Amagi – Glass to Glass Media Connect!

Posted in General

The demand for digital content creation is set to drive the global market, with a projected CAGR of approximately 15% during the forecast period of 2023-2028. By 2028, the market is anticipated to reach a value of approximately USD 30 billion. This growth is attributed to the rising demand for digital content across diverse business sectors. One particular area witnessing a surge in content and viewership is sports. There is a growing appetite for sports-related content, ranging from major global events to local competitions. Additionally, news content, including both breaking news and localized updates, is experiencing a substantial increase in viewership. Furthermore, genres such as documentaries are also gaining popularity among audiences.

Simultaneously, what we are witnessing today is a generation shift in how content is getting consumed. Consumers want to consume content in the format that they love, on the screen of their choice and want to decide how they want to pay for watching the content. This increase in the content consumption spectrum has resulted in several new distribution platforms, be it OTT, subscription based or free advertisement based consumption platforms.

Amagi is on a mission to connect the explosion of content creation with the emerging distribution platforms of the future. This exciting technological transformation is occurring at the intersection of video and cloud, opening up new possibilities and opportunities for content delivery and new monetization models.

The success of content lies in its ability to establish genuine connections with the intended audience. Therefore, it is essential for content creators, whether they are TV channels, OTT platforms, or movie production companies, to continuously evaluate the content preferences of their viewers. By staying updated on the content that people are currently consuming, creators can ensure their stories resonate and engage with the target audience effectively.

This connected engagement – from your video camera to a consumer screen – glass-to-glass experience, is what will drive the future of media industry and Amagi is positioned to play a pivotal role in defining this future.

I am very excited to join Amagi and be a part of this journey! It presents a significant opportunity and a fresh challenge for me. Throughout my previous experiences, I have actively participated in the early stages of multiple startups such as Pramati, Rivigo, and Harness, where I played a pivotal role in their remarkable evolution into unicorn companies. Additionally, I have also gained valuable insights from working at established companies like Adobe, which have well-established processes for ensuring product success and agility. However, Amagi finds itself in a unique phase of its journey. It has undergone rapid growth in recent years, assembled an excellent team, and is currently poised for the next phase of expansion and scaling. This particular journey holds immense potential for transformation, empowering change and nurturing extraordinary growth.

Harness India – 100 & Growing

Posted in General, People & Culture, Software Delivery

This week we celebrated our 100th hire join Harness India center. This is a big landmark for us in our journey. Starting in 2018 with big dream and aspiration of helping companies improve software delivery, we have come a long way to make our customers successful and grow Harness.

I am very proud of what the team in India has accomplished over the past 2 years as we continue to expand and grow. Some of the key highlights:

  • Complete ownership of key products and key technical areas on all products.
  • High customer focus, delivered many features, enhancements, fixes.
  • Thought leadership with early participation on research & product engineering of new products.
  • Cohesive collaboration with engineering, product & business across time zones – one team!
  • Strong focus and building scalability and stability of the platform.
  • Improved automation, quality processes, daily release and testing.
  • Key driver and execution on UI – platform, usability & quality with introduction on new concepts and thought leadership.
  • Complete ownership on making Harness secure – customer security support, application security, compliance, vulnerability scan, bug bounty.
  • Emphasis on learning from the initial days with TLS program (Thursday Learning Sessions).
  • One team, one dream on Harness mission

Thank you team, upwards & onwards!

Harness – We are on a Mission!

Posted in General

The world runs on software. Yet delivering changes to software remains massively complicated, highly manual, and risk-prone. At Harness, our mission is to simplify the entire software delivery process so that software engineering teams can move fast and ship code effortlessly without the fear of breaking things. That’s why we’re bringing the industry’s first Continuous Delivery-as-a-Service platform to the market.

You can learn more about my mission at harness.io

Adieu Rivigo!

Posted in General

After almost 3 years at Rivigo, I am looking to begin my new journey at Harness.

Rivigo was an amazing journey as you would expect out of a startup. Global trucking revenue pool is close to USD 2 trillion dollars which is about 20X the cab market revenue pool. Even in the developed market such as US, it is a highly fragmented and antiquated business which lacks use of technology and data. I built some of the most sophisticated technology, filing 3 patents in this area that includes network relay model, fuel analytics & optimization, resource allocation & optimization, human behaviour analysis, time continuums, line haul planning. This is the plan that I laid out at the beginning and wrote about data disruption in trucking.

Here are some of the blogs that describes some part of the work in details (updated) –

I built a team of about 100+ top notch engineers (from just one), and I am proud of leaving Rivigo with 100+ great friends and colleagues!

More on Harness later.

Rivigo Hero’s Journey (RHJ)- Embark on a life changing experience

Posted in People & Culture, Rivigo

Hero’s journey vs leadership program

‘Hero’s Journey’ program at Rivigo (based on the work done by Joseph Campbell many centuries ago) is a two-year life changing experience is aimed at unleashing the potential of the talent we hire by facilitating them with unique and challenging work experiences and a conducive environment. This program is uniquely different from other leadership programs and is built on the following principles –

  • Heroes aspire for the “unattainable”; Leaders aspire for the “best”
  • Heroes develop an irrefutable inner strength and power; Leaders develop strength and power to create impact
  • Heroes are perfectionists; Leaders better previous work
  • Heroes thrive on challenges and obstacles; Leaders manage/avoid challenges and obstacles
  • Heroes are hugely inspirational and help people discover their own path to success; Leaders lead people through a common and well laid path

The hero’s journey is a program to develop a new set of heroes, who will go on solve complex problems, become entrepreneurs and CEO’s and help build a better India and a world

Rivigo – A natural world for heroes

Rivigo wants to open up the path toward accomplishing whatever you feel compelled to do in your own life. We have an absolute confidence in the ability of humans to overcome anything. Rivigo provides a truly diverse experience from managing truckers to building breakthrough technology products. It has set new global standards of excellence in delivery times, business scale up, infrastructure, project execution and in everything we’ve done so far. Rivigo is here to mentor and nurture heroes who can challenge the status quo, rewrite the game, push the boundaries, expand the horizon, think the unthinkable, solve unsolvable problems and improve lives of our people, clients in their quest to become their own best.

Rivigo ensures that this journey is intense yet reflective; engaging yet fun; tough yet protective in order to bring the best out of its people. It is a journey of crossing the threshold between the unknown and known in us not only to leave our mark on the world, but to make it a better place. So, here’s a call for adventure!

Write to us at hero@rivigo.com

Reproduced from linkedin article by Deepak Garg, founder & CEO, Rivigo.

Rivigo closes $75 million Series C funding

Posted in Leadership, Rivigo

Our mission at Rivigo to change logistics industry and improve the life of driver just got some excellent support. Rivigo has closed $75 million Series C funding with Warburg Pincus. Warburg Pincus was a key investor in Bharti Airtel where they made one of the largest private equity exit in India. Here are links to some media coverage.

Rivigo raises $75 million in Series C funding from Warburg Pincus (ET)
Warburg Pincus bets `500cr on logistics co Rivigo
(TOI)
 Warburg Pincus invests $75 mn in logistics startup Rivigo (vccircle)

funding

The success behind Rivigo is Deepak’s leadership, vision, business acumen and setting up a world class team with mission focus on getting things done.

Data disruption in trucking

Posted in Analytics, Data visualization, Decision Making, Disruption Opportunities, Internet of Things (IoT)

Global trucking revenue pool is close to USD 2 trillion dollars which is about 20X the cab market revenue pool. Even in the developed market such as US, it is a highly fragmented and antiquated business which lacks use of technology and data.

If you are an aspiring leader in technology and data, this is the place to be for the next 5-10 years for the following 3 reasons:

  1. It is a large and highest growth market to create impact, second only to goods commerce. More the internet commerce happens, higher the need of logistics and trucking to move goods. The next Amazon and Alibaba will come from Supply Chain technology and data disruption.
  2. The technology and data play is only starting to begin. Data availability is exponentially increasing through GPS, smartphones and IOT sensors.
  3. The problems are far more challenging and futuristic. It requires interplay of automation using IOT/driver assist systems, advanced mathematics/algorithms, and high quality UI/UX to exponentially increase adoption. Many other sectors don’t offer such a wide range and depth of problems.

Rivigo is leading the wave of disruption in trucking through a combination of the following factors

  • Unique operational ideas based on driver and network relay. First globally.
  • An outstanding leadership team across business, operations and technology
  • A strong and unflinching belief in the power of data

Rivigo has already attained a high quality business scale in India and aspires to build solutions which are applicable globally. In the truest sense, it has the potential to do what Amazon and Alibaba have done to commerce, Uber has done to cabs and several other disruptors have done to large global markets. The next 5-10 years is going to be exciting and enriching – some of the sample problems Rivigo tech and data teams work on:

Network relay model

The driver relay model needs sophisticated technology to ensure that millions of trucks can run smoothly every month with several millions pilot changeovers. The underpinning of this technology is a network model that can predict estimated time of arrival, simulation models to predict vehicle arrivals, wait time optimization and driver performance and behavior. This model brings everything together from the network and creates a coherent stream of output to make the pit stop changeover process seamless and scalable

Fuel analytics and optimization

Fuel is one of the biggest operating cost in logistics and fuel pilferage is a rampant problem for any trucking company having fleet of vehicles. However, reliable technology solutions are not available at present to prevent pilferages as the values fluctuate and the data has to be processed real time for even small reduction in fuel value. A fuel graph is a volatile time series graph, very similar to some of financial time series models and requires both predictive and heuristic problem solving approach. We are building patented fuel technology involving many complex algorithms and data science models to improve fuel efficiency.

Resource allocation and optimization

In trucking any idle capacity – truck or the driver is a fungible capacity. You cannot keep less or more of capacity at any point in the network. This is a massive problem and requires queuing theory, linear programming and advanced mathematical modeling to ensure the system is optimized and balanced

Human behavior analysis

Good driving is at the core of making logistics successful. This means that every minute of driving across the network has to be monitored and analysed. The big data from past and current has to be constantly evaluated to determine and predict the driver’s behaviour. This needs to be done in real time to know how a driver is driving to make immediate corrective actions. Is the driver in control of the vehicle? Is the driver driving carefully? Is the driver driving cautiously? These are just some of questions that needs to answered to convert a qualitative system via quantitative model.

location-intelligence

Geo analytics

All the trucks at Rivigo are fitted with several different sensors and IoTs. These IoTs generate massive amount of data that needs to be processed, consumed and analysed. The analysis and data science on this data turns Rivigo trucks into smart trucks. The smart trucks run on a geo-grid and we are building very advanced location analytics engine for constant monitoring and simulating intelligent events. We are building an artificial intelligence layer based on machine learning and deep learning approach for simulation such as demand-supply matching, traffic maps (imagine Google Maps for logistics), hotspot and density analysis.

Time continuum and visualization

Rivigo is building a time continuum of its key resources that will allow to predict and create performant and efficient logistic system. A time continuum is analysis and visualization of all that is happening during the lifecycle of the resource and is a solution that gets built after applying algorithms, intelligence and predictive behaviour on a time-series on huge quantities of data. This needs scalable real time and batch processing over big data.

Line haul planning

Line haul planning optimizes the plan based on historical demand, volumes and service time commitments. The planning model determines the number of vehicles required on each route and network in an optimized way such that the shipments can be routes in the most efficient way. This planning can also be used for processing center capacity planning and building sales strategy to optimize the entire network. This problem is inherently an LP problem with multiple optimization and requires very sophisticated approximation and heuristics to solve it.

Tech platform

One of our over-arching goals is bring 2 million trucks in India online in the next 3-4 years. We are building a high quality tech and data platform to bring the entire trucking commerce (fuel, service, brokerage, resale, financing) online to ensure higher efficiency, lower costs and data led optimization for individual truckers. This is an immensely exciting project being led by world class engineers.

The future will be better if we waste less and use less and less resources for more and more output. Rivigo’s core operating philosophy is based on this approach – through use of data we want to further gain the marginal efficiency to make the world of logistics as automated, efficient and safer as possible.

Please do reach out at hemant@rivigo.com if you have common interests.

The future of transport is closer than you think!

Posted in Disruption Opportunities, Driverless, Internet of Things (IoT)

A convoy of truck recently traveled in Europe as part of the European Truck Platooning Challenge. One of the convoys traveled more than 2,000 KMs platooning where ever possible with all driverless trucks following the lead truck with a driver inside.

The driverless trucks open up several possibilities including higher utilization of inventory, lower fuel consumption (which is a bug cost) and less human errors leading to overall safety and better efficiency in the system.

4230

This week as part of Kista Mobility Week Program, Ericsson is offering test rides of driverless buses from and to Kista Galleria in Sweden.This is a very interesting demonstration of what is possible around future transport.

The transportation industry is huge both in volume and financial terms. And it is witnessing massive disruption that will change the way people and goods get transported. I am very excited about the kind of technology, intelligence and innovation that it will require to build such a system and operate at a scale.

Uber, Please Simplify Airport Booking!

Posted in General

I am a frequent Uber customer but I always find it difficult to book an Uber cab from the Bangalore airport. The reason is simple – poor internet connectivity at the airport arrival area. Since the app does not behave well with the limited connectivity, I always end up using an alternative. This must be a problem for many other passengers as well and lost customer opportunities for Uber.

On the flip side, if I am an Uber cab driver, I will prefer not to pick passengers for airport drop-off because I will find it difficult to get a return trip from the airport. Double whammy.

What if Uber builds an airport button that can fast-track the entire booking process? Why does it need to find so many vehicles that are available, then show it on the map and then allow the booking process? That just uses lot of bandwidth and takes time. I really don’t care to see which cab I am booking. I just want to know if there is a cab that gets booked and I can head home as fast as possible. Uber can always build intelligence on the cab inventory at the airport and use it while booking.

Less internet usage with faster booking process!