Coalesce.io is a data transformation tool built for scale. And as the first platform to combine the speed of an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI), code flexibility, and automation efficiency for data transformations, Coalesce customers benefit from increased data engineer productivity and insights. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Coalesce CEO and co-founder Armon Petrossian to learn more about the company.
Armon Petrossian’s Background
What is Petrossian’s background? Before Coalesce.io, Petrossian was part of the founding team at WhereScape, a leading provider of data automation software. At WhereScape, Petrossian served as national sales manager for almost a decade.
Formation Of Coalesce.io
How did the idea for Coalesce.io come together? Petrossian said:
“Throughout my career, I’ve seen companies struggle with data transformation and optimization, and with the enormous growth of the cloud, that challenge has only increased. Data teams, in particular, are challenged with the everyday demands of the business and the shortage of skilled data engineers and data architects to combat the growing volumes and complexity of data.”
“I created Coalesce with my co-founder, Satish Jayanthi, to solve these challenges.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Petrossian shared:
“Coalesce is a data transformation platform that simplifies and automates the process of modeling, cleansing, governing, and documenting data so organizations from any size, from small companies to the largest enterprises, can access and analyze their information more easily.”
“Our product solves the largest bottleneck in analytics today by combining the speed of building data pipelines through an intuitive graphical user interface with the flexibility of code, plus a healthy dose of automation, to enable rapid data transformations. We enable customers to dramatically increase data engineer productivity and accelerate insights to tackle today’s most data-intensive initiatives.”
“While I think there are numerous concrete benefits and outcomes with the Coalesce platform, including faster data pipeline development, better data governance, and improved change management, I believe a testament to our approach is that we are already seeing Coalesce becoming the data transformation and innovation platform of choice for companies. Now that we’ve removed most of the day-to-day overhead challenges, our customers have time to extend off of our platform to quickly address new use cases in novel ways.”
Challenges Faced
What bottlenecks has Petrossian faced in building the company? Petrossian acknowledged:
“The biggest bottleneck in our sector – the data transformation part of the analytics cycle – has been a challenge for decades and is precisely why we founded Coalesce. Companies have been struggling with data transformation and optimization since the early days of data warehousing, and with the enormous growth of the cloud that challenge has only increased.”
“We are on a mission to radically improve the analytics landscape by making enterprise-scale data transformations as efficient and flexible as possible. We see the value of Coalesce’s technology as an inevitable catalyst to support the scalability and governance needed for cloud computing.”
Customer Success Stories
After asking Petrossian about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“Paytronix, a guest engagement and customer loyalty management platform for 1,800+ brands in the restaurant and fast food industries, struggled with deriving timely insights from multiple diverse data sources. Before Coalesce, they relied on a combination of manual Scala and PySpark jobs for data transformation, which proved unsustainable, time-consuming, and in essence blocking the data team from accessing data quickly enough to enable real-time or near-real-time insights. With Coalesce, the data team at Paytronix:
1.) Completed a high-profile transformation in just one month with only two team members, a drastic improvement from the previous six-month timeline.
2.) Enabled other teams throughout the organization to better understand the data they work with, establishing a single source of truth.
3.) Was able to shift focus towards building new features and predictive models for business enhancement, including creating new data products for the company’s customers that utilize cutting-edge generative AI capabilities.”
Funding
When asking Petrossian about the company’s funding, he revealed:
“To date, we’ve raised a total of $31.92 million from investors, including Emergence Capital, 11.2 Capital, GreatPoint Ventures, and Industry Ventures.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Petrossian affirmed:
“Our competitors’ solutions largely fall in one of two categories: code-first data transformation tools that are time-consuming, error-prone, and only accessible to highly-skilled data professionals, or Graphical User Interface (GUI) tools that lack the flexibility needed to support today’s complex use cases for data products. We’ve built a platform that combines the best of both worlds.”
“Coalesce automates the generation of a substantial portion of SQL code that would traditionally require manual scripting and features an easy-to-use GUI interface, with the full flexibility of a code-first solution. This empowers data teams to expedite the development and maintenance of data pipelines and allows them to prioritize communicating with the business, extracting valuable insights, and maximizing the potential of their data.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future company goals? Petrossian concluded:
“We have only scratched the surface in terms of what a data transformation platform should be, and while we can’t divulge our future plans in detail just yet, we’re extremely excited to work with cutting-edge technology and equip organizations with a platform that enables the most innovative use cases–think generative AI and beyond–with efficiency and speed.”
