Is Virtual Reality The New Reality? Emerging Tech Explored

welcome everyone to today's episode where we're joined by Raji AI a remarkable woman in technology and business as a co-founder and CEO of agregation Raji has been at the Forefront of steering the company's ambitious growth plans and embracing emerging technology her insights on company culture immersive Technology Innovation and her experience as a woman in techfield make her a distinguished figure in the industry in this episode we'll explore Raj's Journey the challeng es and the Triumph she's faced and her vision for the future of technology and wom entrepreneurship so Raji it's really lovely to have you in today's show thank you PJ it's it's great to be here today as well and so raaj you know for me one of the interesting um things that I found was that your co-founder is actually your partner so could you just walk us through how that Journey came about and uh what inspired you to specifically focus on the VR uh space as well sure so um we've always run businesses uh my partner's always been an entrepreneur um he he worked in the in the in in one of the larger hyperscalers but then decided that's not for him so ever since I've met him I've always been a part of his journey uh working his Ventures this is our third Venture um and I finished my masters and I was just starting to get back into the workforce and he said why don't you come on and join us and you know I'm starting I'm thinking about you know doing different kind of software practice and I just need some help putting together some processes and why don't you just come on and like started there on a two we stint um but then I really loved what they were doing and I said you know why not start this up as a business and and scale it um and why not set that up as a separate entity so that's really how it happened I was there for two weeks I really loved the software um really looked at the vision on what that could be and I started doing some research on yeah what the future looks like for that Tech stack and yeah and then here I am I suppose 10 years later and we're still doing this so yes so would you have ever imagined both of you uh creating a business together back 10 years ago or so oh well no when I met him it was almost 20 plus years ago I was yeah I was never an entrepreneur and he was always an entrepreneur and I never thought that I was going to be a part of uh building and growing a business let alone emerging bleeding Tech right never in my wildest dreams but yeah I'm not regretting it at all all haven't regretted it I mean there's been ups and downs and it's been really a challenging Journey but not but not regretting it's been fantastic I couldn't think of a better person to do it with to be honest um it's a safe space when you put your has your back yeah I totally agree and I think I think it's because when I speak with a lot of people I guess for a lot of people that are wanting to go into ENT entrepreneurship uh Journey they always want a partner that could you know build it together I think it's also a you know when I think of Entrepreneurship I think about it in a sense of rather than the commercials it's really about building something together and I think that's quite exciting on your end as well that's true it's not it's it's never about um it's not about the product alone and it's not about the business but it's about creating something of value that will grow um and that would do good you know work with a whole bunch of people create something good have a bunch of good customers deliver good value so overall it's it's it's the notion of creating value and doing that for good um that's what brought us together uh we're not we're not the kind of people who would have thought that we would be in business together but here we are and I don't think we would have it any other way yeah yeah well said and you know for a lot of uh females that might be listening to this uh what's kind of your advice on working with a partner and building of a business because you know like for example my wife wife also gets involved in the business and for a lot of business owners that are in a partnership uh both in a relationship and business sometimes you know you're going on a date and then I guess the business element slips in or it gets very interwined so would you be able to share some tips and tricks that you found quite useful um sure I don't know if their tips and tricks but I suppose everyone's life um has got their own story and journey and you kind of learn from it and adapt and adopt what you need to do um this particular question is very tricky because there is no Shire answer I would be lying if I said that you know work doesn't trickle over um and boundaries don't Collide it certainly does quite horribly sometimes um quite nicely many times um and very poorly very rarely so which is good kids normally help balance things out so um focusing on the kids and what they want to do and the real things that matter help us uh navigate through that challenge um and in a strange way being on this journey together also helps us strengthen our relationship um we understand each other's work ethics um and modes and behaviors a lot better and we've also gone through many life experiences where we've realized that we're building software um we want to grow a business we're not saving lives so got to focus on the things that really matter take a step back take a deep breath so we kind of hold each other honest to those values on are we really doing good is it going to affect a lot of people is our decision going to be the right thing to do how do we um do the right thing by the customers uh by our people and team and by the business first so we kind of keep each other in check but certainly having boundaries on where work starts and finishes holding each other responsible when things start to kind of blur and also making sure that you kind of take a deep breath take a step back and say okay we having a really bad day and it's affecting my partner more than it's affecting me so let me not escalate the situation but just take a deep breath and try and make reason with him or her um to navigate through this thing and making reason would mean doing something different going for a walk or just sitting down and saying it's all going to be okay everything's going to be okay this two shall pass and at at the moment we're not you know doing any critical Services we're not saving lives so it can't be the worst thing if something gets delayed and we lose a project it can't be the worst thing in life they far more detrimental items so y yeah yeah thank you so much for pointing that out because you know I mean from a personal experience one of the things that's coming up for me is that work never stops especially if the business is is yours um I think there's just continuous amount of tasks that needs to get done so sometimes there just a lot of important items but as you said like it's sometimes just taking a step back and then thinking about what is really important um and I think it's so important to balance that out I mean you know one of the things that I've been reflecting on is yes work is important but at the same time uh you know the kids are also important as well and making sure that they got the time and attention as well cuz I guess we'll never see them at that same stage of their life again I think we should appreciate those unique moments and also don't forget those moments with your partner as well because you want you w't be 35 again or you won't be 40 again and time just fly so yeah and then you know we we talked a bit about uh the technology element I mean one of the things that I really liked um and item that you posted was about I think it was Jeff Bezos uh sharing about the amount of immense opportunity in today's world and how in the past some of the greatest thinkers would have wished there were in you know today's realm um and I guess some of the things that you're also working on is around experiential technology VR uh metaverse as well in your perspective I guess what's all the trends that organizations need to be thinking about and what like what's your thoughts on the future work with all these immersive Technologies coming in play I think there's quite a bit of attention on emerging Tech now especially with AI so our approach um when we start to work with the Enterprises is really looking through what Innovation means for them and what problems they want to solve I think that's at the Forefront um we always say that when you're looking at emerging Tech it needs to either make more money or um save money or solve a compliance made right so it needs to kind of do one of those three things and how does your Tech help you do those things so that's something that I really urge Enterprises to consider it's not emerging Tech it's about what solves the problem and how can it be best used within that Enterprise workflow and how ready are people for change and how do we navigate them through that change so those are some of the key things that we ask about everything to do with technology is actually heavily reliant on change management um so it does involve people it involves people's acceptance of technology and change so we focus a lot on what would bring about the most amount of impact um which would have an easy change and transition process but the impact is high so the way we approach emerging Tech is that just because we have a platform and we've got a whole kitty of solutions doesn't mean that every you know we want to try and push that down someone's throat it's about what works best for them and that's the main reason why our platforms the way it is as well it's kind of open modular and very easy to use and it can be used across multiple things based on what you want to do so we make it as easy and open not from a platform perspective as well also from a people and process perspective so we each Enterprise is unique uh and we acknowledge that and we also urge them to understand that no no one size fits all when it comes to technology yeah and you know one of the things that that I saw in a recent report was that um at least in America pretty much over 90% of organizations are thinking of adopting or see a use case in leveraging uh experiential Technologies in their workplace uh obviously in different use cases and I think they've all identified that like at least there'll be one use case where they do foresee experiential Technologies uh playing out in their company for an organization in Australia whether it's small business to large Enterprise how would they approach like leveraging items around experiential technology because I mean one of the U items you did share just recently was the fact that just first of all figuring out what is the problem you're trying to solve for and then looking at what technologies are worth embedding to solve that specific problem um is there any other further insights you can share on that piece sure and and there's three things that you need to look at right because when you're thinking about Innovation um it's really really key that you start to look at what problem you're going to solve how you're going to solve that problem and what technology you're going to use but you also need to look at um the the right people and partners who help you solve that problem because not everyone can work with each and every problem and you need to find the partner that fits with you um people who share your vision people who understand that what your goals are and who can deliver value to those goals um and you also need to measure the right metrics and get the right feedback to keep on monitoring and measuring as you're innovating to see what else do I need to change incrementally is it going well so just keeping a temperature check on it uh first and foremost you'll need to start to look at a Pilot or a proof of concept as we call it um and you get some learnings from it you work with a CO User Group end users customers a select group of users who will tell you if there is a value proposition and if there's a need for a business case to actually scale um the technology that you're piloting and it's really important to do that step uh because without that there is no scaling and to understand how you need to scale what you need to scale and where do I invest I think the pilot and the pock approach and that's a very common approach in within the Enterprise space uh once you've done the pock then it's important to understand that even scaling requires the right metrics and and and measurements and monitoring as you go along because even when you're scale you still need to do little pivots so you need to work again with the right people partners and platform to make sure that whatever whoever you adopt to help you implement this change they've got all those things in place that will help you navigate make those little pivots um adjust the sales as we call it and make sure they deliver value right um because once you've gone further down some a deep Tech scenario it's very hard to come back up if you haven't measured it along the way yeah yep and you know you talked about some of the ideas around how to make sure that the Project's successful just so that audience can get a glimpse on what does success look like um along with some of the Innovative clients or projects you've worked on are you able to share some interesting uh case studies with us that people might find interesting sure um success looks like is when it's made a significant difference in their workflow and people can either learn better do things just a little bit more faster and more efficient right so something that comes to mind is we worked with a large University in in implementing a an augmented reality courseware for learning Anatomy which is a really complex um complex concept to learn otherwise right so the intention is that this isn't a standalone application it needs to be working in their classroom with their cours Weare so again as with any other Enterprise that needs to reside within their um their systems and processes and structures uh and what this meant was people can bring their own device so this is not something that the university would provide devices as well so you remove that barrier straight away so it's BYOD could go on people's mobile phones and tablets if they've got um and even if they can't use those mobile phones and tablets there's a digital way to actually run it on your laptop as well so which means that you kind of make adoption a lot more easier for users to use you don't give them any fancy names you just say here's a very easy coare tool for you to understand this piece of anatomy learn a bit better work out how the muscles um and the nerves work hand inand how they contract how they expend is's a very easy way so for us uh and this was something which happened like 5 six years ago right so when the technology was still nent phones and connectivity was still not as good as right now um but for us the fact that the classroom embraced it uh took it on and five six years later they're still using it uh within the classroom space and consistently growing it I think that for me was exciting um and the key learnings we had was the fact that working with the end user um understanding what their pain points were and working with the lecturers who kind of knew what learning outcomes that they wanted to get what they wanted to measure and giving them a free reign on how they wanted to run the classroom have control over what data that they wanted to see and have dashboards that help them uh grow that I think was very interesting for us so it was just not just the content it was also data it was also not altering how people learned in the classrooms significantly but just introducing just another tool a digital tool that enhanced their learning but also reduced the time that the facilitators and lecturers had to spend within the classroom space as well so we look at that as small digital tools that are introduced along in the workflow which shifts small parameters to a greater extent and incremental change rather than disruption um which is a lot harder especially for um you know they're not they're not uh universities are never looked upon as innovators but in this case they were they embraced it um done the right way it sticks yep yep totally agree with you and you raised a very important point which is change your incents like one step at a time I think you know in today's world at least some people have this expectation that they want the results quick uh they want things happening quick however like sometimes going slow allows you to go really fast and I think that's that's quite an important uh note there and the reason I say that is I guess one of the things that I've been personally finding is that that whole R&D space of doing customer question like customer development which is like speaking with the customers the different stakeholders getting feedback you know it's sometimes a gring process for you know uh new entrepreneurs however when you speak with the customers and the different stakeholders and get the feedback it really refines the product but also it allows you to think about things that you thought weren't important but become very important for the end user which uh sometimes it is that you know it's not having a million things in the product it's a very interesting point to raise because it also makes you think about all the things that you thought were important but it's actually not important at all the end users yeah because they give you the most the best feedback and also sometimes very brutal so um as an entrepreneur I think um you need to you need to love your product but you need to love your users even more because you need to be able to say yep we' worked so hard on it but I'm going to scrap it because the users are telling me there's no real value the customers are telling me I'm not going to pay for it because there's no real value so it it more often it tells us what's not working um and when things are working no one ever really says anything right I mean I've been in a situation where we've had a customer for about 10 years and um they said to us and we said we need to upgrade your applications you know it's a digital application and you know in Digital Life seven or eight years is a long time to be running an application and they said it's a fantastic application that's the first time we've ever heard them say that it is a fantastic application everyone uses it every day and everybody knows how to use it it's running I have no issues please don't touch it yeah yeah um and then just I guess in terms of just uh the customer and the whole decision- making process you know one of the things I'm seeing is a lot of uptake even in the Australian business environment uh is there's been numerous applications from my understanding whether it's um workplaces think about how they can use experiential Technologies to onboard new employees um train them you know in the real estate space couple of new startups are implementing it to Showcase clients virtually so they can have real feel around the property but even I think the Army has also like uh tested out this capability to do real life trading without you know impacting the um Workforce health or the Civ you know consequences of having a onfield experience I guess the thing that comes in my mind is that for a lot of organizations there's always uh a innovator within the organization looking to uh get buying to test these new ideas and um I guess allowed the decision makers to also approve this obviously one of the key stakeholders in a lot of organizations is the CFO um you know I understand in your role previously you were in the uh fintech space and then you transition you know you've um gone through your career to become a CFO as well so it'll be good to get you uptake on as a decision maker um what allows what kind of things are they looking for to say yes let's try out this technology let's invest our time in it let's invest our uh commercial Investments as well in this so it's a it's a great question because the CFOs are the key stakeholder in making any information technology um or digital transformation decisions right because they are the own and only stakeholder who's got visibility across a business quite deep in terms of what's Happening commercially what's happening financially and where where are we bleeding money right so and more often they're not digital transformation projects are the ones that will be bleeding a lot of cash if not done well so from that perspective I think one of the key things that I have um I've worked in in finops and in my previous roles I've worked in in working through transformation projects to understand you know the the cost and and and funding and how do I manage the the budgets and things like that and one of the things that I found was um the key challenge as a CFO that I've had in the past was not the cost of Technology um not the cost of data but it was actually the cost of implementing and managing the technology was never SP on was never spot on you could never put a price on how much am I going to pay to get this into my Enterprise and to manage it on an ongoing basis because any boundaries that you put on that is is is is just blown out of proportion so I think the the whole system integrator um or a Consulting approach and on how we engage with service providers on how they're going to actually orchestrate this Pock to scalable solution to ongoing maintenance to upgrades that needs to be thought out upfront and that's where finding the right partner becomes really really key because more or less the CFO is not just trying to look I was not really trying to look at the the badge of success but I was trying to look at what's the group of project people I'm looking working with how what are their values like can I trust them so when I do a when we used to do a Pock it was almost always capped off with the PO and the PO was always a gateway to say here's a very limited budget a small budget Pok but I'm going to put the gates up there because I'm not going to commit to any scaling until we've completed the park and I know there's a business case and then you need to work together on a business case on what scaling implementation looks like and trying to keep them fixed cost yeah was always um the key and I think with the way technology has evolved now when the software space is evolved now getting fixed cost for those um soft items that has always been in Shades of Gray is getting easier and easier I also think that enterprises now have a a lot more bargaining power than they used to because CFOs are very clear and they have a very clear understanding on what implementing technology looks like now as opposed to 20 years ago so which is really great because they know what we're talking about when we talk about service side when we talk about you know the infrastructure costs and Cloud costs and things like that they're completely aware of what the choices are and and you know what the vendor um Persona and the vendor groups look like so makes our discussion as a software vendor really easy uh but challenging for us to substantiate a lot of the stuff that we do but makes it very easy to have that conversation but when I was on the CFO side um there was always Shades a gray and I'm seeing that has actually kind of tap it off now um CFOs are very very switched on about technology costs because that underpin everything else um how the businesses are run these days so yeah yeah well said and the CF gave you a good on what was that Raji I said hopefully that gave you a good Insight on on on the um the knowledgeable CFO or the the the it backed cf4 these days um compared to when I started my career actually yeah well I think you know you shared a very important point because the reality is um anyone that's looking to get buying to test out these Technologies they do ultimately need the cfo's approval that's just the reality of things and I think for people to understand the context that CFOs are operating in uh it really helps allow them to build up the business case within the business to go you know this is what we think this would be a good uh Innovative idea to test out as a business um I because I used to actually uh work with a lot of CFOs in the past and I do believe the CFOs role has changed significantly uh in the sense that they're getting heavily involved in it uh but as you said also like because they're getting heavily involved in the whole it space because of the digital transformation that uh their remit falls under is they are getting aware of okay well what works what doesn't work they're connecting with the peers as well to learn okay what's working what's not because you know over the years there's been even in Australia there's been like hundreds and thousands of dollars to millions of dollars of just failed transformation happening within the business where they're investing a lot of money in the infrastructure and then realizing that the Implement implementation hasn't gone quite well um I think you know you do really raise an important point which is it's not just about the technology it's about the whole implementation on boarding the change management piece getting the users actually getting uh the Buy in and wanting to use the solution as well I think that's quite critical when we look at Enterprises we look at implementing small digital tools that incrementally provide the change that they need right so they're not they don't need to re redo or overhaul their infrastructure and I think that's going to stick in the future in looking at digital tools um that will change a workflow and then incrementally grow that out so that the large transformation projects are are not going to be viable because they there's no end point to to it and they kind of just evolve into something else over a period of time um and I think CFOs are in favor for small changes which have most impact yeah yeah well I think it's it's about the trust as well like I think once you've been able to show you know yes we've been able to deliver this small pocket then you can kind of build up on that as well I mean I think time has gone quite fast because I'm looking at the time now I'm like oh my God 27 minutes is already gone um but as we come closer to the end of the podcast some of the things that I just wanted you perspective on is you know there's a lot of tools recently whether it's the Google Glasses the Facebook VR to different Technologies I mean is there any key trends that people should kind of keep an eye out for Raji I think um generally that space is evolved quite a bit um from where we started off so certainly organizations are now working through an XR strategy which was never the case when we started off 10 years ago um and when right now large organizations are putting an exos strategy through so the acceptance that uh post the AI XR and aai which is AR and Ai and VR and AI that wave is just going to hit in the next five years so being prepared for that and understanding what are the use cases and how can my organization uh adopt it what do I test and tease out now so I'm ready when everything scales being a uh adoption these days takes much faster and more quicker like you know with open Ai and you know how they gained a million users is much faster than anything else right so when things hit so you're not lagging behind but also know that there are trusted Partners available to navigate you through that Journey so when you have questions feel free to pick up the phone and speak to people like us who can tell you what is it that you need to be looking at from an EXA perspective what kind of an Enterprise are you small medium uh and how can we do something for you that fits the budget but has an impact and you're ready when the wave hits so it's all about making sure you're staying um a breast of the trends the devices are evolving with apple coming into play now the devices will continue to evolve we're not quite there from a lightweight um and and from a connectivity perspective on how easy it is to use a but I think in in in the five years we will get there as well so just being aware speaking to the right people and having your own right partner really makes it easier for you you're not alone in this journey and there are lots of experts to guide you through that yeah and you know you you bring up a important part particularly I think your last Point around the expert piece which is I think in today's world there just so much information happening so much Trends happening like for a lot of leaders it is very hard to keep up to date with just everything at a deep level as well I think one of the tips that I really resonated with um was almost getting like the leader the key role is to almost have a helicopter view of what's happening in terms of Trends and if there's any Trends that's really applicable to them really you know leveraging their context leveraging um people like yourself Raji to get a more in-depth understanding of how does that impact their business uh because you know to be an expert in everything I think in today's world is just becoming so hard because the pace of innovation is just literally increasing like faster and faster and I think the only way we can really get through and really um gain unique perspective is to get a holistic view PE up to date and then really you know connect with this self Raji around the more specific technicalities of what's happening in specific space very noisy space it's a very noisy space at the moment the technology landscape so so make sure you you you find the right and and it's very easy to connect with experts these days um between LinkedIn and and other and other sources um you know reach out to people ask the questions and when you feel like you can trust someone and someone aligned with your Enterprise values and and what you're trying to do you know have a chat to them and understand what can be done because it's easier to be prepared then to then um react um when things have hit and you need to catch up

2024-01-02 11:12

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