Spire Technologies is a Context Intelligence Technology organisation that provides contextual meaning out of textual data. The solutions are real time and are continuously derived from Big Data analytics.
Neeraj Sanan, Chief Marketing Officer, Spire Technologies & Solutions Pvt Ltd speaks with Zia Askari from TelecomDrive.com about the company’s innovative solutions around contextual intelligence and how it is targeting the Indian market.
Tell us something about the company’s core philosophy. How is Spire unique?
The whole concept is built on the fact that a lot of data is being generated from the available technologies and those all being connected to the internet. However, the problem lies in the fact that there is hardly anyone who is keeping a record of the huge data that is being generated every second.
About 90% of this data is textual in nature, unstructured in form and are untouched for analysis. The old HR software available in the market offers basic analysis that even Google provides or you have your own statistics which you analyze. But the main knowledge is derived when the actual information is received as per one’s exact need. We have achieved that. We have developed an intelligence platform that recognizes ‘context’.
We are a product based company; a better way to call us would be a platform based company. Our context intelligence platform, SCIP, Spire Contextual Intelligence Platform reads English and analyzes the language just like humans. It gives real-time outcomes on Big-Data.
If a system Integrator in India looking for government tender, will Spire can pinpoint search using contextual search?
Any kind if search is possible on the platform, the final business rule would be defined by the person using it. All kinds of data can be analyzed, be it matchmaking, risk taking, security etc. Spire provides the capability of analyzing the data.
The business would chalk out the business rule, as to what are they looking for. Any machine that can perform pattern analysis can acquire the tenders, but Spire can go a step ahead and find the relevance of the tender and the likelihood to get it.
What is your go to market strategy?
Currently, Spire is not focusing on platforms beyond HR. If someone comes with an ambition of building a platform in a certain vertical we are happy to partner with them, provide them with the technology of building the product and if they can’t build the product, Spire will
build it for them.
We are completely focusing on HR products ranging from recruitment research, ORM, Talent and Development, Training Needs Identification etc. We are currently focusing on our own platform.
As of now do you have any live customers?
Spire Technologies is an 8-year-old company. We had dedicated the initial 5 years in developing the product, and the last two years in selling it. We are arguably one of the spearheading companies in the country to build such a contextually intelligent search and technology platform.
Some of the leading global organizations with more than 10,000 employees, are using our unique HR technology platform ‘Spire TalentSHIP®.
How many people do you have working in the organization today?
We are a company of about 200 people, mostly based out of India. Our sales and services department is based out of our US office while we have our client servicing people in Mumbai and Chennai.
Is there any development towards certain key verticals?
What we have built is a product which is modular in nature. Being modular, it allows it to do functions- a separate core engine, a separate infrastructure layer and then there is a business layer.
The core engine and infrastructure engines are domain vertical and need agnostic, while the business layer is domain or vertical specific.
Therefore, whatever business rules have been written, starts speaking up. Once you have the idea in place, writing the business rule idea is an art. There are three arts involved- a) making the technology which is agile, easy to integrate, and scalable, b) Science of writing the business rule-completely for HR, c) and lastly the usage as more you use the system, the more accurate it becomes.
How do you compete with companies which have so much of muscle on the financial side?
The large organizations who have been traditionally building HR technologies and systems, HR tech is nothing new and has been done for a long time now. Annually in 2016, 17 Billion US dollars will be spent on HR technologies.
That’s the market today where large technology companies have already applied automation, still everyone is upset. Businesses are unhappy with the HR as the latter fails to get best-fit talent, HR is unhappy with the inability to write proper JDs and ill-treatment from everyone.
Companies are investing on technologies but are unable to acquire business benefits. So where has that huge 17 Billion gone? It has been spent on the muscles and nerves- the control system, the appropriate HR tech advisable for a company according to its business need. There is an input, output and a feedback loop.
Large organizations have only done their automated jobs. We are not competing with them. We are adding intelligence to something to which they don’t have, we have provided a technology that integrates with everything. We are not at a bottleneck.
Wifi aware and push messages, what kind of business prospect will this kind of solution have in a telecom scenario?
Your example of wifi aware and push messages, in popular terms can be called contextual sales and contextual marketing. The term ‘Contextual Marketing’ is about ten to eleven years old.
Marketers know how to use it. This contextual intelligence to do marketing is an old philosophy. However, they are doing only contextual analysis on structured data to provide contextual solutions, which is only 10% of all the data available to us.
Unstructured data is an analogy of context. The philosophy of the world is based on constructive reality. Learning is the function of the learner and not the teacher. The uniqueness in learning in this scenario would be context.
How do you look at the system integrator or community developers?
A lot of them are getting into smart cities and government projects. Are you also looking to integrate with any government projects?
We have the capability to integrate with any solution, practically 99.99% of the HR systems in the world. Typically, large organizations have various HR systems employed. We integrate with old systems that do not talk to each other. Tech giants don’t interact. Fundamentally we are adding efficiency in the world.
What are your growth plans?
We have grown b at about 333% this year over another 333% last year When you talk about disruptive technologies, you cannot talk about growth.
We don’t have any specific plan, we change our plans every year basis our business. Each business for us is a millions-dollar deal.
What is the customer base that you are targeting for 2017?
Currently we have, 9 global clients, we would want to have lots more, of course. We are only targeting fortune 1000 companies. We are looking at companies which have a global mindset led by managers who are visionaries.
