zeb is a premier digital transformation strategy company and AWS Premier Tier Partner, offering a holistic, product-centric approach that combines strategic planning with an AI-powered implementation methodology. Pulse 2.0 interviewed zeb founder and CEO Mal Vivek to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Mal Vivek’s Background
Can you walk us through your background and what led you to launch Zeb at just 24? Vivek said:
“I started in tech when I was about eight years old doing functional programming at summer camps, which snowballed into using machine learning to explore patterns in children’s nut allergies by age 15 and working in computational biology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center by 17.”
“After taking over as CEO of Avasoft in 2020, I saw a gap in the market where most vendors operated transactionally without truly understanding how to translate AI technology into applicable business moving parts. I founded zeb in May 2023 because I wanted a more modern digital brand to become the face of our AI-powered digitalization strategy services. My vision was to create a chimera of sorts—an AI-centric technology transformation organization with deep industry expertise and the agility to stay ahead of AI developments.”
Formation Of zeb
How did the concept for zeb come together, and what problem were you most focused on solving from day one? Vivek shared:
“The core belief behind zeb was to make AI equally accessible for startups and small-to-medium businesses as it is for enterprise, while building use cases with AI that actually deliver ROI. I saw that with the impending boom of AI, there was going to be an equal need for organizations who knew the technology, could stay ahead of it, AND could translate its use to actual applicable moving parts of the business.”
“Most existing players were either ticket takers operating on tasks given by IT departments or strategy consultants delivering expensive decks without much else. For an organization to truly achieve transformation, it needs to not only understand AI but have expertise across all the tools and working processes of businesses today—making AI part of the process, not a silo.”
Rewarding Moments
What’s been one of your most rewarding moments building zeb so far — whether a team win, product breakthrough, or client impact? Vivek reflected:
“Being recognized as the AWS Rising Star Partner of the Year in December 2024 was a huge privilege for our team and a testament to our commitment to innovation.”
“But what’s most rewarding is seeing our customers come up with the most interesting use cases that really challenge our teams—like a customer wanting to use AI to be a dynamic pain management digital partner that reduced mental health challenges in chronic pain management patients all the way to customers challenging us to build incredibly dynamic and reinforceable metadata context layers that allow all their customers to truly ask any question of their data.”
“AI is pushing us and everyone around us further and working with and watching our teams continuously top themselves has been incredibly rewarding.”
Core Offerings
For those unfamiliar, what are zeb’s core offerings and how do they support enterprise transformation across industries like healthcare, finance, and retail? Vivek explained:
“zeb is a leading digital transformation strategy company that offers clients a holistic product-centric approach to digital transformation by combining strategic planning with a proprietary AI-powered implementation methodology. At zeb, we have practices that serve every aspect of the technology stack, from application development to robotic process automation, data engineering to infrastructure and security.”
“These practices allow us to transform companies end-to-end, making sure we don’t build AI in silos but rather integrate it into the company’s existing tech stack and on their data. We work across industries like the ones you mentioned as well as manufacturing/supply chain and digitally native businesses to deliver measurable business outcomes by understanding what drives their business, their bottom line and their customers.”
Challenges Faced
The digital transformation space is crowded and constantly evolving. What have been some of your biggest challenges in staying ahead — and how has zeb responded? Vivek acknowledged:
“Building with extreme speed and depth both horizontally and vertically has been the biggest challenge—staying on top of industry impacts while ensuring our large team is up to speed on relevant advances on the technology front. The only people we’re really competing with are ourselves—it can be done, it’s more about finding the resilience and persistence to do so.”
“There’s a lot of fear that arises when companies use AI, with people worrying about job security, which is one of the most emotional fears of all. We address this by assessing where AI can aid a company, freeing up human creativity by putting AI to work on repetitive processes that are “wasting human capital,” while ensuring the business feels empowered rather than dragged along.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has your tech stack — especially your use of GenAI, Bedrock, SageMaker, and Databricks — evolved since launch? Vivek noted:
“We went all in on the AWS and Databricks Platforms and their underlying AI infrastructure as a first principle when we started zeb while also developing expertise in platforms putting AI to work like ServiceNow. Our approach often involves using compound AI systems that leverage internal canonical data models aligned with different industries and the biggest changes in our stack come from our incredible partners working tirelessly to package and commoditize more and more AI building blocks that enable us and our customers to have optionality, efficiency and build for scale.”
Significant Milestones
What are some milestones you’re particularly proud of? Any recent wins you can share, such as AWS partnerships or customer growth? Vivek cited:
“Like I mentioned the biggest one recently was earning the AWS Rising Star Partner of the Year – Consulting Award and achieving AWS Premier Tier Services Partner status while growing 10x in our first year, positioning us as one of the most experienced and thoroughly endorsed partners in the marketplace. We also achieved the AWS Generative AI Services Competency in July 2024 along with becoming a Gen AI Launch partner for Databricks, distinguishing zeb as a top AWS and Databricks Partner. These achievements validate our technical expertise and proven track record in delivering transformative solutions.”
Customer Use Case
Can you walk us through a standout customer use case — something that really shows zeb’s impact on operations or user experience? Vivek highlighted:
“One of the really fun customers we’ve worked with recently is one of the largest privately held third-party logistics providers in the U.S. who we helped to build a data warehouse and implement several different production generative AI tools. Prior to implementation, a team of several data analysts managed a substantial backlog of data requests and dealt with thousands of user reports. Our system transformed business user requests in natural language into actionable operational insights, significantly reducing the workload on data analysts by up to 80–90%.”
“By building the data model around the way our customer was going to look at the data, this approach was also more conducive to maximizing Gen AI when it came time to implement it. The system seamlessly integrated with their existing workflow, including Slack channels where data requests were already managed which is an example of our commitment to continually integrate AI into our customers’ experiences – changing behavior without changing culture.”
Growth Metrics
Are you able to share where zeb stands in terms of growth metrics — revenue, funding, or customer count? Vivek revealed:
— Privately held, we don’t share revenue or funding
— We currently have over 300 customers.
Total Addressable Market
What’s the market opportunity zeb is targeting, and where do you see the most urgency among your enterprise clients right now? Vivek assessed:
“The biggest challenge our customers face is accessibility—so many come to us saying they’ve heard big things about AI but don’t know where to begin, or they don’t have any of their data in one place so they can’t use it at all. The landscape is death by a thousand cuts and objectivity is nowhere to be found. We’re seeing dramatic changes coming in the next two years—we’ve barely scratched the surface.”
“This is the first time since the dot com bubble we’ve had two very specific ingredients for what I believe will be our greatest technology revolution: a technology that works and creates massive impact, and an incredibly difficult market pushing every company to adopt it or die.”
Differentiation From The Competition
How do you view the competitive landscape — and what makes zeb different in how it implements GenAI and cloud-native tools? Vivek affirmed:
“Most investment intelligence tools and AI consultancies struggle building the right data and context foundation frameworks—the lens on their telescopes isn’t providing the right resolution for the clarity they’re trying to generate. We treat context as something that is very living and breathing on two planes: that which can be generalized and abstracted versus that which is dynamic. What sets zeb apart is our ability to tailor AI-augmented services and cloud-first solutions to address the unique challenges of each client. We’re not confined to the constant boxes of offshore tech vendors or AWS partners—we’re proving that constant innovation and scale don’t have to be at odds with each other.”
Future Company Goals
What’s next for zeb? Are there specific product expansions, customer segments, or go-to-market priorities on the horizon? Vivek emphasized:
“We’re working on several industry-specific agent-to-agent communication workflows that focus on creating the right orchestrations and chains of incentive and evaluation mechanisms. When applied to the right combination of data points, we’re seeing the ability to automate functions that previously took several different levels of teams and expertise. The goal behind these initiatives is to create a network effect based registry of true referenceable production ready architectures we can use to provide continuous improvement for our customers.”
Additional Thoughts
Is there anything else you’re excited to talk about — trends you’re watching, advice for other young founders, or ideas that drive your leadership? Vivek concluded:
“I continue to watch Anthropic’s research into model safety—we’re finding out so much about how LLMs function and process concepts of incentive, which massively influences how we train and build with them. At zeb, our culture centers on upward mobility—the ability for people and organizations to move past what they were born into. Scale for me looks like being able to invest in our employees and our customers and that is what motivates me every day. For young founders, especially women: ‘You miss all the shots you don’t take’—being ready to give almost anything a shot has opened incredible opportunities for me.”
