Exclusive Interview with Sarvesh Mahesh, Founder, and CEO, Tavant

Agility and innovation are two characteristics that define digital transformation. Given the wide expanse of operations and diversity of domains a company engages, quite often it becomes unfeasible to develop its digital products. In such cases, it is wise to seek the services of digital product development companies, to speed up prototypes for user testing. Tavant is a digital product and services company that provides innovative solutions powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning for businesses to achieve high operational efficiency. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Sarvesh Mahesh, Founder, and CEO, of Tavant.

1. Please talk about the legacy of Tavant, its vision and mission, and USPs?

"Our core values define what we want to be, how we want to act, and how we want to be perceived."

• We provide a swift, seamless, and cohesive workplace to enable excellence and engagement
• We inspire, engage and drive our people towards excellence in whatever they do
• We are an organization that nurtures innovative thinking and its application
• We inspire collaboration and celebrate teamwork
• We empower our people to be their best
• We are a team that promotes optimism and creativity so that people feel good about themselves and their work

Based on our core values, we have adopted 3 pillars of business success: People. Passion. Excellence.

We believe that when passionate people come together in an endeavor to achieve excellence, we build innovative products and solutions that create a profound impact on our customers' core business.

Striving to be the best in all that we do, Tavant is a company that builds impactful digital products and solutions for its customers. We achieve it through unparalleled passion, a high level of expertise, and a total commitment to our people – be it associates, customers, or other stakeholders.

At Tavant, another belief that is core to our legacy is that ideating, strategizing, deciding, and performing are done best when done collaboratively. We passionately intertwine the ideologies of diversity, equity, and inclusion to our organizational goals, align them with our purpose and ensure that everyone owns it. We encourage our people to embrace 'self-awareness' and understand their thoughts, passions, strengths, opinions, goals outside of work, and all the elements of who they are and bring their whole selves to work.

The Tavant Vision:

To be an expert in each market we enter, offering unquestioned value and extraordinary service to achieve mutual success and growth for our associates, customers, and shareholders.

The Tavant Mission:

Our mission is to drive customer success through impactful solutions. We achieve it through unparalleled passion, a high level of expertise, and a total commitment to our people and our customers.

2) Could you please explain Tavant's business areas and key markets?

Tavant has been the frontrunner in driving digital innovation and tech-enabled transformation across a wide range of niche industries such as Fintech, Manufacturing, Agtech, Media & Entertainment, and Retail in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific.

Our solutions, powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms, help improve operational efficiency, productivity, speed, and accuracy in the interconnected world to succeed in a rapidly changing business environment. Our key offerings include AI, ML, analytics, digital customer experience, enterprise applications & salesforce, development & quality engineering, cloud services, DevOps & Infrastructure, and advisory & consulting. We also have the expertise in catering to the niche and customized requirements of our customers like IoT in manufacturing, analytics first approach in Service Lifecycle Management, Flywheel approach, customized after-market solutions, productive maintenance, Machine Learning applications, industry-specific cloud solutions (Tavant Evolvx), cutting edge AI practice, Tavant's AI-powered Touchless Lending, etc.

Tavant specializes in product development in the Fintech (VΞLOX NXT, VΞLOX Digital Lending, Touchless Lending) and Manufacturing (Manufacturing Analytics, Product Registration, Warranty) domains. Powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities, they result in higher customer satisfaction and greater return on investment.

3) The Indian tech domain is highly jolted by established and start-up players. What makes Tavant stand out from others?

• Tavant helps its customers 'innovate at speed' and scale. The company seamlessly connects strategy, technology, and design to deliver transformative results while driving user engagement and adoption.
• Tavant's philosophy of 'inch wide, mile deep' has helped the company carve its niche, the one focus area that yields the best results. The company's 'prowess in technology and innovation', commitment to next-gen digital technologies, solutions-oriented ideas, and customer-focused approach motivate customers to partner with them.
• Tavant embraces an 'open-kitchen methodology' to maintain business transparency. The company provides a behind-the-scenes and soup-to-nuts look at how it operates. This enables them to improve customer engagement and enhance the quality and speed of decision-making.
• For Tavant, 'speed is both an obsession and a cultural bias'. Tavant's operating models are fast and frictionless and foster agility and simplicity.
• The company focuses on 'building trusted long-term relationships' with its clients and enables them to become high-performance businesses by being responsive, flexible, attentive, relevant, and consistently delivering value.

4) What role has Tavant played in the innovations of new technologies?

At Tavant, we inspire the expression of creative ideas and nurture innovative thinking and its application to big challenges as well as everyday improvements.

Our participative planning and decision-making process empower all our associates to think and talk about new and innovative ideas and suggestions and contribute to the company's business.

Three of our products that speak aloud about Tavant's innovative personality are:

• Tavant VELOX – Industry's first AI-powered digital lending platform, it is digitally disrupting the lending industry with an immersive omnichannel experience and high-velocity execution: from home discovery to loan funding. It provides an immersive lending journey for every stakeholder in the lending ecosystem.
• FinDecision – FinDecision, a "one of a kind" product, has created a disruption and changed the mindset in the mortgage industry. Tavant's FinDecision is a machine learning-based conditions management and decisioning platform. It improves loan fungibility, automates and streamlines conditions management, triggers decision-ready digital loan files and gears for better operational efficiency.
• Touchless Lending – Tavant's Touchless Lending platform is an exciting addition to its already robust suite of digital products and solutions, allowing customers to optimize their back-office, simplify their mid-office, and transform their front-end consumer experience into an efficient digital data stream. This AI-powered lending-as-a-service platform maximizes the use of data-driven processes to provide an end-to-end loan manufacturing experience.
• A future-ready Service Lifecycle Management – Tavant's future-proof SLM suite gives businesses a competitive advantage by enabling exceptional service experiences for their customers while driving high service revenues. Powered by AI and advanced analytics, Tavant's SLM suite enables organizations to gain better insights into end-to-end after-market processes like warranty and claims, service parts, field management, predictive maintenance, operating conditions, wear and tear, parts failures, and support. This suite also helps organizations provide a connected and seamless after-market experience, including customer support, service requests, service planning, service execution and field service, spare parts management, warranty management, and recalls.
• Tavant Warranty On-Demand (TWOD) – It is an AI-powered enterprise warranty platform offered on the Salesforce cloud. The on-demand platform offers end-to-end warranty lifecycle management and is the only solution of its kind on the force.com platform. TWOD is the only native warranty management app on the Salesforce platform that enables closed-loop warranty management, helping clients reduce warranty costs, increase supplier recovery and improve after-market efficiency.

5) Kindly tell us how Tavant is looking at adopting quantum technologies such as Metaverse, Web 3.0, Blockchain, and NFT in its offerings?

The virtual world has become a reality thanks to next-generation digital technologies. The demand for virtual reality has increased, and the metaverse industry is thriving. Organizations that adopt blockchain and the transition to Web 3.0 will reap enormous benefits.

While quantum technologies are still in their infancy in our offerings, there is no doubt that they are a significant step toward the future of IoT usage and an undeniably important part of the next big tech revolution. They will increase productivity and efficiency, reduce costs, and assist organizations in achieving better overall results. At the same time, security and data privacy concerns are important factors that could stymie the global metaverse market. Organizational decision-makers must take advantage of the benefits of the metaverse to remain competitive. Tavant has always been a market leader in providing transformative products and solutions as well as driving digital innovation.

6) How do you see the company and the industry in the future ahead? What are your growth plans for the next 24 months?

It's now been close to three years since we witnessed the first signs of the pandemic. We proved to be an incredible team and overcame challenges together. We broke the bottlenecks, adapted to the situation, and improvised and innovated. And this holds true for the entire industry as well.

At Tavant, our operational excellence, customer focus, disciplined execution of our strategy, and the team's dedication have enabled us to keep moving ahead and fast. We proved that one of our core values is that we never leave our posts.

Last year was an incredible year for us at Tavant. We crossed a few significant milestones that include substantial investments and continued growth momentum in our businesses. We are all geared up for newer challenges and more significant milestones in the coming years.

7) What is the current global associate strength of Tavant? Do you have any hiring plans for the near future? 

We have reached a global headcount of close to 3000 associates and still counting. With new business and customers lined up, we are growing and expecting to continue to do so at a pace we have never seen before. In addition, besides our long-established presence in the US and India, we are expanding rapidly in Europe, Latam, and the Asia Pacific.

8) What is your take on the government's decision to roll out the new Digital India Act? How is it set to revolutionize the Indian IT sector?

The technology landscape in India and globally are changing and evolving dramatically. The IT sector's contribution and impact have grown magnificently over the last few decades. And it will continue disrupting the way all other sectors do business. So, looking forward to what's in store.