BIS TECHNOVATORS | Mate Labs Offers Full Suite Automated Supply Chain Solutions
With a vision of democratising AI and ML for non-developers, Karnataka based, Mate Labs has built Mateverse which is the world’s fastest and most accurate Demand Forecasting engine. Mate Labs provides fully automated, highly accurate, highly granular demand forecasting solutions for FMCG/CPG/Pharma Companies with the world’s fastest proprietary AutoML tech to operate at scale and speed. Rahul Vishwakarma, Co-founder and CEO, Mate Labs while talking with Nitisha talks about its latest products and ahead strategies.
Kindly explain Mate Labs and how the company has been focusing on ‘digitizing and building a sustainable supply chain’?
Mate Labs provides the world’s fastest and most accurate demand forecasting solutions for global supply chains. Our core AI approach has enabled us to develop the world’s fastest AutoML technology, allowing us to build solutions that use our platform “Mateverse” to reduce supply chain response time from 3 to 4 months to near real-time response.
The pandemic has demonstrated that Supply Chains must be resilient, extremely agile, and dynamic in order to service consumers even in the most adverse conditions. Businesses are slowing down as a result of supply chain redundancies. We can only achieve the highest levels of responsiveness and robustness, as well as true innovation, by removing these redundancies and transitioning to an automated workflow.
Responsible businesses cannot afford to be uncertain: they must incorporate necessary technology into their operations, automate processes and transform into a responsive supply chain for the greater good
Mate Labs is actively working with Fortune 500 organisations around the world to build fully automated next-generation supply chains. We’ve already automated the demand planning process, and we’re working on inventory management, vendor management, distribution, and logistics automation.
Talk about the scope and challenges of digitizing supply chains in India – What should businesses be focusing on?
India is the world’s second-largest provider of supply chain and logistics services. However, insufficient infrastructure has slowed growth and development. Misconceptions about technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, combined with an implementation process riddled with lengthy, time-consuming decision-making processes, redundancies, and poor KPI evaluation, have resulted in slow digitization across industries. Organizations also waste too much time and money searching for the perfect solution when they should be focusing on changing their implementation strategy.
The present market volatility, increased competition, and the desire to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into multiple business activities have all fueled demand for precise, dependable, easy to implement and real-time demand forecasting solutions.
We are working to address this industry-wide need while also reducing implementation time and optimising it for immediate results. By incorporating Mateverse, businesses can easily address most pressing issues confronting the supply chain ecosystem such as redundant processes, lack of data driven accurate planning & forecasting, lack of dynamic planning.Businesses that use our AutoML technology can implement our solutions and begin seeing results in weeks, as opposed to traditional solutions that can take up to 6-8 months to fully implement and see results.
Kindly share your special offerings?
Mate Labs offers a full suite of automated supply chain solutions built with our proprietary AutoML technology. Mate Labs’ predictions are real-time and 100X faster than traditional methods because our demand forecasting platform is the fastest forecasting AI engine in the world. This provides companies with a 5%-30% increase in planning/forecasting accuracy, assisting clients in reducing inventory loss or opportunity loss through the supply chain process and improving their bottom line. Our current suite of solutions help supply chains optimise processes such as:
- Demand Forecasting
- Supply Planning
- Demand Driver Analysis
- Crisis Forecasting
- New Product Forecasting
Kindly highlight any unique project you are working on and also launch in the loop in the coming time?
We are currently developing a solution with a global consumer care brand to predict and manage Slow Moving and Obsolete Inventory (SLOB). Despite the fact that obsolete inventory has one of the most negative effects on the bottom line of any organisation, the complexity of the challenge has led to no solutions on the market that are specifically designed to predict obsolete inventory. Because of our AI-first approach and AutoML technology, we were able to crack the code and create a first-of-its-kind solution that organisations can use to reduce SLOB in their supply chain.
How do you differentiate Mate Labs from other AI companies?
Mate Labs currently provides Fortune 500 companies with the most accurate and timely demand forecasts. The predictions are generated using our proprietary AutoML technology, which is currently the fastest in the world. Because of our flagship product, Mateverse, a platform that automates the entire data journey from data processing to data modelling and predictive analytics, we can quickly create and deploy supply chain solutions. This distinguishes us from the competition by enabling us to provide quick, accurate, and precise solutions based on our AutoML technology.
When compared to other companies that provide AI-based solutions, our demand forecasting solution is 100x faster than industry standards, and we can increase demand accuracy from 5% to 30%. Our AI-powered solutions can also be easily implemented in a short period of time with minimal manual intervention. Using Mateverse allows users to take a data-driven approach to planning, resulting in a 5% increase in forecast accuracy and a 1% increase in bottom line.
What improvement and issues have you seen so far during COVID wave?
Many business sectors were completely disrupted by the pandemic. Consumer purchasing behaviour in sectors such as FMCG, F&B, and Retail has shifted dramatically. Companies faced significant challenges such as supply planning, distribution, and customer acquisition, and the multiple lockdowns exacerbated the problem of declining sales.
However, innovation is underway, and COVID-19, as a digitisation catalyst, is now providing unprecedented opportunity, opening doors to analytics and automation in an industry that has long been reliant on manual processes.
Recognizing this new requirement in mind, Mate Labs was the first company in the world to develop prediction models based on COVID. When the first wave hit, demand was at its most irregular in a highly volatile market, and most FMCG firms struggled with forecasting and balancing supply and demand; however, we are glad to have assisted in the forecasting of demand for both essential and non-essential products.
One of the interesting cases that Mate Labs was able to address was for a well known global consumer care brand. Even before the pandemic hit its peak, hand sanitizers became an integral part of personal hygiene all over the world. In fact, it was one of the first items to vanish from supermarket shelves. When the global consumer care brand sought us for assistance in resolving their issues, we took the leap straight away. The brand witnessed a difference in accuracy of up to 55 percent between their internal estimates and ours after using our Demand Forecasting solution built using Mateverse, our flagship AI Platform.
The pandemic emphasised the need of having tools such as demand forecasting to help with decision making during a crisis. The use of advanced analytics insights greatly improves how businesses model, anticipate, and plan in order to reduce bias, discover trends, manage difficulties, and uncover development opportunities.
