Founded in 2012 by
Chetan Alsisaria (CEO & Co-Founder),
Amit Alsisaria (COO & Co-Founder) and
Ajay Goenka (CFO & Co-Founder),
Polestar Solutions provides enterprises with a unique mix business analytics and consulting services to aid enterprises in their digital transformation journey by keeping technology at the forefront of their business innovation.
In this interview
Website Planet hears more about their services provided to businesses across data engineering, data management, business intelligence, advanced analytics and machine learning.
What sparked the idea for Polestar Solutions, and how has it evolved since?
Chetan Alsisaria, CEO & Co-Founder: One of the biggest challenges for businesses is addressing the gap between business strategy and technology implementation. And, while businesses have become excited about big data and advanced analytics, we still see a lot of companies struggling with data-driven decision making and limited or sub-optimal implementation of technology. Amit, Ajay and I took a chance early on in 2012 to enable companies to do more with their data, and understand the power of data analytics in not only decision-making but also business continuity and planning. That’s what sparked the founding of Polestar Solutions. Since then we have brought data analytics, collaborative planning and algorithms to every client’s decision making and use cutting edge technologies to build digital transformation journeys.
While we’ve had our own share of ups and downs along the way, we’ve been extremely lucky to have worked with over 250 companies to provide a unique mix of technology, business analytics and consulting services to help reimagine innovation using intelligent big data and analytics decision systems. Recently, we raised series-A funding from a US-based strategic investor.
What are some of the main challenges that you solve for your clients?
Chetan Alsisaria, CEO & Co-Founder: Today, we see many instances of companies being ready to adopt data analytics, however, many of them do not succeed, and that’s primarily due to lack of holistic data strategy, poor data quality, reluctance of top leadership to back the initiative during the state of change where things are a bit turbulent and lastly, not being able to identify the right service provider to help address their challenges and needs. That’s exactly where we come in.
Right from helping businesses define a data strategy, putting in place mechanisms to improve data quality to the creation of a unified data layer to data visualization and data science — we do it all for the companies that we work with. We believe in enabling organizations to build a data-first culture which is more of a people-challenge than technology challenge.
Who is your main target audience?
Ajay Goenka, CFO & Co-Founder: We are at an exciting juncture as digital transformation has now become a key enabler in any brand’s strategy — data analytics and other emerging technologies have clearly become critical for any business. We serve a motley of clients ranging from Fortune 500s of the world to conglomerates and large enterprises. The spectrum of our clientele extends to new-age funded startups as well. Since our inception we have delivered our services to over 250 clients with a repeat business ratio of over 80%. We have worked with businesses across sectors such as CPG and retail, Pharma & Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Real Estate, IT & ITS and, FSI (Insurance and NBFC), etc. to help them make more informed data driven decisions with analytics.
What are certain Business Model PS uses and what is the split in terms of business revenue or bottom line?
Ajay Goenka, CFO & Co-Founder: We are into the IT Consulting services, wherein we help clients in providing business solutions through data analytics and EPM solutions. We are partnered with OEM’s like Microsoft, Qlik, Anaplan, Snowflake, Alteryx and some others which enables us in creating world-class technology solutions for our customers in their efforts to maximize value from their data. So, our revenue primarily comes through these technology implementations services.
We have built a great team of techno-functional consultants, who are from consulting backgrounds and possess deep domain knowledge, as well as academics from top-notch educational institutions. We have started to see some traction for our industry solution consulting and it has emerged as an additional revenue stream for us. This is a highly competitive space, but we have carved out a niche for ourselves, wherein we are competing with the best in the business and we back this up with robust implementation and delivery.
Which AI-related technology trend do you think will have the biggest impact on your industry in the coming years?
Amit Alsisaria, COO & Co-Founder: The biggest shift taking place for enterprises right now is shifting from pilot to production phase in order to explore the full potential of not just AI-ML but also analytics. According to many recent reports, a majority of the AI projects do not make it to full production post the pilot phase, but I think a lot of that is going to change now, as companies look to drive full value from AI projects.
Any tips for business leaders on how to prepare for an AI-centric world?
Amit Alsisaria, COO & Co-Founder: AI and ML can do their best when they are not confined to a silo. Business leaders have to design a strategy of their overall analytics journey including AI-ML components based on where they are currently when benchmarked against the industry leaders and where they want to be in a time-bound banner. In order to create a compelling case, business leaders need to continue innovating for AI to demonstrate its true potential to bring profitability and efficiency across the entire organization. Another area that business leaders have to work on is to be able to provide sufficient data for these advanced algorithms to provide meaningful insights.
