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Startup Saturday: A data science tool that sorts information to impact bytes
Data Analytics is the buzz word these days. So, what is it that Rubics does, given that there are so many players in the field doing the same thing?
The Elections 2019 are upon us and the noise is at their peak. Perhaps the cacophony would make some sense with Rubics - a Data Science tool developed by Prashant and Anand Pansare, the co-founders.
Prashant said that they launched the product last year end.
“With Rubics, political parties can easily leverage social media data to increase the voter turnout and swing the elections in their favour. It can help enterprises make sense out of data in a seamless way, help academia and researchers,” said Prashant.
Data Analytics is the buzz word these days. So, what is it that Rubics does, given that there are so many players in the field doing the same thing?
“Today you have a whole lot of data, you have people talking to people, machines talking to machines, sensors and so on generating tonnes of data every minute and to make sense and derive some deep insights from all this structured and unstructured data, you need some powerful technology. So, we wanted to build a product that would fill this gap, make a product that would be easy to use, be data agnostic and not require a big team working on it. Rubics helps a company make sense of data that is generated from any source and in an easy way,” he said.
To help people gain insights into data in an easy way and from varied sources was what drove the brothers to develop the tool. So how did they make this product that is data agnostic and easy to use?
“From the beginning, we set the bar very high. We wanted our product to be simple, crunch data across verticals and without the help of an army of engineers and data scientists. With this in mind, we began our task in 2017,” he said.
Prashant said that melding from services mindset to products culture was the most challenging transformation.
“In India we are used to delivering software services and not really build products to that degree. So, most engineers are not geared towards it. This was quite a challenge for us while developing Rubics. Moreover, we have set very high targets for ourselves,” he said.
Prashant explained that earlier, one has to go through hundreds of data points and processes to derive at scientific insights.
“What we have done now is to reduce these process models to a single digit activity,” he said.
The brothers began their work in 2017 with a small team. In the same year, they were invited by Business Finland to participate in a global innovation programme for R&D projects. “Rubics was at the concept stage, we were far away from an minimum viable product, but we still went ahead, to test the waters. We got a terrific response, and their innovation council recommended the product idea for research funding. It not only validated the need for such a technology, but also boosted our confidence for product globalisation mission,” he said.
The Finland experience showed the Pansare brothers that their gut instinct about a data analytical tool such as theirs was right. With further work they were ready with Rubics in 2018 end.
THE SELLING STRATEGY
Prashant said that they asked some of the large enterprises to throw a ‘2-week data challenge’ on Rubics and showed them the outcome.
“Our data crunching showed the first few companies that Rubics gave 90% accuracy as against 70% accuracy with the tools they were using. This itself proved Rubics case,” he said.
A large bank in Singapore has signed up Rubics for automating their News Analysis & Risk Classification and one of world’s biggest auto-OEM runs Rubics for predictive intelligence, demand forecasting and sentiment analysis in after sales service areas.
