Dr. Anand Verma
Appearances
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better society and better businesses right and unless we make profitable businesses i don't think people will think about climate and the impact so this kind of relationship between profitability and sustainability is truly truly kind of core to our our strategy um so in the future what i would really love for ai to do is agentic ai more so so there are a lot of jobs to be done by any company
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be it a small to mid-sized business or be it a large business, for example. So our mission vision is that we become the AI backbone for SMEs globally, which means that getting them to focus on their core business and growing that and let the AI do its job in order to add more time, more profitability and more sustainability is where I would like this company to be in 2030, right?
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Now, if I put that in numbers is I think we can reduce 500 megatons worth of emission by 2030 and we can add close to $40 billion in savings by 2030, right?
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That to me is the North Star for us. And I hope we get the right kind of support and custom to kind of get to that BHAG, you know, big audacious kind of goal.
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Yeah, I think, look, you know, end of the day, some actions will be easier and some will be harder. So we call it, you know, more kind of changing in your policy or your kind of soft action. But a lot of actions require capex, right? They require investment, putting a solar panel on your warehouse roof or, you know, putting better energy efficient light bulbs and so on and so forth.
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Every little counts, right? That's the kind of first thing you've got to think about. But a lot of companies don't know where to start, how to start, what improvement they can make and so on and so forth.
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I really urge the listeners of this wonderful podcast to put their company name in or put one of the suppliers in and say, you know what, I'm just going to, I'm curious to find out what improvements I can make for this company or my company and so on and so forth. I really would love for you to try and see the magic happen. That will be my urge.
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And, you know, I can talk till the cows come home, as they say in England. But end of the day, showing is believing. I think that's where I believe that it's all about every little action.
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every recommendation, every action, and just seeing your data kind of play the role of your mirror and telling you and guiding you in terms of what you should do is the best way of getting the audience to believe in this.
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Yeah, so look for expectai.com. It's very easy. Oona is a platform, so you'll be able to see the access. If you want to look at the demo for, you know, let's say your country is not covered on the platform, you can ask. Contact me at anand.expectai.com, and we'll make it happen, right? And, you know, but I think expectai.com is the perfect place to go and start your journey on Oona.
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I'm great. Great to be here, Dr. Tamara. Really appreciate it.
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So we are in the UK. So we cover 5.6 million companies in the UK. We are aggressively moving towards the US. And by New York Climate Week in September, we should be launching our product in the US. And by the end of this year, we should cover New York, California, Massachusetts, three states. But with public data, oil is the oyster, literally, right?
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So we really believe that we can get past the full U.S. market access by mid next year. But we are starting state by state is the plan right now.
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Look, you know, my wife is of Indian origin, but she was born in Dar es Salaam in Tanzania. And I've got lots of friends from Africa. I have a university with a lot of friends from Ghana and Nigeria and many other places. And Africa is interesting because, you know, I think it's been kind of left out of the digital revolution.
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And that's what they did so well, moving from wired telephony to mobile telephony with all this kind of leapfrog. First time, and I say it from my heart rather than my mind, I really believe, that AI democratizes knowledge and access. And Africa, and I have a lot of wonderful friends, and Africa is full of talent, full of youth, full of opportunities.
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All right. So it's a long story, but I'll cut it short. So my name is Dr. Anand Burma. I'm the founder and CEO of Expect AI. And our mission is to help small to mid-sized businesses reduce their emissions, but increase their profitability. So we call that profitable climate action. I've been a computer scientist in the past doing machine learning when AI was not that popular.
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But I feel that it's been very extractive over the last 30, 40 years by external bodies and countries. But this is Africa's chance to use AI, put that at the core strategy, and make sure that they actually double their profit and double their impact. Again, same thing that we've just talked about for the SMEs market.
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So that's why I'm quite excited about what Africa can do, not just because my wife is from there, but also I believe that AI presents the true opportunity for African youth and the leaders.
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You know, I've got two kids, 18-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. And I have to say, I worry about my daughter more than my son because of you know, the nature of content that is available out there, especially in social media and other places. And it's a fine balance between, you know, stopping it and also trusting, you know, the internet.
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I feel, you know, I really believe trust is everything, right? And I really believe there's big tech companies have to put that at the core of their agenda. And government and the tech companies can do more on this. But also, I have the responsibility and we have the responsibility to make sure that it's embedded in the system, embedded in our culture and value.
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And one of our core values, I've got five values behind me, and one of them says, you know, act with integrity, right?
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Right behind me. And the reason I always put that this is that culture of the company is defined by the values. And and I think every company must have those values in my view. Right. So, you know, I think we need to make sure that we don't touch personal data. It's really important for us. But company data is a different you know, it's for more value creation.
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The data is verifiable and auditable. It's really important for us. And we need to make sure that we focus on why do we exist as a company? And it's about real outcomes for the business, right? So I think as long as it's grounded on trust, especially dealing with business critical information, I think that... I believe will overcome the fake content and data privacy issue. But I do fear, right?
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I mean, you know, I can't just leave this podcast saying that, hey, everything is great and blah, blah, blah. But I do fear for what AI can generate and will generate. And, you know, how real it's becoming with all of these image and video tools. But I do think the responsibility lies with the company and the regulators.
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And it's very important because I think about as a parent, I think about my daughter and I would not do anything in my company to hamper or hurt that community. So why can't everybody else feel and, and, and do the same. Right. So, so yeah, it's a, it's a real, it's a real kind of, I think it's a trust and culture topic. Dr. Tomorrow. Yeah.
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Exactly, exactly. And everybody has someone dear to them, right? Mother, sister, father, brother. And then I think sometimes, you know, lose track because There's so much commercial pressure to compete that we lose track of what matters and what doesn't, right?
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But I feel that AI has come at the right time to help my customers and the small businesses be successful.
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So anyway, it's a bit of a heart and brain kind of conversation, but I believe we need both to create a better outcome for our next generation.
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I think the metaverse for companies, SMEs, I think I always think about how SMEs can go into this metaverse world and connect with them. And the second one I would say, if I may, is kind of AI will take your job. I don't believe a word of it. I think it's something that I feel that will evolve, like with industrial revolution and internet and so on and so forth. But I think AI...
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augmented human will create more opportunity and it will not take the job is what I think.
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You know what I'm going to say, right? So I think, you know, agentic AI, if it's done right, what I call is agentic experience models. I think that to me would be really cool to get all of these kind of things that I don't want to do, but I have to do it. But so I can put more time on high impact, high value stuff.
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All right. So I think the Ministry for the Future. I don't know if you know this. Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson. Wonderful book. Wonderful book. And it's kind of in between sci-fi and reality. And everything that he or most of the things that he said in the book is somewhat coming real, which is crazy.
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I think I'll be selfish and say Oona will be able to make companies sustainable without much intervention from the SME directors and users. I really believe that Oona has the power to be the AI backbone for the SMEs. And just like LinkedIn did with billions of professionals, I think I would love to do that for 350 million SMEs out there.
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I, you know, I think the same, right? It's, you know, sometimes it takes time to become democratized. And I feel that, you know, that this is truly in the hands of real people and people who are not technical, but using AI to kind of truly transform their business and personal lives.
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Thank you, Dr. Tamara. So expectai.com, Anand, A-N-A-N-D at expectai.com. I'm also on LinkedIn, Anand Verma. You know, I am a LinkedIn junkie. So you can find me and I'll respond back to you. Yeah.
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Thank you so much for having me on your wonderful podcast, Dr. Tomorrow.
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Yeah, it's a great one, you know, and sometimes you have to introspect about yourself when these questions actually come in. At the heart of myself, I am a problem solver, and I also consider myself a kind of a creative technologist, right? So I always look at how the system change could be made with the power of technology, but also understanding of the human being. So that's who I am.
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And the origin of Expect AI is you know, this kind of sector called small to mid-sized businesses. And just to give you some numbers tomorrow, there are 330 million small businesses in the world. They are the heartbeat of any economy. They contribute 40 to 50% of the global emissions, and yet nobody is talking about them. Nobody is talking about them.
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They're short of ideas, they're short of capital, and they're short of knowledge. And I truly believe, right, Expect AI's mission is to use the power of data, public data especially, and use the power of AI to help these companies who are truly in desperate need to create a better outcome for them, become more profitable, but also become more sustainable. That's where Expect AI comes in.
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Absolutely. So, you know, I think we are more of a horizontal platform. So what I mean by that is that we include all kinds of companies, yet there are some companies who are going to take more advantage of our platform than the other right now.
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So if I'm a highly emmative company, like I'm in agriculture or construction or let's say transportation, those companies truly get attracted by our platform because there is an insurmountable amount of pressure on top of them. either from their procurement or from the supply chain and so on and so forth. And also they want to do good and they want to take action.
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So I would say our platform is highly inclusive. and highly accessible, but you'll see a bit of a kind of curve whereby the highly emitted sector will deploy our solutions faster than some of the companies who are not yet. Like fashion is a great example. It's a very highly emitted sector. And we see fashion as a great kind of opportunity.
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Industry sector is a great opportunity for our platform to truly make a difference.
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Yeah, no, I think, you know, Holy Smokes is a great one because, you know, sometimes you wonder why are you doing what you're doing and how you're doing what you're doing. And I really believe that for us, when our platform is called Oona tomorrow, so when Oona starts to calculate the emission of a company without
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that company putting their own private data and shows the path of success, people like, where did that come from, right? Where did that come from? And I think for us, it's that kind of wow moment, which kind of connects with the user, connects with the business and says that we are here for you. We have done the hard yard to understand you.
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You know, remember you have a website, remember you've disclosed something on SSE or in companies house in the UK. We have actually gathered that information. create a profile, a persona of you, and we are now kind of giving back to you, right? That makes your business more successful. That is wow, right?
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And I hope that many wows are in the platform, but I let the users decide if they believe me or not, right? But that to me is this interrelationship between public data AI and ability for it to create what we call an adaptive carbon profile, which is the same way you've got our profiles on LinkedIn.
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On our platform, we've got SME profile on our platform that is created off the bat from publicly available data. Right. Oh, wow. Wow. That is wow. So that's my kind of big kind of punch in line here to say that, you know, this is, this is, this is cool. And I'm hoping that adaptive carbon profile becomes a standard. three years, four years time.
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So any company looking for any company, they go to Oona, they type the company name and it's there, boom.
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That's cool.
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So think of Oona as like a neural engine. with climate and business intelligence. So today, tomorrow, there is climate intelligence, and then there's business intelligence. So we see a white space where Oona can bring a role, play a role in bringing those two things together, right?
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So what we have done is we have made it as easy as typing your company name into a Google-like search, and then it creates a profile for you. So like I said, it's adaptive carbon profile. Now, that adaptive carbon profile is built with world's first climate knowledge graph, right? And why do we say knowledge? Because knowledge drives insights and insights drive actions.
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And the knowledge graph is basically a neural network of relationships and opportunities. So let's say, you know, tomorrow PLC or Inc. is a company searching for itself on the platform. We're able to actually connect you with opportunities and connect you with what you should be doing, right?
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For savings.
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For savings. Yeah, absolutely. For savings. But also, furthermore, we are using a genetic experience. So, for example, in the UK, if I can share an example, There is 5 billion pounds worth of green subsidies available. Normally, every year, it gets underused or unused by the companies.
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Now, what we have done is we have gathered and ingested all that subsidy data into easy to use so that SMA can say, hey, I'm looking for this particular subsidy. And then the agent does all the work, all the nine steps. And what used to take six months now takes six minutes for that company to get that delivered into the bottom line.
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so our goal is to create a new balance sheet for the companies can ai help smes double their profit and double their impact that's our thesis we're still early in that process but i truly believe that we can make them more profitable more productive and more sustainable so our experience has to be jaw-droppingly amazing Yes.
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From searching a company to following the agents to making sure that they're notified when something happens is for us is really, really important part of our offering to our customers.
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Yeah, it's a really good question. So I think our thesis is that if I'm an existing business, I have my digital estate and I can go and find stuff about me. But if I'm a new business, what we do is if there is no data, then we create what we call is a proxy data. So what are the companies like you?
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out there so that we create a profile for you and we give it a confidence score and that confidence score may be very low but the idea is to get you to start ingesting your private data right so that engagement that relationship that trust is super critical for us to build a longevity in our platform right so we don't discount anyone We want to be an inclusive company.
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And climate is one of those things you have to work together, right? This is not like, hey, Alan Verma has solved the problem. That's not the intent here. Intent here is to find this systemic change contributors that enables that newbie to feel that they can also contribute, right? And that's really important part of it.
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Exactly, exactly. So we capture, capture. So think of this as a kind of a mind map of your company, right? So I know your company will be in the center. your location will pop out. Then your industry sector will pop out. Then how many employees pops out, how much your revenue pops out, you know, on so on and so forth. So we build this neural network, right?
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And that neural network finds opportunities. It creates, you know, detects anomalies. It creates, you know, new ways of looking at your business that you hadn't before. So right now you're, if it's a new business, start small, but if it's an existing business, it already spawns across multiple different forms, right?
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So that's been our biggest kind of contribution to our technology over the last three years is building the network first and then building the app on top of it, right? And that's why AI is very, very powerful when the data is there. If it's not there, then, you know, it kind of struggles to create something, right?
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100%. So our goal is that, you know, to show companies that they can start their job in a very accelerated fashion or they work in a very accelerated fashion. That's why we use public data. That's first. Second. we always invite them to add their private data.
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So if you remember what happened to LinkedIn back in 15 years ago, they start to ask you about, you know, Dr. Tamara, which university did he go to? Hey, when did you last graduate? Hey, which company did you work? So it kept asking you that question. So that progressive disclosure build your profile to be accurate.
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Now it's become a muscle memory, but back in the day, they'll give you a 60%, 70%, 80% profile completeness score. So we are following a similar psychological path, right? So, but in our case, 60% is already there from the public data. So adding the rest 10, 15, 20% over the period to come is where we kind of get a lot of private data from our customers.
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It's a really, really good question. And I think with AI, there's a huge amount of debate on how do you kind of look at that line of ethics versus plagiarism or copyright, for example. So I think two things kind of keeps me awake all the time. One is transparency. And then second is the autonomy, right? So every data that we collect,
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we show the source of where did the data actually originate from. That's the first thing we do. And the data provenance is, and the traceability and auditability is very core to our heart because climate and finance especially is an auditable asset, right?
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So we want to make sure that the accountants in the financial services organization can look at our data and say, we believe in the source of this data, which means that this is auditable, right? So that's one component. The second thing, which is I think a lot of debate out there, but I really believe that human in the loop is really important.
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So I might not have all the employees in my organization, but with AI and I'm in the loop, I feel more confident that jobs will get done the way I want it, right? And that's really important, right? So all in all, we feel that, you know, ensuring that AI augments the human agency is really core part of our thesis. AI should not replace humans, it should augment humans, right?
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So I think that's been fundamentally the core part of our manifesto of our technical design. And we make sure that we always look back and say, are we crossing the line or are we within our manifesto thesis?
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You know, like an entrepreneur, this is my third venture. And I think, you know, my first one, my tagline was make life simply better. Right. And I feel that, you know, the future has to be about better planet.