Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Blueshift CEO Manyam Mallela (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: I could say that you are selling your technology. It’s a rich set of capabilities for the larger companies to personalize their marketing.

As a small company, I don’t have that option. I would like similar kind of rich capabilities for the smaller business in a way that is web self-service and doesn’t cost so much to sell. Maybe the Shopify merchants can buy.

One of the big gaps is applying AI to small businesses. Today most of the AI is being applied to large companies. We are at a stage of evolution where the AI skillset is still limited. There’s a finite number of people who can operate with complex AI algorithms. They are applying expertise in building products mostly for the enterprises who are willing to pay lots of money.

The entire SME segment is wide open and is not being catered to by AI technologies.

Manyam Mallela: I do agree partially. There is a lot of truth to that statement. We do have a lot of small retailers and e-commerce companies that use our platform today. Those are not Walmart-scale. They are able to use this platform. It is still not at a stage where a five-people company can use it. That is a wide-open space. If I’m a small shop with 5 to 10 people, how do I effectively use AI? That is still an open question.

Sramana Mitra: What is your pricing model? There are two key drivers. One is how easy it is to use. Two is pricing.

Manyam Mallela: We price based on three dimensions. One is how much data you bring into the platform. That is indexed to your active user base. You have probably enough user base to qualify.

The second is what kind of AI capabilities would you like to use. The third is, what channels you want to engage the customers on. The large companies will have a lot of these problems but a smaller company can certainly say, “I only want to do email. I have 100,000 users, and I’m only trying to use the best personalization technology today.”

We do have that price point that allows those customers to have it. There are a lot of mom-and-pop businesses that are fairly well-established businesses. 

Sramana Mitra: Because of the virtual company model, there is a tremendous number of virtual companies that are run by one, two, or three people and are pulling immense revenues. One of my favorite case studies is a solo entrepreneur with two people. They were doing $5 million a year. 

Manyam Mallela: A lot of Silicon Valley would envy that.

Sramana Mitra: Shopify merchants is a great category for this kind of business. There are tons of Shopify merchants who run these very small-scale virtual e-commerce companies that sell something and are doing great businesses. The number of employees is not determinant of their digital footprint or their revenue. These are very successful companies.

Manyam Mallela: Truth be told, we are price-sensitive as well.

Sramana Mitra: If I were advising your company, I would advise you to stay away, because it’s just distracting.

Manyam Mallela: You were talking about open spaces. If I think about the marketing domain and the people you just mentioned, they are not well-served today. We have a long way to go. I can see a path to that.

Sramana Mitra: Somebody has to focus on that. It’s a matter of focusing and positioning and not so much lack of capability at all. 

Manyam Mallela: There could be a lot of players in there. They could thrive. 

Sramana Mitra: For a small company, you can’t really do enterprise and these small business segments. Wonderful conversation. Thank you for your time.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Blueshift CEO Manyam Mallela
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