Host: So, it's been more than two decades of your professional journey. We will be pleased to hear about the key highlights that have shaped your career so far.
Rohini Kasturi: Yeah, my journey has been filled with excitement and great opportunities. As I moved from southern India back in the late nineties into Chicago, I initially worked at Bell Labs and Lucent, Bell Labs, and Motorola, doing a lot of mobile work, cell phone features work, and then moved to Silicon Valley back in 2003. I worked at good companies like Cisco and Juniper. After that, I did my own startup, founded a startup called Avni, which was the first hybrid cloud platform company in the world. We ended up getting acquired by Veritas in 2016.

After that, I was at a couple of security and infrastructure companies, Pulse Secure and SolarWinds, as the chief product officer. So, it's been an exciting journey working in the Silicon Valley, surrounding myself with a lot of great minds. Fantastic experiences for me.

Host: The great experience you have shared will be valuable for our audience. Just a quick question. In the same industry, from where you started with computers and phones to now with AI, how do you see the changes as both an audience and a technology professional?

Rohini Kasturi: I think for me, the good experience or the sweet experience is when we first developed code or features for cell phones, we hadn't seen cell phones. This was back in the late nineties or even early nineties, right? That was exciting for me. But at least nowadays, we get to see all the latest technologies getting implemented right away.

So, I think for me, the biggest blessing or opportunity has been being able to work on cutting-edge technologies, whether it's been mobile technologies or cloud technologies back in the early 2010s and so on, or working on data technologies starting in 2015, 2016, and then now working on AI technologies. So, it's been an exciting part of my life and journey. Great to be here.

Host: That's great to know. Considering your extensive background, what are your goals for HG Insights, and how do you plan to contribute to the company's growth?

Rohini Kasturi: So, I was a customer to HG Insights prior to joining HG Insights. SolarWinds was a customer of HG Insights. For me, when I saw HG Insights, I really felt the potential was huge. So, what the company does today is we actually mine and analyze a lot of data, like petabytes of data, and then we have our own AI engine on top of it to really get insights out of the data. The data is used to guide the go-to-market teams. We guide sales teams, marketing teams, rev ops teams, product teams, or analytics teams, depending on the size of the company and on their go-to-market decision-making.

In a sense, what we do is we take the data, and we can tell customers to help accelerate the revenue. That's what we do, right? We accelerate revenue for B2B companies using our data and AI insights. That's very powerful and very gratifying. So, when I looked at the company and its potential, it was huge. Especially the market timing for AI companies is so great.

Especially the market timing for AI companies is so great. The market timing for data-driven insights is huge. So that's why I joined the company. The goals are very clear. One is to make sure that we double down on what we do best, which is AI-driven insights. How do we double down on it? How do we go into more industries? We are very focused on tech companies right now. How do we go into more industries, whether it’s banking, finance, insurance, retail, etc.? The second thing is, how do we keep our innovation on the edge? What do we do from an AI perspective, from a generative AI perspective, that helps our customers even further? And third is, how do we grow globally? We have customers worldwide. How do we grow our presence? How do we help our customers even better?

Host: That’s insightful. I’m sure our audience will find it valuable as well. So, speaking about the innovative technologies that HG Insights offers, what do you think is the most impactful technology trend in the next five years?

Rohini Kasturi: I think, to me, the biggest technology trend is AI. There’s no doubt about it. AI has been there for decades, right? But it’s really taking off right now. The use of AI in everything we do is going to be massive. From a technology trend perspective, it's generative AI, which is generating new things, new content, new models. So, for example, we use generative AI to create insights. How do we create new insights from the data we have? That’s going to be huge. And then also from a technology trend perspective, cloud and data are still very strong. They are foundational technologies that will continue to grow.

Host: You mentioned AI and generative AI. How does HG Insights incorporate these technologies to provide value to its clients?

Rohini Kasturi: Yes, so, HG Insights has been incorporating AI for a long time. What we do is we take all the data we have, we mine it, and then we use AI models to create insights. For example, let’s say you’re a sales team. What we can do is, using our data and AI models, we can tell you which companies are more likely to buy your product in the next six months. That’s very powerful, right? That’s a very strong use case for AI. We can tell you which companies are going to spend more in the next year. We can tell you what kind of products they are looking for. That’s all using AI. So, the insights we create are AI-driven. And we continue to invest in AI, continue to innovate in AI, especially generative AI, to create even more powerful insights for our customers.

Host: That’s fascinating. It’s great to see how HG Insights is leveraging AI to drive business growth. So, as we wrap up, what advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs and professionals in the tech industry?

Rohini Kasturi: I think the biggest advice I would give is, always be curious and always be learning. Technology changes very fast. What you know today is not going to be relevant tomorrow. So, always be learning, always be curious. The second thing is, surround yourself with great people. You cannot do everything by yourself. Surround yourself with great minds, great people who can help you and who you can help as well. And third is, be persistent. There will be ups and downs; there will be challenges but be persistent. Keep going after your goals, and you will achieve them.

Host: Thank you, Mr. Kasturi, for sharing your valuable insights with us. It’s been a pleasure talking to you. We are sure our audience will gain a lot from your experiences and advice.

Rohini Kasturi: Thank you, Mr. Krishna, for having me. It was a pleasure talking to you.

Host: Thank you, everyone, for tuning in to this episode of Extra Mile by HiTechNectar. Stay tuned for more insightful episodes with industry leaders. Until then, keep exploring, keep learning. Goodbye!