The DataWeave Blog

Tag: Company Stories

  • [INFOGRAPHIC] 2020: The Year the World Navigated Uncertainty Together

    [INFOGRAPHIC] 2020: The Year the World Navigated Uncertainty Together

    The start of 2020 brought with it the promise of global economic growth. Markets in the US were on a steady rise we also witnessed demand from brands and retailers in Europe and the Middle East. All seemed to be on track to make it a year of plenty.

    Out of nowhere, the end of the first quarter saw the world coming to a grinding halt. The world was held hostage by a global pandemic and the force with which we were hit, was unprecedented.

    From February to mid-May we saw things come to a sharp halt. We at DataWeave seized this intermittent downtime to bolster our product offerings.

    On the flip side, when the world did start opening May onwards, we saw completely new categories take center stage digitally. With new habits and trends taking shape, the pandemic single-handedly caused exceptional growth in the Food and Grocery Delivery intermediaries. Predictably, the rest of the world followed. Our existing customers saw the competition rise steeply with everyone coming online. We invested substantially in our Digital Shelf Analytics solutions after noticing that e-commerce was seeing a boom. 2020 saw brands making their online presence the new norm. This meant that small, medium and large enterprises had to now divert their spending to analytics and e-commerce. 

    It is interesting to note that the rise in the food and grocery delivery segment gave brands another channel to focus on vis a vis their presence. Brands that were available on these sites focused on how they could optimize their sales on these channels, which proved to be the front runners during the height of the pandemic. While the challenges and opportunities for both these segments overlapped and seemed similar, our solutions helped measure and optimize brand performance across all online channels. Some of the in-demand solutions and analytics we saw our customers use were; share of search, content audit, assortment and availability, pricing and promotions, and ratings and reviews. 

    There were mixed emotions in the market, with regard to the best use of marketing spends. Human resource and client cutbacks happened across the board. At DataWeave however, we had the pleasure of onboarding 25 new clients including retailers and brands ranging from food and grocery delivery, home improvement from across multiple geographies.

    Infographics

    Throughout the year, the work never ceased at DataWeave. The team showed incredible resilience while working remotely, making sure our deliverables were being taken care of, at all times. Due to the e-commerce boom and immense pressure from existing and new entrants in the digital space, our clients saw a need to gather more insights. With the given uptick, we are happy to report that our stellar 95%+ accuracy record for in-depth insights at scale, was maintained through the course of all the work done.

    Looking forward to the year 2021:

    In the US, the adoption of e-commerce accelerated as traditional brick and mortar stores shut down and pivoted. To put things into perspective, e-commerce adoption grew only by 4.3% from 2014 to 2019. In just three months in 2020, e-commerce adoption grew at 4.3%! Add to that, with approved vaccines making their way slowly to the public, we do anticipate the travel sector to open up and we look forward to working with new clients.

    Nike’s Chief Executive, John Donahoe recently said, ” We know that digital is the new normal. The consumer today is digitally grounded and simply will not revert back…the shift to online sales could be a permanent trend.” We could not agree more! With online sales here to stay, brand and retailers’ requirements to keep their competitive edge will only continue to grow. We at DataWeave, look forward to delivering the results they want in this new year, and for the years to come.

  • Market Intelligence Platform with Kenshoo

    Market Intelligence Platform with Kenshoo

    We’re thrilled to announce that we have teamed up with Kenshoo to offer an integrated marketing solution that combines DataWeave’s digital shelf analytics and commerce intelligence platform with Kenshoo’s ad automation platform. This in turn, provides better recommendations on promotions to retailers and consumer brands.

    As e-commerce surges, consumer brands can now promote their products through retail-intelligent advertising. Product discoverability, content audit, and availability across large marketplaces can be critical to a brand’s success. Using DataWeave’s digital shelf solutions, Kenshoo now can offer marketers greater visibility into a brand’s performance.

    Even large retailers and agencies can use our commerce intelligence platform to improve their price positioning, address category assortment gaps, and more.  

    Through this partnership, Kenshoo – a global leader in marketing technology, can help its significant base of consumer brands and retailers invest their marketing dollars intelligently and in a timely manner.

    At DataWeave, we have constantly strived to bring in a holistic approach to help our customers optimize their online sales channels. This partnership furthers our resolve in this direction. As we collectively strive to adjust to a post-COVID-19 world, we are observing an acceleration towards digital commerce. This acceleration and change in consumer behavior is going to be a lasting change, creating significant growth opportunities for both DataWeave and Kenshoo.

    With this partnership, we look forward to helping our customers make timely, intelligent, and data-driven decisions to grow their business.

  • Coronavirus Outbreak: Impact on E-Commerce Retailers and Consumer Brands

    Coronavirus Outbreak: Impact on E-Commerce Retailers and Consumer Brands

    The Coronavirus, otherwise known as COVID-19, has made landfall on U.S. shores. At the time of writing this article, there are over 230 confirmed cases in the country and 12 deaths. The growing unease about the virus, which has quickly accumulated 95,000+ confirmed cases globally, has, among other things, adversely affected businesses and stock markets the world over.

    In the wake of this outbreak, U.S. based retailers and brands would be prudent to brace themselves and plan ahead to minimize disruptions as much as possible.

    Businesses and consumers in China, the global epicenter of the epidemic, have been dealing with these challenges over the last couple of months. It’s likely that some of the trends observed in China would be mimicked in the U.S. as well, something that domestic retailers and brands would do well to study and prepare for.

    The Inadvertent E-commerce Wave

    When the outbreak happened in China, it caused an uptick in e-commerce adoption as shoppers were reluctant to step out of their homes and instead, opted to shop for their goods online.

    Reports indicate that Chinese online retailer JD.com’s online grocery sales grew 215% YoY over a 10-day period between late January and early February. Similarly, Carrefour’s vegetable deliveries grew by 600% YoY during the Lunar New Year period. Online sales of Dettol, a disinfectant produced by Reckitt Benckiser, rose 643% YoY between 10 February and 13 February on China’s Suning.com.

    In Singapore, another region affected by the virus more recently than in China, Lazada’s grocery arm, RedMart, and Supermarket chain, NTUC FairPrice, both reported an unprecedented surge in demand, which tested their delivery capabilities to the limit.

    This bump in online sales isn’t just restricted to grocery, but other categories as well. Jean-Paul Agon, CEO of L’Oréal, recently said that online sales of the brand’s beauty products increased in China in February.

    Given such a consistent shift in shopping behavior across coronavirus-affected regions, it’s logical to expect that a similar trend would be followed in the U.S. – in fact, it might already be underway.

    A recent survey by Coresight Research indicated that 27.5% of U.S. respondents are avoiding public areas at least to some extent, and 58% plan to if the outbreak worsens. Of those who have altered their routines, more than 40% say they are “avoiding or limiting visits to shopping centers/ malls” and more than 30% are avoiding stores in general. The survey also found consumers will likely begin to avoid restaurants, movie theaters, sporting events and other entertainment venues.

    Therefore, it’s essential for U.S. retailers and brands to swiftly energize their e-commerce readiness and be fully prepared to cater to the circumstances-induced shift in shopping behavior, inclined toward online.

    A Logistical Nightmare

    The most obvious area of impact for retailers and brands is in their supply chain and order fulfilment operations.

    A large portion of consumer product manufacturers rely to some extent on China, and the potential impact of the virus on supply chain processes is inescapable. Chinese factories have been operating at partial capacity, impacting supply chains globally. This has largely affected highly popular e-commerce categories like consumer electronics, fashion and furniture.

    Shares in the U.S. of furniture e-commerce retailer, Wayfair, fell as much as 26% toward the end of February, according to a Bloomberg report. The is particularly revealing, as the online retailer reportedly relies on China for half of its merchandise.

    Retailers struggling to cope with this stress in their supply chain systems would do well to warn their customers beforehand about delays in deliveries, like AliExpress has just done.

    For categories like CPG, as consumers increasingly shop online, retailers that offer Buy Online Pick Up In Store (BOPIS), should expect a surge in its adoption, and reinforce their online infrastructure and in-store operations to cater to the rising demand.

    In addition to disruptions in the supply chain, several other mission-critical areas are likely to get affected too.

    Keeping Up With The Online Surge

    As with any event of this magnitude, the business implications reach far and wide. The following are a few areas that we’ve identified as critical, based on our experience working with retailers and brands. Being aware of and focusing on these issues are likely to alleviate some of the issues faced by consumers today.

    Fair pricing: There have been several reports of price gouging on e-commerce platforms. Examples include 2-ounce Purell bottles being sold for $400 and face masks for up to $20. While these prices have mostly been set by third party merchants, brands are likely to face the flak from consumers. A recent Bloomberg article reported that online retailers still rely partly on employees to manually monitor these items. This approach has obvious limitations, such as products quickly reappearing on the website after being de-listed. Brands and e-commerce platforms will need to explore automated ways of controlling their online pricing practices at large scale.

    3P merchant and counterfeit management: Often, unauthorized third-party merchants selling an original manufacturer’s goods are the ones who unreasonably inflate prices. These merchants tend to test the markets on online marketplaces with their pricing, which adversely affects the brand image of the manufacturer. Further still, they sometimes list counterfeit or fake goods that make incorrect or extravagant claims. Brands will need to swiftly identify and de-list these merchants from online marketplaces.

    Ensuring stock availability: During times like these, it’s a common sight to see empty aisles at supermarkets selling items like canned food, water, paper products and personal care products. Consumers will benefit from brands monitoring their stock availability at stores, which will help them better align their supply chain operations to the rapidly changing demand patterns across the U.S. map. This way, efforts can be more targeted at regions with severe shortages.

    Content compliance: Helium 10, a technology provider for Amazon sellers, reported that since 26 February, 90% of searches on Amazon are coronavirus related, and searches for hand sanitizers spiked to 1.5 million searches in February compared to 90,000 in November. As a result, to arrest exploitative practices, some online marketplaces have announced policy guidelines on product content claiming health benefits. Words like ‘Coronavirus‘, ‘COVID-19‘, ‘Virus‘ and ‘epidemic’ are, in fact, prohibited.  Amazon has already de-listed several merchants claiming fraudulent cures. Ebay has gone as far as to ban all new listings for face masks, hand sanitizers, and disinfecting wipes, due to regulatory restrictions. In this context, retailers and brands will benefit from deploying tracking mechanisms that quickly identify offenders.

    The areas of business presented above are by no means a comprehensive list for retailers and brands to rely on during this time. Still, these are critical impact areas for them to address, even as huge efforts are made toward managing highly stressed supply chains.

    DataWeave Offers Support

    The coronavirus outbreak is likely to get worse before it gets better. As we enter unchartered territories, DataWeave is offering to contribute in small ways, pro bono, by leveraging our expert talent and competitive intelligence technology platform, to address some of the challenges faced by retailers and brands.

    We’re announcing a limited-time, no-cost offer to detect and report on price gouging, the presence of unauthorized third-party merchants, as well as stock availability across U.S. ZIP-codes. This offer will be valid for 4-6 weeks (timeline will be flexible based on how the outbreak develops) and limited to monitoring the top 10 U.S. online marketplaces, as well as critical product categories such as medicinal and hygiene-related products, emergency food items, survival-related products, fuel, etc.

    Reach out to us for further details.

  • [INFOGRAPHIC] 2019 at DataWeave: Blazing New Trails

    [INFOGRAPHIC] 2019 at DataWeave: Blazing New Trails

    As another year comes to a close, we look back at 2019 with fond memories and look forward to the exciting new prospects of 2020. Take a trip with us as we highlight some of DataWeave’s milestones of the last twelve months.

    Over the course of the year, DataWeave’s success has gone hand in hand with the evolution of retail and e-commerce, reinforcing the relevance of our technology platform.

    Our rapid growth in the North American market is a reflection of how intense competition in the region is triggering the need for accurate, timely, and actionable competitive and market insights, as well as other avenues for retailers and brands to gain a competitive edge.

    Last year, we saw a resurgence of big-box (omnichannel) retailers as they adopted innovative approaches to play to their strengths (their offline stores). Offering buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) or click-and-collect options, rolling out price match guarantee programs, and expanding their partnerships with delivery services like Instacart, enabled these retailers to leverage the best of both the online and offline worlds to compete with e-commerce firms.

    Amazon continues to dominate e-commerce with a daunting 38% share in the US. Still, the partnerships between brands and Amazon are increasingly being tested. Nike and Ikea recently joined the likes of Swatch and Birkenstock to sever ties with the retail behemoth. This seemingly growing trend is largely due to counterfeits continuing to leak through the system.

    Brands that used to de-prioritize their focus on their eCommerce channel (as it often was only a small portion of their revenues) have come to realize that consumers use large marketplaces like Amazon not just to shop for products but also to perform product research. As a result, how these brands are represented and sold online impact their offline sales. And with the onset of BOPIS and click-and-collect initiatives, brands can now analyze this correlation even at a hyperlocal (ZIP-code) level.

    Large marketplaces, for their part, have started taking advantage of the increasingly brand-agnostic shopping behavior of consumers by launching ad-platforms for brands and manufacturers, enabling them to boost their visibility online.

    Due to such sweeping transformations to the market landscape, brands and retailers are increasingly looking more toward intelligent tech-based solutions to help them gain a competitive edge.

    In order to effectively serve the growing need for competitive and market insights, we’ve pushed our platform to its limits and beyond. It’s our constant endeavor to innovate and improve. This is evident with the launch of a host of new features on our product suite, especially Brand Analytics – designed to enable consumer brands to protect their brand equity and optimize e-commerce performance.

    One of the key factors that enabled us to achieve all the milestones we did is the aggressive hiring of some of the most skilled talent in the tech industry. Our team grew by 44% in 2019, giving us additional confidence to raise the bar on our capabilities and offer 95% accuracy in our data and insights to our customers consistently.

    We’re encouraged by the fact that we’ve more than doubled as a business, year-over-year, for the past several years, without depending solely on growing the team, but also by consolidating our technology stack, optimizing our processes, and scaling our products.

    Here’s a sneak peek into our performance in 2019:

    2020 Vision

    The upcoming year promises to be an exciting one for the retail industry and the consumer brand space at large. We plan to be at the helm and increase our footprint all around. There’s a strong focus to expand our US team and consequently, the business. While we continue to strengthen our roots in India, we will look toward other mature markets like the UK, Germany and the Middle East as well.

    On other fronts, we’re gathering steam on new partnership engagements – consulting firms, ad tech firms, marketing agencies and complementary technologies. We will also expand our foray into the travel and delivery services verticals.

    With our diversifying portfolio, we haven’t lost sight of one of the most important aspects of any successful company – its employees. We will continue to keep our employees engaged, motivated, and satisfied by providing vertical and horizontal career growth opportunities, conducting personalized training programs, organizing hackathons, fostering cross-team collaboration and learning, and encouraging everyone to periodically blow off some steam at company retreats and the ferociously fought in-house sports tournaments.

    Here’s to a stellar 2020 of empowered retailers and brands. We wish them well as they navigate the dense competitive landscape, knowing that they have an ally in their corner with DataWeave.

  • Flaunt Your Deep-Tech Prowess at Bootstrap Paradox Hackathon Hosted by Blume Ventures

    Flaunt Your Deep-Tech Prowess at Bootstrap Paradox Hackathon Hosted by Blume Ventures

    When DataWeave was founded in 2011, we set out to democratize data by enabling businesses to leverage public Web data to solve mission-critical business problems. Eight years on, we have done just that, and grown to deliver AI-powered competitive intelligence and digital shelf analytics to several global retailers and brands, which include the likes of Adidas, QVC, Overstock, Sauder, Dorel, and more.

    As the company has grown, so has our team, which is now 140+ members strong. We’re still constantly on the lookout for smart, open, and driven folks to join us and contribute to our success.

    And so, we’re excited to partner with Skillenza and Blume Ventures to co-host the Bootstrap Paradox Hackathon, where we are eager to engage with the developer community and contribute in our own way back to the startup ecosystem.

    The event will be conducted as an offline product building competition, with a duration of 24 hours on August 3-4, 2019 at the Microsoft India office in Bengaluru. It will provide a platform for developers and coders to interact with and solve challenges thrown up by DataWeave and other Blume portfolio companies, such as Dunzo, Unacademy, Milkbasket, Mechmocha, and Locus.

     

     

    Taking up DataWeave’s challenge during this Hackathon will give you a sneak peek into what our team works on daily. It’s no surprise that we have “At DataWeave, it’s a Hackathon every day!” plastered on our walls. After all, it’s not just all about intense work, but also a lot of fun and frolic.

    The problems that we deal with are as exciting as they are hard. Some of our key accomplishments in technology include:

    • Matching products across e-commerce websites at massive scale and at high levels of accuracy and coverage
    • Using Computer Vision to detect product attributes in fashion such as a color, sleeve length, collar type, etc. by analyzing catalog images
    • Aggregating data from complex web environments, including mobile apps, and across 25+ international languages

    One of our more recent innovations has been in optimizing e-commerce product discovery engines, which dramatically improves shopper experience and purchase conversion rates. During the Bootstrap Paradox Hackathon, coders will get a chance to build a similar engine, with guidance and assistance from DataWeave’s technology leaders.

    Data sets containing product information like title, description, image URL, price, category etc. will be provided, and coders will need to clean up the data, extract information on relevant product attributes and features, and index them, in the process of building the product discovery engine.

    For more details on the challenge, register here on the Skillenza platform.

    As a sweetener, the event also promises everyone a chance to win over 10 lakhs in prize money.

    Simply put, if you love code, this is the place to be this weekend. See you there!

  • 2018 at DataWeave: A Year of Prolific Success and Growth

    2018 at DataWeave: A Year of Prolific Success and Growth

    As we enter 2019, in the backdrop of DataWeave’s unprecedented growth and success, we decided to take a breath and look back at some of the highlights of our progress over the last 12 months.

    DataWeave’s growth through the year has been complemented and influenced by the evolution of the retail sector, reinforcing the relevance of our technology platform.

    Amazon continued to dominate the online retail landscape, now commanding a staggering 49% of US e-commerce. At the same time, several large retailers have taken sure-footed strides toward establishing a stronger e-commerce presence, which places them head to head against the Seattle-based retail behemoth. As a result, competitive intelligence is no longer a “good-to-have” but is fundamental to the survival and growth of both traditional and new-age retailers, enabling them to devise smarter, data-driven competitive strategies.

    Consumer brands are continuing to figure out the dynamics of selling on online marketplaces, which happens to give them valuable access to a vast base of shoppers while simultaneously restricting their ability to influence the brand experience. In their quest to sell more through the e-commerce channel, while trying to safeguard the brand experience and loyalty, consumer brands have turned increasingly toward e-commerce performance platforms to augment their decision-making process.

    These trends have reinforced our confidence in our technology platform, which aggregates and analyzes data from the Web at massive scale to deliver actionable competitive insights, as we’re well poised to address the evolving challenges presented to retailers and brands today.

    In 2019, there are no signs of slowing down for DataWeave.

    We will continue to execute strongly in high-growth regions, and especially in the US, which has, in a span of two years, become the largest revenue generating region for DataWeave. We will also build a stronger footing in Europe, with specific focus on the UK market.

    With time, our historical repository of data increases in volume and granularity, which enables us to better serve the maturing space of Alternative Data. We have already witnessed highly encouraging inbound interest over the last year, and we expect this interest to rise significantly moving forward.

    With great success, comes the need for great people. In 2019, we will aggressively expand our team across functions, organization levels, and regions. As always, DataWeave is on the lookout for people who flourish in a competitive environment and can propel us to the next stage of growth.

    Our technology platform never ceases to impress in its ability to aggregate and analyze billions of data points accurately each day. As our pipeline swells and we onboard bigger and more diverse customers, the platform will consistently be pushed to its limits, driving further innovations and improved efficiency.

    Over the following 12 months, on the strength of all the lessons learnt and successes achieved in 2018, we look forward to another challenging year of empowering retailers and consumer brands to compete profitably in the new world order.

    Watch this space for more on DataWeave through the year!

  • CEO Speak: Serving the US Market, Hiring the Right Talent, And More

    CEO Speak: Serving the US Market, Hiring the Right Talent, And More

    Recently, Karthik Bettadapura, Co-founder & CEO at DataWeave, was interviewed by Vishal Krishna, Business Editor at YourStory, in the Bay Area, California. They discussed DataWeave’s focus on the US market, challenges that retailers face today, DataWeave’s technology platform and hiring practices, and more.

    The following is a transcript of the interview.

    (The transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity)

    Vishal Krishna (VK): You left India to come and conquer America, why is that?

    Karthik Bettadapura (KB) : Just a bit of history — we started in 2011 and product development and research was based in Bangalore, and still is. At the end of the first 5 years, we realized that we built great technology, but we were not able to scale beyond a certain point [in India]. If we had to build a growing business, we had to look at other markets as well.

    VK: Quickly, can you tell me what DataWeave does?

    KB: We provide Competitive Intelligence to retailers and customer brands. We work with some of the largest brands and retailers out there and we provide them with analyses to compete profitably.

    VK: You said you had marque clients in India, yet you didn’t want to stay there because you wouldn’t have scaled beyond a particular point. Why is that?

    KB :The ticket size in India is still on the lower side. If you must build a sustainable business, you need access to a much larger customer base and we found that in the US.

    VK: Let’s start from the basics. What are a few things that a startup should decide to do when coming to America?

    KB: A few things:

    • A good understanding of the market
    • Learn fast about the market
    • Build a team here, or a have a team here already doing some work initially
    • Consider how your team back in India will go about doing things in your absence
    • The last one is about your own personal journey. I was so used to walking into an office and interacting with people. You come here, and you are all alone!

    VK: It’s a lonely journey. Doors don’t open all that easily and you’ve got to hustle. Why?

    KB: For people here, you are an unknown entity. Why should they be trusting someone who does not have enough customers here or has not raised money here? We had two US-based customers when we came in. It’s an uphill task to ensure that customers trust you.

    VK: Who was the first customer you personally met here and why was that meeting so important?

    KB: The first customer I met here was a large, big box retailer, and the meeting was primarily focused around why they should trust us — how can they know that we would survive and serve them, as well as how we are better than some of the other guys out there.

    VK: Can you tell us what DataWeave does for US retailers?

    KB: For retailers, we provide competitive intelligence, primarily around pricing optimization and assortment analytics. In the US, a lot of retailers are shutting shop and filing for bankruptcy.

    VK: Yeah, we saw Sears go through something like that.

    KB: The reasons fall broadly into 3 categories:

    • They failed to compete profitably with a lot of these new age businesses.
    • The new age retailers offer superior customer experience. They have figured out a better assortment/product strategy.
    • The third one is ‘Price’ — price is such an important feature.
      What we do is help these retailers optimize their strategies around pricing, assortment and promotions, eventually enabling them to compete profitably.

    VK: Typically, customers pay you on the outcome, pricing, license or subscription?

    KB: It’s a subscription-based model. There is a one-time setup fee and an ongoing subscription fee.

    VK: So you plug into their data management system?

    KB: Yes, but we can also have our product sit independently. Sitting out of their internal systems is a benefit for us as we don’t have to get into the entire loop of integrations into their internal systems right from Day 1. We prove our product works and then we integrate with their systems.

    VK: How do you integrate? Is the CIO your target?

    KB: No, we don’t sell to the CIO world. We sell to analytics, pricing, and merchandising teams.

    VK: Can pricing alone give retailers a competitive edge?

    KB: Yes, pricing is a big lever that retailers use. For example, last holiday season’s sale, Amazon and Walmart made 120 million price changes in just 2–3 days.

    VK: So they change the prices so dynamically to compete with each other. Is this price war coming to India?

    KB: It is happening in India already.

    VK: How much data can DataWeave’s infrastructure ingest?

    KB: We are a global platform — we have customers across the globe, not just the US or India. So, on a daily basis, we process data on around 120 million products.

    VK: Talk a little bit on R&D quickly. Do you have your marketing team in the US?

    KB: We have marketing teams in the US and India.

    VK: And the engineering team?

    KB: The engineering team is in Bangalore.

    VK: For people who want to work in your company, what kind of talent are you looking for?

    KB: We look at 4 broad talent areas:

    • One is in the world of data acquisition, which addresses issues like how data can be aggregated from thousands of websites and millions of pages on an ongoing basis, and how this data can be stored.
    • The second area is on what kind of insights can be generated using this data. This could be done using text analytics, image analytics, and other technologies. This includes process optimization, in terms of building efficient and scalable systems.
    • The third area is on how well the data can be represented if we have a customer who wants 60–70 million data points to be consumed on a weekly basis.
    • And the last area is on data modeling — what kind of insights can we eventually give to the customer? And, when I say insights, I mean specific actions.

    VK: You want people who can handle massive scale and for that they should be good at linear regression.

    KB: We value people who write good code. We primarily work in Python, and we use a lot of optimization techniques in the middle of the stack to help us scale.

    VK: Would you do something for supermarkets?

    KB: Absolutely. The largest offline supermarket in India is our customer.

    VK: So what can you do for supermarkets?

    KB: Offline retailers across the world are facing something that’s called showrooming. This is when a shopper walks up to a store, looks at and feels a product, then searches online to see it’s available at a better price. So we have retailers who are wary of this phenomenon. We also have retailers who are wary of diminishing customer loyalty. So they have to constantly ensure that they are priced better in the market and are not losing customers because of [online] pricing.

    VK: How powerful are your algorithms?

    KB: There is a dedicated team that works on our algorithms. These fall into several buckets. One is pure data scale algorithms — how do you build systems which ensure that you are able to efficiently query them in real time and get the desired output. The second one is — how do you keep improving your machine learning algorithms. For example, computer vision algorithms, text analytics algorithm, etc. The third — how do you keep experimenting effectively.

    VK: What role can an MBA degree holder play in DataWeave?

    KB: We have people who hold MBA degrees and are working in customer success, delivery management, marketing, and sales.

    VK: Do you spend time in training?

    KB: You do have some lead time if you are a fresher, but if you are a lateral hire, its expected that you keep the ball rolling. They should be able to learn and learn fast — learning is more important than knowing. So, we give a lot of importance to people who can learn and pick up things quickly – about our product, handling customer objections, etc.

    *

    Watch the whole video here or check out DataWeave’s website to know more about how we use data engineering and artificial intelligence to enable retailers and brands to compete profitably in the age of eCommerce.

  • [INFOGRAPHIC] 2017 at DataWeave: A Year in Retrospect

    [INFOGRAPHIC] 2017 at DataWeave: A Year in Retrospect

    And that’s a wrap! Another exciting year done and dusted, in which DataWeave continued to execute strongly through accelerated revenue growth, new customer wins, and expansion to heretofore unchartered regions.

    Through the year, we engaged with retailers and consumer brands of all types and sizes, and our belief that actionable competitive insights will increasingly play a defining role in driving profitable growth in retail was reinforced. Competition was stiff, and more times than not, we came out on top due to our ability to process huge data-sets, and the unmatched accuracy of our insights.

    Encouragingly, the emerging vertical of Alternative Data gained greater maturity, as adoption of non-traditional data sources from the Web by Asset Managers picked up steam.

    Our extensive focus on the North American market yielded impressive results, and we’ve only just scratched the surface.

    Other regions and verticals continued to contribute significantly, helping us close out the year with record sale volumes.

    As we wind ourselves up again for another marathon year in 2018, we look back at some of our achievements across the board, including customer impact, technology leadership, and team contribution and growth:

    Moving into 2018, we have a lot to look forward to.

    We’ll roll out a new and improved version of our SaaS-based data visualization platform, built with greater focus on actionability and customizability for our customers. Feedback from early beta tests have already been promising.

    As our team size swells, we’ll be on the lookout for passionate problem solvers, who thrive in a hyper-competitive environment, to join us and contribute to the next stage of our growth journey.

    Across verticals, we are well on our way to digging our heels into the North American market. 2018 will also see us gain a more solid footing in the Alternative Data space.

    With eCommerce adoption showing no sign of slowing down, demand in retail for competitive intelligence solutions is set to soar, and our proprietary data aggregation and analysis platform is up to the challenge of catering to this growing need.

    Stay tuned for more from DataWeave in 2018!

  • DataWeave Wins 2016 BI Software Awards From FinancesOnline

    DataWeave Wins 2016 BI Software Awards From FinancesOnline

    After a thorough assessment of our product FinancesOnline, a well-known software review platform and SaaS leads generation source, awarded DataWeave Retail Intelligence with two of their prestigious industry awards. According to FinancesOnline, our specialized competitive intelligence product is a rare tool that handles different languages with ease, and it allows businesses to improve the margin of their products and be more competitive.

     

    Currently, DataWeave Retail Intelligence holds two of the platform’s prominent awards: the 2016 Great User Experience Award given to products which facilitate complex operations and allow users to navigate an easy and familiar interface; and the 2016 Expert’s Choice Award, confirming that DataWeave employs a variety of unique mechanisms to produce valuable competitors’ insights, compares and measures metrics that matter to every online store. Both awards were given for the platform’s business intelligence software reviews category.

     

    According to their DataWeave review here the experts believe DataWeave genuinely focused on making businesses more competitive instead of simply listing data that may not be actionable by the company. They were particularly fond of the advanced identification of weak and strong points, actionable insights, and assortment intelligence, but mentioned as well the positive aspects of combining internal analytics with market data the way DataWeave does it. They praised our efforts to surpass traditional functionality gaps arising from language and location restrictions, and seem to firmly believe that out well-planned integrations make DataWeave usable for all type of analysis. Continuing with this tempo, FinancesOnline’s B2B professional foresee DataWeave performing successfully in many areas other than retail.

     

  • API of Telecom Recharge Plans in India

    API of Telecom Recharge Plans in India

    Several months ago we released our Telecom recharge plans API. It soon turned out to be one of our more popular APIs, with some of the leading online recharge portals using it extensively. (So, the next time you recharge your phone, remember us :))

    In this post, we’ll talk in detail about the genesis of this API and the problem it is solving.

    Before that — -and since we are into the business of building data products — some data points.

    As you can see, most mobile phones in India are prepaid. That is to say, there is a huge prepaid mobile recharge market. Just how big is this market?

    The above infographic is based on a recent report by Avendus [pdf]. Let’s focus on the online prepaid recharge market. Some facts:

    1. There are around 11 companies that provide an online prepaid recharge service. Here’s the list: mobikwik, rechargeitnow, paytm, freecharge, justrechargeit, easymobilerecharge, indiamobilerecharge, rechargeguru, onestoprecharge, ezrecharge, anytimerecharge
    2. RechargeItNow seems to be the biggest player. As of August 2013, they claimed an annual transactions worth INR 6 billion, with over 100000 recharges per day pan India.
    3. PayTM, Freecharge, and Mobikwik seem to be the other big players. Freecharge claimed recharge volumes of 40000/day in June 2012 (~ INR 2 billion worth of transactions), and they have been growing steadily.
    4. Telcos offer a commission of approximately 3% to third party recharge portals. So, it means there is an opportunity worth about 4 bn as of today.
    5. Despite the Internet penetration in India being around 11%, only about 1% of mobile prepaid recharges happen online. This goes to show the huge opportunity that lies untapped!
    6. It also goes to show why there are so many players entering this space. It’s only going to get crowded more.

    What does all this have to do with DataWeave? Let’s talk about the scale of the “data problem” that we are dealing with here. Some numbers that give an estimate on this.

    There are 13 cellular service providers in India. Here’s the list: Aircel Cellular Ltd, Aircel Limited, Bharti Airtel, BSNL, Dishnet Wireless, IDEA (operates as Idea ABTL & Spice in different states), Loop Mobile, MTNL, Reliable Internet, Reliance Telecom, Uninor, Videocon, and Vodafone. There are 22 circles in India. (Not every service provider has operations in every circle.)

    Find below the number of telecom recharge plans we have in our database for various operators.

    In fact, you can see that between the last week and today, we have added about 300 new plans (including plans for a new operator).

    The number of plans varies across operators. Vodafone, for instance, gives its users a huge number of options.

    The plans vary based on factors such as: denomination, recharge value, recharge talktime, recharge validity, plan type (voice/data), and of course, circle as well as the operator.

    For a third party recharge service provider, the below are a daily pain point:

    • plans become invalid on a regular basis
    • new plans are added on a regular basis
    • the features associated with a plan change (e.g, a ‘xx mins free talk time’ plan becomes ‘unlimited validity’ or something else)

    We see that 10s of plans become invalid (and new ones introduced) every day. All third party recharge portals lose significant amount of money on a daily basis because: they might not have information about all the plans and they might be displaying invalid plans.

    DataWeave’s Telecom Recharge Plans API solves this problem. This is how you use the API.

    Sample API Request

    “http://api.dataweave.in/v1/telecom_data/listByCircle/?api_key=b20a79e582ee4953ceccf41ac28aa08d&operator=Airtel&circle=Karnataka&page=1&per_page=10”

    Sample API Output

    We aggregate plans from the various cellular service providers across all circles in India on a daily basis. One of our customers once mentioned that earlier they used to aggregate this data manually, and it used to take them about a month to do this. With our API, we have reduced the refresh cycle to one day.

    In addition, now that this is process is automated, they can be confident that the data they present to their customers is almost always complete as well as accurate.

    Want to try it out for your business? Talk to us! If you are a developer who wants to use this or any other APIs, we let you use them for free. Just sign upand get your API key.

    DataWeave helps businesses make data-driven decisions by providing relevant actionable data. The company aggregates and organizes data from the web, such that businesses can access millions of data points through APIs, dashboards, and visualizations.