Pradeep Janakiraman,Founder & CEO

Finding a good problem to solve is always a great way to start-up. Early 2015, when Pradeep was heading engineering at a Big Data Analytics start-up, he was working on a proposal (RFP) for a potential client which required a lot of Computer Vision based solutions. A quick market search revealed that there weren’t many compelling solutions in that space to cater to the kind of features that were required in the proposal. Around the same time, rise of Deep Learning and AI along with availability of GPUs in the cloud, were just about transforming the landscape on how Computer Vision could beapplied for building many interesting solutions. This fuelled Pradeep’s passion to establish his own venture and tap into this opportunity. This marked the beginning. Soon he was also supported with a modest angel funding from the very founders of the startup he was working in.

In the early days, while there was a lot of excitement around the type of technologies used and the POC solutions being built, it was taking time to find the right product

market fit. Also recurring contracts were hard to come by.“Our first major break came a little after finishing among the Top-10 start-ups in the 2016 Wharton India Business competition when we got a bit of media attention. We soon entered into a Joint Venture with a leading multinational company that approached us to build a platform for delivering solutions in the Sports domain leveraging Computer Vision and Deep Learning,” says Pradeep. The platform was quite successful and several key POCs were executed in a relatively short time frame.

" Drive has been doing a lot of work recently in the Mixed Reality space combining 3D Computer Vision and AI. The goal is to disrupt a few high impact areas such as fitness, sports coaching and online apparel retail reverse logistics "

Right from the beginning of its journey, the core principle at Drive Analytics was always to incorporate the latest advancements in the field of Deep Learning to create high impact solutions. In 2017, Drive Analytics was featured among the Top-10 finalists in the Lets Ignite competition which is the largest Angel and VC competition in India. In March 2018, the company was picked for a focused mentoring initiative by NASSCOM for 20 startups called the DeepTechClub, which was modelled along the lines of an accelerator program.

Creating a Disruption
With the support of the visionary

advisory board, the access to world class mentoring via the NASSCOM initiative, and ability to get an early feel of the market needs via the joint-venture, the company was able to build some very interesting solutions in a relatively short time. Throwing light on the same, Pradeep elaborates, “Initially, we created a platform for measuring the impact and ROI of Brands and also enabling new commercial opportunities in the multi-billion dollar sports sponsorships domain. Since 2018, we have concentrated on building a platform to bring Mixed Reality based solutions to the market, leveraging 3D Computer Vision and AI. We have consistently noticed that customers are willing to invest the time and money into such cutting edge, transformational solutions, provided they are well defined and aligned with their business objectives to attain or retain market leadership in their respective segments,” he says.

The Growth Story
An early start and the opportunity of working on several different solutions for some really high profile clientele has helped Drive Analytics to be called as a mature start-up in terms of the depth of solutions and analytical insights it offers, while still retaining an active start-up culture with the freshness of young and bright talent. In June 2018, Drive Analytics internship program was selected among the ‘India's Best Startup Internships' by Internshala, India's largest portal for recruiting fresh talent.