Gianni Minetti is the President and CEO, Paradox Engineering SA has about 25 years of business experience in information and telecommunication systems, with peculiar interests in Internet of Things, smart technologies, blockchain and cryptography. In 2005 he founded Paradox Engineering as the vehicle for bringing his unique technology vision to the market through pioneer IoT platforms for Smart Cities and Smart Factories. He is currently President and CEO of the Company, which has been part of MinebeaMitsumi Group since July 2015. Gianni is also chair of the Southern Alps Chapter of the Crypto Valley Association, active investor and advisor to several blockchain venture projects. He is based in Ticino, Switzerland. | November 2018

Leadership Viewpoint

surveillance cameras, etc. – are not dumb, isolated devices, but smart nodes of a citywide network. With the Internet of Things (IoT), all these objects are injected with intelligence and acquire the capability to receive and transmit data and execute commands, thus enabling remote monitoring and dynamic, adaptive control functions.

when human or vehicle presence is detected, and on demand actions can be triggered in real time for single or grouped lamps – for instance when a car accident or an emergency requires intense lighting in a specific area.

Acquiring and correlating data from urban assets is a significant step forward to improve quality of public services and citizen satisfaction, reduce energy consumption, optimize costs and simplify processes for City operators and managers. Even more, it provides actionable information to feed strategic decisions about services efficiency and improvements, and take evidence-based actions where and when needed.

It is proven that implementing LED lighting and an IoT remote management and control platform can cut energy consumption and greenhouse emissions up to 70%.

Moreover, connected lamps can monitor key operating parameters and automatically report failures, generating extra savings on maintenance costs. Considering LED technologies last about 50% longer than traditional light sources, the US Federal Department of Energy estimated that if the entire country converted to LED lighting over the next 20 years, it would save a total of USD 120 billion.

Let’s apply what we’ve just described to a basic service such as street lighting. By connecting street lamps to a wireless IoT network, it becomes possible to turn them on/off and adjust brightness according to daily solar times and ambient light levels, defining variable patterns for working and festive days, residential and industrial districts. Sensors can be integrated to bring lights up

Even more interesting developments are possible with blockchain technology, which can make Smart Cities far more secure, transparent, efficient and resilient. As an original combination of mature technological concepts, including peer-to-peer networks, distributed consensus algorithms, validity rules, ledger technologies and cryptography, blockchain can be successfully applied in

| November 2018

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any domain where stakeholders’ relations are based on trust and may be entirely disintermediated. This is particularly true in Cities, as they rely on accurate, secure, authentic and trustworthy information exchanges to deliver services to people and businesses.

About energy distribution, for instance, blockchain-based metering solutions can accelerate the adoption of real-time differential pricing models and encourage users to participate to power generation by connecting their renewable energy microgrids to the main grid. In water networks, blockchain technologies enable smart contracts and validated rules to automate water supply in the most possible efficient manner, minimizing leakages and tampering.

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Blockchain technology can be combined with IoT solutions to provide better waste collection services: it allows to accurately track waste input and optimize waste truck routes upon parameters like bin status, filling levels, etc. This increases service quality and efficiency, and generates further savings on fuel expenses and overall maintenance costs. Garbage-related data could also support the introduction of customized fees for household and commercial users, thus rewarding recycling and correct waste separation.

Coming to public government and administration, blockchain can be used to automate and digitalize civil registries, as well as property, real estate and business registries,

generating notable cost savings and increasing quality of service.

Considering citizen participation, blockchain-based voting platforms can improve present, analogue electoral systems by achieving secure, anonymous and unique voting in a decentralized manner.

Same platforms can be used to poll citizens on specific urban initiatives, making sure contributions from civil society are recognized in Smart City planning and development.

Blockchain technology is still in its early days, but most experts agree it has a potential for disruption. And some pioneer experiences – from Dubai to Tokyo, from New York to Tallinn – demonstrate that benefits for Smart Cities can really be worthwhile.

| November 2018

Helping to Reach Language Fluency Goals Faster

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ith the changing world, technology is progressively marking its presence in most of the industries.

Education is not an exception and companies like Play2Speak have come up with brilliant immersive learning experiences in order to change the face of education. The organization’s product helps students in practicing to speak fluent English by putting them into conversational experiences.

In an interview with Insights Success, Giuseppe Fantigrossi, the CEO of Play2Speak has shared some of his insights behind setting a benchmark in the education industry.

Give a brief overview of the company, its uniqueness and its vision.

Play2Speak is a Spanish EdTech.

Our vision is to bring immersive learning experiences to students. We want to shape the future of education because we believe it needs to be changed.

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Play2Speak’s unique use of technology focuses on mixing virtual experiences with Artificially Intelligent (AI) conversations to allow students to improve their second language.

What are the cutting-edge products/solutions offered by Play2Speak?

Our product helps language learners practice to speak English in Virtual Reality (VR) by immersing them into conversational experiences. If going to England is the best way for you to speak contextual English, then we bring English experiences to YOU. You simply put on a VR headset and start talking with our virtual characters. Throughout the activities, you get feedback on your progress, and by the end of the experience, we provide scores on your ability to: speaking, listening and reading.

Our conversations are powered by an AI engine, made of cognitive services to give you the illusion that

you are having a conversation with our characters. This is very important, because the fear of embarrassment when talking to native speakers is a real problem.

Many learners have to overcome this in order to become more fluent.

Give a detailed description of your influence over the company and the industry.

My main quality is persistence! I won’t quit, and that passion is felt by the people around me. I live and breathe Play2Speak, day and night.

I have knowledge of the language learning field, as I know 4 languages and have studied French and Spanish, over the last 7 years. In addition, I know how to motivate people to follow us. At one point, we were 18 people, working in hopes of making a great product.

Describe the experiences, achievements or lessons learnt that have shaped the journey of the company. | November 2018

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Together, let's shape the future of education —Giuseppe Fantigrossi CEO

In the beginning, we needed to be seen. It didn’t matter if we had a finished product or not: visibility was one of our strategies to make opportunities happen for us. So we applied to all sorts of events, conferences and competitions.

This allowed us to meet key people in the education industry and shape our company to what it is today.

Lessons learned: Move faster! This is the number one gripe I had with the way I worked. As CEO, you have to make tons of decision, many times without all of the data. How to approach this? Create and fail fast! If we had to start over with what we all know today, we would make shorter iterations of the experience and get to market faster. Also, we would include an accredited learning institute from the very beginning of the game development!

What are the challenges faced while providing innovative | November 2018

solutions and how is Play2Speak serving to tackle them?

envision sustaining its competency?

The major challenge facing VR is the hardware issue.

Virtual reality and augmented reality will be the two technologies which are going to become mainstreamed in most schools in 2 years’ time. Until then, we will be looking to partner with major educational editors and institutions. This will allow us to adopt and use current methodologies for learning English. Also, we will have an option to convert other languages within our software. Will Chinese and Spanish be a language we support, we believe so.

We made our first experiences for the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. It is visually pleasing and done in a way so that the user does not get sick. The issue is schools and academies don’t want to pay 1000€+ for a VR solution!

How are we tackling this? by making our full experience for the standalone headset, but usable on the other ones too, like the Vive and the Rift. This new headset will cost about 200€, won’t need a computer or mobile to play, and will be at a great price point for schools and academies to invest in.

What according to you could be the potential future of your relative industry and how does Play2Speak

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Yes, Internet of Things is Reshaping the World D ata—an abstract can’t be felt, can’t be touched, more likely to be understood.

A cryptic information flows omnidirectional in surrounding in the form of wave signals, transferring the data at different frequencies prevents the over-drawing. This data is secured in the cloud—large storage servers which provide a better protection to the information.

Internet of Things—the appliances used in daily life interrelated with cloud computing in-order to make toil easy. It’s been introduced while ago; its applications are seen in household commodities, and now enterprises have also started showing their keen interest in IoT’s. Certain IoT’s specially programmed for the processes in the enterprise; coordinating with such technologies will bring a boon to the enterprises as a whole, with variations in utilization the benefits also vary.

Outlook of IoT’s depending on their functioning Twining the Product Digitally Digital Twins—a mirror-like virtual representation of an original product for proper analysis is it all about. This program helps to generate a digitalized graphical image of any object at an instantaneous time, whereas, the analysis includes functioning, learning, and reasoning. Any complicated object can be regenerated and studied for its better improvement. For example, in automotive industries,

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it’s quite hard to point out a mistake or a flaw in complicated functioning objects. An engine design is pretty much intricate, so is it’s functioning, a digital twin of the engine helps to analyze the speed of the engine, compressor ratio, oil pressure, heat emitted by engines and, etc. With the help of DT, there’s the possibility of creating a connected engine instead of assembling the parts of an engine.

DT can make a change in physical assets by providing options for creating, testing, building, monitoring, and maintaining. Implementing such IoT will benefit in accelerating the product development rate and will also reduce the costs. Before any occurrences in failure predictive maintenance is always the best option. Hence, in order to prevent further calamities, it’s better to take measures accordingly.

Following Up the Blocks; More Secure Way Block chain is another way to transfer data without getting altered by other factors, the cryptography is so at its depth that making changes get tough. Block chains is a series of blocks which will pass data from one to another. This methodology is used for transaction process between two parties, considering any enterprises sharing the monetary assets digitally, and then through block chain, the transaction will be more secure. Trust is important factor required for the business, thus, this will build trust between those two parties involved in the transfer. And, as block

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Chalk Talk

chain stores the data promptly in the blocks; the details of transfer amount and related can be retrieved.

Earlier three parties were required in order to proceed for the transfer, but here, the involvement of ‘middle party’ is evoked, this reduces the time as well as efforts needed. As the transactions are done on a peer-to-peer basis, there is a reduction in contractual costs. And, reduction in cost is always been beneficiary to the company. With the absence of middle-man, the transaction process boosts up leaving out the unnecessary time required.

Delivering Various Platform for Various Processes This the age of digital disruption, in order to overcome such issues, an enterprise needs to rethink on their business agendas. There are certain IoT companies which provide solutions with the digital transformation. A trend has been followed up with innovation comes growth, considering such methods a new platform has been developed to reduce the launch timing of new digital services which includes predictive maintenance and helps to monitor assets.

Some companies provide cloud-based IoT SaaS platform for medium-sized businesses, and large companies for the distribution and managing their IoT assets and services.

Enterprises will also be able to engineer the products by gaining proper insights with advanced digital technologies; this will help to maintain position in the market. There are some platform providers which help the enterprises to develop smart IoT’s, so that the maintenance required by the enterprises work more efficiently and will definitely increase the product quality and will increase transparency in operations. Along with, as-a-services are also offered to the enterprises for the repairing and product performance related issues. Whereas, there are some IoT firms which provide assistance by monitoring, utilizing assets and tracking of vehicles. Installing such IoT will not only help industries to remotely monitor and will have a total control over the management.

Industries to Utilize Automated Vehicles Time to go RC’s (remote controlled) Many big companies have made electric-cars more available at a commercial level too. Whereas, automated vehicles have raised the level of non-liquid fuel cars; nowadays, computerized controlled cars are seen in the trend. Many companies have adapted them in order to reduce labor; these cars receive data directly from the cloud through certain commands supporting employees to

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remotely manage vehicles. AV consist of advanced GPS systems with high quality of cameras which helps the vehicle to see up to 100m of the area without any disturbance caused by nature, in hand to that, the data acquired by the sensors helps to generate 3D optimized view of surrounding of vehicles. This reduces the cost as well as the time required for the transportation.

Now, Easy to track assets A systematic implementation should be taken for the management of assets. Talking about the management, the most faced problems by the companies are the assets missplacement and miss-location. For preventing such issues, certain measures could be taken by an implementation of IoT; IoT such as tracking devices, this will monitor the location of assets and help the companies to have an outlook of their products.

Customizing the consumption with IoT Smart Metering—another way to make building maintenance easy, this allows a program to manage the consumption rate of water, natural gases, and energy entities. Installing such SM IoT will boost the comprehension of building requirements; it will maintain the level of needed supplies resulting in the reduction of over-pay for the resources. Well, it is the beneficiary method to focus on.

Coordinating IoT with CC Cognitive Computing (CC) is a way to bring human thoughts in computerized figures; it has self-learning abilities which helps it to solve problems on its own. It’s been a while in the use of CC in industries, but, with the involvement in IoT has uplifted the technological standards.

CC acquires the data from IoT devices and works accordingly, this vastly generated data are unstructured, multi-modal, and, while maintaining the use of such large detailed information some of the sensor data is thrown away. As the productivity is limited not utilized data are considered are left out which is also known as ‘dark’.

Hence, for certain products certain data is acquired.

Securing the Place in Market Due to digital disruption, it has become mandatory for the enterprises having a strong-hold understanding on upcoming new innovation. Implementing IoTs will not only help in the growth, but also be a tough competitor by increasing productivity rate. Hopefully, the saturation in the IoT is far more likely to be inevitable.

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Reforming the Real Estate Business

A

rtificial intelligence is one of the biggest inventions of the 21st century. Restb.ai is a company that leverages Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) in order to create a precise, intelligent product that learns to recognize real estate specific features and insights from real estate images. The solution pushes the boundaries of machine learning, having been designed from the ground up to accurately recognize complex concepts within a real estate context.

Restb.ai is the only Computer Vision organization in the scene that offers an extensive range of solutions for the real estate industry. The organization aims to offer real estate players a seamless experience and home buyers an easier quest to find their dream home.

Providing Cutting Edge Solutions Restb.ai provides highly specialized computer vision models at scale. The organization’s ground breaking technology allows portals to detect entire duplicate listings and extract relevant information in images: room types (bathroom, kitchen), home

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features (fireplace, hardwood floor), house styles, and house condition.

This information helps real estate players by improving their: Ÿ User experience - Users search for houses in more intuitive ways, enabling them to search by room types or compare rooms across listings. Ÿ

Data models - Much of a property’s listing information is hidden within the photos, creating difficulties for automated valuation tools. Restb.ai can extract information such as whether a home has been renovated, kept in an immaculate condition or would represent a great home to be flipped.

Ÿ

Content moderation - Many portals still struggle keeping their websites free of spam and low quality content. It’s why Restb.ai offers industry-leading watermark and duplicate detection solutions.

A Scientist Turned Leader Angel Esteban Soto is the CEO and Co-founder of Restb.ai. As a

passionate and dedicated computer scientist, he has always wanted to put his skills to use and make a change for the better. He focused his career on the R&D of automated systems and how they can solve real world problems.

This eventually led to the birth of Restb.ai.

Angel developed the core A.I. technology behind the company. His leadership skills and clear vision inspired him to see the potential which computer vision has on the real estate industry, and focus on creating a valuable product to solve an endless stream of problems. Thanks to Angel, Restb.ai has quickly earned achievements, like the Horizon 2020 grant offered by the European Commission.

Solving Real-World Problems Initially, Restb.ai was launched with the idea that it can solve all the world’s problems. Its tech has always been strong, yet the lack of focus made it difficult to understand and solve the problems of such a diverse range of customers. Restb.ai soon realized it’s not enough to be good at everything -

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1 ST The

with Innovative Solutions 2018

We see ourselves as a partner to real estate companies that want to obtain the most high fidelity data from their most valuable asset - the photos.

—Angel Esteban Soto Co-founder & CEO

one needs to be the best in one specific field. It’s what makes Restb.ai’s value proposition better than Google’s or Amazon’s.

It’s important to add that no matter how impressive a product or founders are, a company won’t achieve anything without a passionate team. It’s crucial to create one such team with talented, hardworking people.

One of the big challenges has been pushing the boundaries of a new market. Many of Restb.ai’s potential customers think that computer vision is cool, but they don’t understand where it fits into their company. Additionally, they are unsure how to create budgets for it, as it is not replacing any existing solutions. So the organization has spent a large amount of time and effort educating the market and helping them visualize how these solutions would look in their websites and what their ROI will be.

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Helping the Real Estate Industry to keep up with Changes When it comes to the future, Restb.ai expects every real estate company to be using computer vision to help their respective businesses within the next five years. The organization also believes that photos are the most powerful asset for the real estate industry. A time will come when companies will not be able to survive in the ever competitive market without unlocking the information their images contain. Additionally, people are slowly evolving into more and more technologically apt beings. The best part is, this shift is happening naturally, and the real estate industry needs to keep up with the changes.

A Satisfied Clientele “Restb.ai’s technology is fast, accurate, and specialized for real estate with types and features - a key factor for us. Their AI technology allows TLCengine to disrupt the way people search for homes while making our website ADA compliant and providing a huge SEO boost. A winwin-win.” – Krishna Malyala, CEO of TLCengine.

“Restb.ai’s ability to detect logos and watermarks helps us more quickly spot quality control issues of our visual content, a critical part of our business.” – Darius Bradbury, Founder at OpenRent.

Rest.ai is working round the clock in order to help the industry to transit into the future. Currently the organization is in constant touch with leading innovators of the field in order to build its creative solutions.

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CHOOSING the

RIGHT TRANSLATOR for INTERNATIONALIZATION services. The biggest barrier to business over the years has been language. Most entrepreneurs use English on their websites, which is a huge drawback especially to the native language speaking clients. Changing the world can be an impossible task to take up, instead the business world took an adaptive approach through internationalization.

Rilind Elezaj Digital Marketing Specialist

I

n the 21st century, the main focus has been making the world more connected, and entrepreneurs are no exception. All entrepreneurs aim at increasing their customer base, and going international is one way to do it.

To achieve this, the business world opted to merge with the technological sphere to ensure the physical boundaries from state to state are not a barrier to the exchange of goods and

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Internationalization is the process whereby the producers strategize on products that are acceptable and appealing to people in as many countries as possible. In case the producers have a website, they design it in such a way that people speaking different languages can translate the content on the site to their own language. Transactions done in one’s native language are as personal as it gets. This trail of logic has been backed by studies that show 55% of clients have a preference of online shopping in their local dialect. Using their native language makes the process easier and the producer/seller becomes more trustworthy.

That’s a good indication which lets us know that localization helps with business growth, but there’s more to it. Investing on an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that has the option of localizing language is of benefit to both the entrepreneur and the customers considering that 56% of clients confess to value the use of their local languages more than the price of the product itself!

Coming to translations on the website, all the critical contents and documentation should be translated. To get the most accurate and honest translations one has to vet the

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Maestro’s Perspective

translator and ensure they are familiar with the native language. Investing on the best translation services and translators will help avoid poor translations which lower the business’ level of professionalism. Even the marketing and branding should be localized depending on the culture of the setting. Some holidays and discounts may simply not make sense to the locals. With the right local specialist or translator you will know the kind of marketing and branding that works for the specific community. The specialist will come up with the best translation for the slogan, the best colors and even give tips on the peak and off-peak seasons of that particular community.

To get the best translations, ensure that you have the best ERP providers who will make sure the localization details are well taken care of. To achieve all these, one has to ensure they have the best language service provider for their organization. The organization has to consider whether the translator is a native speaker or not, because it will be advantageous if they are natives so that they translate accurately. In case the materials to be translated have a specific format or subject matter that can only be handled by professionals in the area, then specialists must be hired.

All translators must provide proof of relevant education or previously translated work to show they are well acquainted with the task and most important they must be within the budget.

Other than the hiring issue, the organization has also to consider the number of languages the organization needs to have translated. If the languages are few and the translations minimal then they can get small language service providers like freelancers, but in case the languages are numerous, then it is advisable to use one language service provider. One service provider is also an easy and convenient contact person in doing follow ups unlike dealing with various small service providers. To maintain the brand, one translator is suitable, as all the documents will be written in different languages but in one voice unlike a variety of small service providers who will all be speaking in their different voices and in different languages, in which case the aspect of uniformity will be lost. It is advisable to use one provider who will develop a deep understanding of the business and can be a long-term translator for the organization bringing about consistency and uniformity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rilind Elezaj is an experienced a Digital Marketing Specialist with a demonstrated history of working in the marketing and advertising industry. Rilind possesses a strong entrepreneurial mindset and has devoted his career to enhancing the sphere of digital marketing. In his methodological approach, Rilind integrates web development and other digital marketing solutions to create hybrid strategies that bring the best results.

organization to manage international websites and ensure they have the capacity to modify the content on local sites.

It should also have an automated translation workflow, this will help reduce time wasted when launching new sites within the website. The minute new information is posted, it is translated to all the languages through the service providers. Pseudo-localization is another aspect to look at.

Language may have a specific font of writing, or direction of writing. This is sorted out by the pseudo-localization which presents language in its most original form. A fallback location should also be put in place to go back to the original language in case the client speaks a language that is not available.

All these features have been brought together to ensure the best localization experience in entrepreneurship wherever one may be and grow the business sector to the highest possible heights, internationally.

To ensure consistency of the multilingual platform, the organization has to ensure they choose the right web control and management solution (WCMS). WCMS enables the

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