Tredence is a global data science solutions provider that is focused on solving the last-mile problem in AI. The “last mile” is the gap between insight creation and value realization. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Tredence CEO and co-founder Shub Bhowmick to learn more.
Shub Bhowmick’s Background
After completing an engineering degree at IIT-BHU in India, Bhowmick began a career in manufacturing but quickly pivoted to technology, joining Infosys as a project leader. And Bhowmick said:
“The early 2000s was an exciting time to begin a career in technology. Not many people knew how to use data and analytics in a meaningful way. I envisioned creating a startup that would leverage global STEM talent, beginning in India, to create data and analytics capabilities and deliver breakthrough insights for leading enterprises. Since understanding customer behavior and market trends is a priority across all industries, I knew that there was a significant market opportunity to form strategic partnerships with global industry companies, solving their complex business challenges, and ultimately creating a global business.”
“I took time out to pursue an MBA at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management to learn more about entrepreneurialism. I then worked at a few companies as a management consultant to gain further experience, including COE Capital Management; American Express; and Mu Sigma, an Indian decision sciences firm.”
“Inspired by Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial spirit, I founded Tredence with Sumit Mehra and Shashank Dubey in 2013.”
Formation Of Tredence
How did the idea for Tredence come together? Bhowmick shared:
“Global business is competitive. However, companies have a wealth of data that they can use to develop modern business models and monetization opportunities if they can drive to insight faster, precisely evaluate different options, and choose the best path forward.”
“It was clear that Fortune 500 companies needed partners who could solve vertical-specific business challenges and deliver high quality data analytics services at scale.”
“I was fortunate to meet Sumit and Shashank, who shared the same enthusiasm that I did for empowering enterprise decision makers with actionable insights. We launched Tredence in 2013, working from a three-bedroom flat in Bangalore. Together, we ditched the conventional analytics methodology of visualizing data in favor of using a highly focused solutions-driven approach. We began selling our last-mile vision to some of the world’s largest retailers, CPG firms, and manufacturers.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for Tredence so far? Bhowmick reflected:
“After we secured our first client, we faced an unexpected setback – a payment delay. We had to decide whether to hide the truth from our employees or be transparent about our situation. We chose transparency and were pleasantly surprised by the unwavering loyalty of our team during this really difficult time.
“Eventually, we recovered financially and rewarded our employees with salary increases to thank them for their dedication. This experience was a trial by fire but also an introduction to the world of entrepreneurialism, as leaders and teams need to be highly flexible and respond to constantly changing developments.”
Challenges Faced
What are some of the challenges you face in building the company, Has the current macroeconomic climate affected the company? Bhowmick acknowledged:
“Tredence seeks to be the data and analytics partner of choice for world-leading companies. Like other startups, we had to tackle the challenge of concurrently building our team, securing funding, and acquiring enterprise clients.”
“The past ten years have been characterized by fast-paced growth, as we have expanded our initial focus on analytics to include data modernization and AI, grown our solution set with data models and accelerators, and added vertical capabilities. A decade later, Tredence has become one of the fastest-growing data analytics companies in the U.S., trusted by multiple Fortune 100 companies to lead their large-scale data and CX transformation programs.”
“The current macroeconomic climate is creating challenges and opportunities for enterprises, necessitating new approaches. Tredence’s ability to use data and AI solutions to optimize costs and processes is resonating with CXO leaders across the market. From Gen AI to MLOps to CloudFinOps, and supply cost take-out to leaner marketing campaigns, our solutions enable businesses to unlock fresh insight across key use cases while reaping more value from their technology investments.”
Core Products
What are Tredence’s core products and features? Bhowmick explained:
“We focus on capitalizing the predictive and generative power of AI. Tredence provides advanced AI and data science solutions across multiple industries, including consumer packaged goods, healthcare, heavy industry, retail, technology, telecom, and travel. The future of AI is constantly in flux and is characterized by continuous progress, ongoing research, and the exploration of new applications. We invest 10% of our annual revenue in innovation, continuously expanding our leadership in AI and ML.”
“Indeed, customer expectations are influenced by the latest advancements and possibilities in AI. We have observed a notable increase in discussions with our clients surrounding Gen AI, and we are actively engaged in several POCs.”
“Our Gen AI approach integrates domain expertise, design thinking, and data science to enhance enterprise operations, enabling faster innovation, increased productivity, and cost reduction.”
“Clients use ATOM.AI, our AI/ML ecosystem, to create a culture of experimentation, empowering their teams to create new ROI across business functions and processes. ATOM.AI creates an end-to-end process that streamlines AI from design to deployment. Teams eliminate process friction, reducing time delays, cost, and other forms of waste, as they drive new value across a wide range of industry use cases.”
Evolution Of Tredence’s Technology
How has Tredence’s technology evolved since launching? Bhowmick noted:
“Initially, Tredence focused solely on providing business analytics and visualization services for enterprises to optimize current processes. However, we soon recognized the importance of adopting a holistic analytics approach addressing vertical and functional challenges. By so doing, we could enable enterprise teams to predict and overcome future challenges while maximizing their ability to capitalize on emerging business opportunities.”
“We invest heavily in building industry-specific solutions and accelerators. These tools use alerts, recommendations, scenarios, and automation to optimize supply chain processes, enhance customer personalization, and solve sustainability challenges, among other goals.”
“Over the past two years, we have developed ATOM.AI, a comprehensive AI/ML ecosystem for our clients. ATOM.AI enables clients to predict demand, decode pattern changes, finetune processes, and continually innovate with data – all useful capabilities in our dynamic digital marketplace.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of Tredence’s most significant milestones? Bhowmick cited:
“We have tripled our workforce in the last two years and upskilled our talent with a wide range of learning and certification opportunities. Our teams bring new capabilities to clients and a focus on driving more value across engagements, which is a key reason 80 percent of our clients expand their work with us.”
“We achieved a 100% growth rate in 2022 that helped us win Series B funding to expand our offerings and geographical presence.”
“Today we have a team of more than 2,000 analytics and AI experts with domain and vertical skills who work from offices in San Jose, and Foster City, California; Chicago, Illinois; Toronto, Canada; London, England; and Bangalore, Chennai, and Delhi, India.”
Customer Success Stories
Upon asking Bhowmick about customer success stories, he replied:
“By modernizing data analytics with Tredence, our clients have accelerated their digital transformation with data. Examples include:
– Tredence partnered with the third-largest convenience store chain in the U.S. to create a data and analytics center of excellence. We worked with enterprise teams to develop a modern data foundation, implement data governance, and leverage ML to enable real-time predictions. Together, we identified $15M in shrinkage that could be avoided and improved forecasting accuracy by 10%, leading to more than $5MM savings.
– A Fortune 100 CPG teamed with Tredence to develop an AI-/ML-powered forecasting engine to reduce out-of-stock occurrences, improve inventory health, and optimize and automate their end-to-end inventory and fulfillment processes. The client significantly enhanced forecasting accuracy, leading to approximately $10MM in additional revenue.
– The world’s largest hotel chain recently leveraged our customer analytics expertise to gain fresh insight into post-pandemic travel behaviors, resulting in a $13 million revenue recovery in under three months and a significant increase in net new members.”
Funding/Revenue
After asking Bhowmick about funding and the revenue model, he revealed:
“We’ve secured $205 million in funding to accelerate our growth and expertise. We received a $30 million investment from Chicago Pacific Founders in 2020, followed by $175 million Series B funding from Advent International in 2022. Our revenue grew by 100% in 2022, thanks to our clients, employees, and strong industry partnerships.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is Tredence pursuing? Bhowmick assessed:
“According to IDC Research, the global expenditure on AI is projected to surpass $300 billion by 2026. The widespread integration of AI across various industries will drive a CAGR of 26.5% from 2022 to 2026, which is more than four times the CAGR of global IT spending at 6.3% over the same five-year timeframe.”
“Clients that were previously on the fence with advanced technology now see the need to accelerate these capabilities, thanks to the fast-paced development of cloud, digital, automation, and AI. Enterprises will pair both traditional and generative AI to transform core business processes, employee productivity, and the customer experience.”
“Tredence has achieved an impressive CAGR of 50% in the last five years. We are optimistic about our future growth, due to our industry-focused go-to-market strategy, deep partnerships, and early and ongoing investments in our AI ecosystem.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates Tredence from its competition? Bhowmick affirmed:
“We’ve designed Tredence in a unique manner, with a strong emphasis on both speed to value and speed to scale for our clients. The transformative shift in AI is disrupting traditional business norms, demanding consultants like us to actively unlearn and evolve our portfolio capabilities. We have built out an incredible set of vertical-focused 50+ AI vertical accelerators that companies can deploy as their own intellectual property. The prebuilt accelerators can be deployed as-is or customized up to 30 percent and implemented within weeks.”
“Enterprise clients gain a proof of concept they can then scale across staff, business functions, and geographies. Clients often choose to add other use cases rapidly, as decision makers want to expand on initial business gains.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of Tredence’s future company goals? Bhowmick concluded:
“At Tredence, our unwavering goal is to propel value creation for our shareholders, employees, and clients. We delivered 5X returns to our first investor, Chicago Pacific Founders. We also rewarded our employees with a significant ESOP buyback program worth $30 million earlier this year, recognizing their invaluable contributions. Our clients have also experienced the true essence of our partnership. Our Net Promoter Score (NPS) is 94%, signifying their trust and satisfaction in our capabilities and services.
With our strategic growth priorities in mind, we are:
— Actively pursuing a targeted acquisition strategy. With relatively low market costs, we believe now is the perfect time to consider acquisitions. We are aided in that quest by our $175 million war chest from Advent.
— Focusing on global expansion, particularly targeting Europe and the Middle East.
— Driving the adoption of ATOM.AI and our accelerators across industries and via non-linear channels and offerings.
— Fostering a strong channel network that converges the transformative power of data, cloud, and AI to solve complex problems and create significant value for clients.
Advent is also providing tremendous operating partner expertise to support our growth trajectory. We are excited to tap into the insights of these partners as we expand our solution set, enter new markets, and grow our channel business.
The next few decades are going to be an incredible time for the industry, with an acceleration of innovation and breakthrough achievements for many companies.
Tredence is well-positioned to help lead this charge. By using our services and solutions, enterprises can bring greater precision to decision making from strategy setting to daily operations across their businesses.”
