Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Arish Ali, CEO of Skava (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What I’m hearing is that your retailers are looking for two things. One is they’re looking to do more customization because the experience that they need to provide is more sophisticated. At the same time, they’re looking to cut down on implementation times. Those are the two trends that summarize this conversation. Is that accurate?

Arish Ali: Yes. In the lower end of the retailer spectrum, they’re like, “I want it all fully managed.” The upper end is the opposite. They also don’t want to continue with existing legacy platforms because they’re not good enough. They realize that if their companies are pitted against companies like Amazon, they really have to differentiate. That’s where technology and platform can make a big difference.

They don’t want to be dependent on large platforms which traditionally have been very good at keeping pace with the e-commerce trend. They’re looking at building something of their own that can give more flexibility and control. They’re willing to spend. They’re willing to spend on people. They’re hiring large teams. There are other retailers who are also on the same journey.

We have built our platform in a very modular, flexible architecture. What that means is we are able to help some of these larger retailers. When they’re building out their e-commerce platform, we are able to show them that we have already built an e-commerce platform. This is an interesting conversation because they want a level of control. They don’t want to be fully beholden to a vendor. They can license source code and take full ownership and control. They can license our full platform or specific microservices.

Sramana Mitra: What are some examples of your most successful clients that display your capabilities in full regalia?

Arish Ali: Kohl’s is one of our largest customers. Then we have other clients who have publicly talked about Skava like Staples.

Sramana Mitra: Staples and Kohl’s are what you believe sites that are particularly interesting.

Arish Ali: We are powering Kohl’s mobile experience right now. There are quite a few others on that list.

Sramana Mitra: Where are the open problems in the e-commerce space? Where would you place your bet?

Arish Ali: The best user interface is no interface. A lot of my work has been in helping customers with better UI. We have been in a place where we have done tap, click, and type. For thousands of years, that has not been the way we interact. Technology is getting to a point where interfaces can disappear where the UI doesn’t have to intrude. I think that’s the trend that has excited me the most especially with AI.

Retailers have huge amounts of data that they have with them. You look at Amazon Echo for example, that’s a great example of voice-based interaction. That’s the harbinger of the future. That is the biggest opportunity for entrepreneurs. How do you take advantage of the technology that is out there and make it invisible?

Sramana Mitra: Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 5 in the series : Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Arish Ali, CEO of Skava
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