4 NRI-led firms Among World Economic Forum Tech Pioneers

There are four Indian American-led companies that are among the World Economic Forum’s 2018 cohort of Technology Pioneers, that have been chosen among the group of 61 early-stage companies from around the world, including Cohesity, CognitiveScale, ThoughtSpot and Drive.ai.

The cohort of companies, according to WEF, are pioneering new technologies and innovations ranging from the use of artificial intelligence in drug discovery, the development of autonomous vehicles, advancing cybersecurity and reducing food waste, to applying blockchain to a decentralized engagement platform.

“Innovation comes from all corners of the earth and from a very diverse group of entrepreneurs, and with this selection we recognize that,” said Cheryl Martin, head of the Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and member of the managing board at the World Economic Forum. “The next step is to help these pioneers bring their solutions to complex world-critical problems to global markets and to take action for the public good.”

In joining this community and the two-year journey where they become part of the forum’s initiatives, activities and events, they bring cutting-edge insights and novel perspectives to world-critical discussions, WEF said.

“Technology and start-ups are not just about computer software, consumer apps and social networks,” said Fulvia Montresor, head of Technology Pioneers at the World Economic Forum. “Technology Pioneers 2018 are tackling complex challenges such as environmental sustainability, efficient energy use and access to healthcare.”

Cohesity, founded in 2013 in San Jose, Calif., is led by founder and chief executive officer Mohit Aron. The company is an industry-leading platform for hyperconverged secondary storage solutions. Cohesity offers native copy data management on intelligent web-scale storage, end-to-end data protection, and in-place analytics, all on one data platform, WEF said.

“Cohesity is transforming the way organizations manage and extract value from their secondary applications and data by revolutionizing modern data center and cloud operations with a hyperconverged, web-scale, data platform,” Aron said in the company’s bio.

Aron was recently named a finalist in Ernst & Young’s U.S. Entrepreneur of the Year competition. The 2014-founded Austin, Texas-based CognitiveScale, led by chief executive Akshay Sabhikhi, is developing a new generation of augmented intelligence cloud software powered by artificial intelligence and blockchain technology.

“CognitiveScale pairs humans and machines to augment and extend human ingenuity. AI has the potential to transform the economy and society by unlocking human potential and creating new opportunities, and we are on a mission to make it happen,” Sabhikhi said in the company bio page on the WEF website.

It makes sense of unstructured data by emulating cognitive functions like perception, abstraction, reasoning and learning. It finds hidden meaning within all available data to ensure enterprises and their customers have the right answers to and advice for problems they want to solve, WEF said.

Drive.ai develops AI software for autonomous vehicles using deep learning. The Calif.-based company, founded in 2015 and led by CEO Sameep Tandon, designs retrofit kits that are integrated software and hardware solutions, which includes sensors such as radar, high-definition cameras and light detection and ranging, its bio said.

It has developed custom sensor locations enabling a vehicle to gain a full 360 degree understanding of its environment and enabling sensor redundancy to ensure safety.

Drive.ai’s custom sensor locations maintain high fidelity in all data collected as the vehicle drives autonomously and optimizes the performance in Drive.ai’s proprietary deep learning algorithms.

“Drive.ai uses artificial intelligence to create self-driving systems that improve the state of mobility today. We work with public and private partners to solve transportation challenges quickly and safely, with geofenced self-driving solutions,” Tandon said in the bio.

Founded in 2012, ThoughtSpot, a search and artificial intelligence-driven analytics platform, is based in Palo Alto, Calif. It was co-founded by Ajeet Singh, who serves as the company’s CEO.

ThoughtSpot is helping companies succeed in the digital era by putting the power of a thousand analysts in every business person’s hands, its bio said.

Businesses can take advantage of Google-like search to automatically analyze billions of rows of data and gain insights based on this data – all with a single click. The platform connects with any on-premise, cloud, big data or desktop data source, deploying 85 percent faster than legacy technologies.

“With ThoughtSpot’s search and AI-driven analytics, the world’s one billion knowledge workers each have the power of 1000 analysts in the palm of their hands, allowing them to search data in the same way they use Google to search the internet,” Singh said.

The newly selected Technology Pioneers will meet at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions 2018 in Tianjin, People’s Republic of China, on Sept. 18 to Sept. 20.

Some of them will also participate in the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2019 in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, in January. As leaders of innovation, they will be supported by the Forum’s new Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and contribute to fostering the innovation ecosystem and delivering critical mass to solve global challenges, WEF said.