A common motif in industries such as Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Pharma, Food & Beverages, and other regulated industries is their long product value chain from R&D to eventual product commercialization, and the regulatory overhang on the same. The entire value chain is broken, leading to ineffective handoffs between its parts and multiple sources of truth. AiZen Algo Private Limited saw a fantastic opportunity to build an integrated platform that can combine all these fragments, their multiple processes, and activities to deliver enhanced productivity. That is how ZenVector™, the integrated AI and Software platform from AiZen Algo, came into being to connect and enhance the productivity of R&D, Clinical Trials, Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Quality Analysis, Quality Control, and other processes. Its mission is to ensure that every food or medicinal product consumer – right from a toddler to an 80-year-old senior citizen – can confidently consume these products feeling assured about their efficacy and quality. ZenVector™ is a versatile platform that can operationally transform the way Drug development/manufacturing, clinical trials, analytical testing labs, food testing labs, biotech start-ups, and many others currently function.

L to R: Venkatesh Natarajan(VP, Engineering) & Chandra Dasika (CTO & Co-Founder)

AiZen Algo is an AI powered, and Cloud enabled product company focusing on delivering smart solutions to transform the way food and medicinal drugs are being developed, tested and validated during clinical trials and eventually manufactured and supplied to pharmacy stores. In short, the company has been ardently building a long value chain of software applications which are AI powered and are potentially delivered over the cloud. Leveraging AI, ZenVector™ ensures workforce effectiveness, improvement to the quality, and delivery of safer medicines. Further, it eliminates human subjectivity in executing these processes, and reduces variability associated with the SOPs, thereby leaving limited scope for any human interpretation. Moreover, the company has been delivering a B2C feel to its enterprise B2B products, where comparable products have been clunky, ensuring robust UX architecture and designs delivering world-class user navigation experiences, thereby improving user product adoption rates.

With ZenVector™, organizations in the Life Sciences, Food & Beverage and Beauty and Wellness industries can build robust quality culture, an integrated source of truth, reduce enterprise-wide risk and deliver higher RoI.

Predict, Prevent & Process!

Chandra Dasika, CTO & Co-Founder, articulates, “We follow a Predict, Prevent and Process – 3P framework, to reduce incidents of undesired transactions. We try to Predict any potential overdue or impending quality issues in advance, Prevent these through providing real time enterprise-wide quality insights to QA teams, and Process the rest of the transactions successfully”. Strictly abiding by this framework, and through infusion of latest technologies such as AI, Digital Twin and Robotics, the company helps organizations operating in regulated industries such as food, medicinal drugs, and cosmetics achieve the highest quality in product delivery. Moreover, its QualZen+™ suite ensures all workflows related to Quality Events are fully automated and allows users to immediately start using a GMP (Good Manufacturing Practices) compliant application, with pre-defined yet configurable workflows.

Zooming into their product portfolio, ZenVector™ platform has separate products that can smartly address all Documentation, Learning, Quality and R&D needs of any Regulated entity. The platform hosts a Document Management System (DocuZen™), Training Management System (EduZen™), Quality Management System (QualZen™), Audit Management System (AuditZen™) and upcoming products in the R&D space – Electronic Lab Notebook (NoteZen™) and Laboratory Information Management System (LabZen™ LIMS). All these can be delivered as a fully integrated suite of products (ZenVector™), or companies can pick individual products to meet their current need. All of them are designed to be delivered either as plain products or with an AI wrapper to bring in the Hyperautomation elements. Further, they can also be delivered on the cloud and as a SaaS solution.

AiZen Algo has come up with its Digital Cohort strategy through which customers can automate an entire value chain segment, if not the entire value chain itself, thereby achieving local maxima in their operations. Through combining AI and Robotics into their Software, AiZen Algo aims to deliver Pharma 5.0 with a consummative and transformative experience to its customers.

Aizen Algo intends to deep engage its prospects and customers alike through deploying an omni-channel digital strategy to spread and enhance awareness about its products. The company has been slowly ramping up its presence across all online Digital channels such as Google Search, LinkedIn Ads, targeted Account Based Marketing), CRM tools and others. Chandra adds, “We are a young firm, and our marketing budgets are only finite, and this inspires us to be innovative in targeting higher bang for every marketing buck, driving flatter conversion funnels and in trying new growth hacks to drive engagement.”

Utmost Customer Delight

Post sales is the crux of AiZen Algo’s operations! Being a B2B firm, its prime focus is on ensuring customer delight or positive voice of customer captured through omni-channels. Chandra says, “We grow along with the client. We support the client during pre-sales and post-sales with a mix of customer success team and support staff to ensure client success.”

Further he adds, “… building a great B2B product company is challenging, not because product development is tough. In B2B, the decision makers and eventual users are always two distinct groups. There are barely half a dozen folks involved in the decision making, but the products are eventually used by thousands of users at these firms. There are no effective current feedback channels for these thousands of users to voice their concerns on real time basis. This frustration builds up over period; and haven’t we often noticed how the experience for both customer and the vendor always goes downhill from the second year onwards?”  At AiZen Algo, they are pursuing aggressive adoption of technology to ensure each user concern and issue is heard and addressed in a stipulated period, thereby delivering a delightful experience. On the other hand, enterprises who have invested in AiZen Algo’s products also relish solid business outcomes.

In the recent times, building a software product has a low entry barrier. The real barrier lies in the path of how one translates deep domain knowledge into delightful user experiences using latest technology and current thinking, and in the process takes the state-of-the-art to the next level. Chandra asserts, “The three main strengths of our team include deep domain knowledge, solid understanding of technology and ability to imbue the same in their way of working and life, and delivering delightful user experiences on the back of a robust UX architecture.” This has been possible by the team by staying abreast of the advancements in AI, NLP and Computer Vision, following up on nifty developments & advancements in Open-Source Technologies as they are inexpensive and well-supported through community development framework, and keeping track of advancements in low-code and no-code frameworks that can help them iterate on the software side of the products faster, and focus their energies and investments on increasing the smart product quotient through AI, and in delivering these products using Cloud technology.

An Ace Team

AiZen Algo’s team holds a combined experience of 150+ years spanning Life Sciences, Risk Management, Quality Control, Technology, Marketing, and other domains. Chandra is a Chemical Engineer from IIT Bombay and a Data and Digital leader with 18 years of experience in delivering best-in-class digitalization solutions to several industries, including Healthcare, Finance, Technology, eCommerce, and others. He has led large technology & AI led change programmes successfully for global corporates over several years. He commenced his career with JP Morgan Investment Banking and then worked with large conglomerates such as S&P and Tata Group.

Krishna, Chief Sales Officer, AiZen Algo, is an IIT Madras and IIM graduate who started his career as an Investment Banker after his B-school. He then found his calling in digital marketing and online sales and has remained a digital marketing evangelist for 15 years. He has led Online Sales and marketing across both large MNCs and start-ups, and has successfully built and scaled his own start-up.

Venkatesh Natarajan, VP – Engineering, has a Masters in Artificial Intelligence and brings in 20+ years of technology leadership experience in all facets of IT product development and business analytics implementations. Venkat has led large cross functional and geographically distributed teams to successfully build and implement enterprise scale applications for customers in India and overseas. His areas of expertise include defining R&D strategy, long term technology roadmaps, product architecture for building robust applications, building cloud enabled solutions and reusable frameworks.

Coki Cruz, who is a celebrated FDA regulator is on AiZen Algo’s scientific advisory board. He drives all the improvements in the company’s products and spends time with the product management team to update them on new regulations.

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Innovations Galore

Innovations at AiZen Algo happen on two fronts. First, it is the solid team of Product Managers with deep domain expertise who stay abreast of new Pharma & Food regulations, and provision the same in the products. And second, its strong Software Engineering and Data Science team comprising of several youngsters who are hungry to learn and adopt modern technologies to drive the innovations on the product development front. Overall, Innovation at the company is a democratic process, rather than the responsibility of driving the agenda being fixed with one or two individuals.

The pace of innovation delivered by a bunch of young employees is what excites Chandra the most about the sheer potential AiZen Algo has. Finally, Chandra lets the secret sauce out concluding with a message to all the aspiring data scientists and practitioners, “To become a successful data scientist, you should inculcate strong critical thinking skills, analytical skills, math skills not limited to Calculus, Matrix Algebra & Statistics, and most importantly, coding skills”.