Willing to help in fight against Covid-19: Velamakanni of Fractal Analytics

After the outbreak of Covid-19, Fractal quickly scaled up efforts to provide empathy towards its staff, customers and vendors. The AI firm is now set to cross $1 bn in revenue

The cafeteria at artificial intelligence company Fractal Analytics’ office in India started its operations again in January this year. Last year in March, after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, Fractal not only swiftly enabled its employees to work from home but quickly scaled up the efforts to provide empathy towards its workforce, customers and even vendors. The office cafeteria, a vendor, had been serving company-sponsored meals to the employees every day. Now about 97 per cent of Fractal’s staff work from home. But Fractal made the decision to take care of the entire catering staff and protected their salaries for the full year.

“The moment we were going for (WFH), the first thing that struck me is that these guys (cafeteria staff) may go out of the job,” said Srikanth Velamakanni, co-founder, group chief executive, and executive vice-chairman of Fractal Analytics. 

The company also decided that even if the performance appraisal of few employees was bad, it still would not let them go. “We told every single person at Fractal that we would have no firing whatsoever.”

The other strategy that helped the firm is that it frequently communicated with its employees who are spread across the globe. This included checking their anxiety levels and loneliness and hosting virtual coffee sessions and town hall meetings. The firm also provided various mental health-related services and roped in various psychologists and psychiatrists.

“We navigated the pandemic, in a way where at least Fractal’s character has stood out,” said Velamakanni. 

Fractal decided that it would measure everyone’s goal based on the company’s accomplishments. If the company achieved a particular profit, everybody would get 100 per cent of the variable pay for the year.

All these efforts have helped the firm in a big way. For the first time, Fractal has given every single employee 125 per cent of their variable pay as the company has crossed its goals. The firm closed FY21 with a revenue of Rs 1,000 crore, a growth of 16 per cent over 2019-20, and has set a target of clocking at least 37 per cent growth over it this fiscal.

“When the pandemic started, we were expecting there will be  (reduction of) 20 per cent in terms of the revenue, but there has been a growth of over 15 per cent,” said Velamakanni. 

The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of technologies such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence among enterprises, which are looking to work with firms such as Fractal. 

Fractal’s mission is to power every human decision in the enterprise. It brings AI, engineering, and design to help the world’s most admired Fortune 500 companies. The firm provides its services to industries such as healthcare and life sciences, financial services, consumer packaged goods and retail. Healthcare is now one of the fastest-growing verticals for the firm. 

Fractal has more than 2,000 employees across 16 global locations, including the United States, UK, Ukraine, India, and Australia. It hired about 600 new employees from April 2020 - January 2021. Witnessing good growth amid the pandemic, Fractal is planning to add 1,000 more to its headcount in FY22.

In 2019, private equity giant Apax bought a $200 million stake in Fractal, valuing it at $500 million, according to the sources. People in the know said that Fractal is now looking to raise another round of about $350 million from the investors. The firm is planning to invest $24 million in building products, expanding the sales team and research and development. It is also looking at investing $100 million for mergers and acquisitions (M&A) this year. 

Velamakanni said Fractal is aiming to cross $1 billion in revenue in the next four years.

An alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, Velamakanni co-founded Fractal in 2000  in Mumbai along with Pranay Agrawal, Nirmal Palaparthi, Pradeep Suryanarayan and Ramakrishna Reddy. 

Last year, Fractal Analytics was also one of the top technology companies, that were collaborating with governments, scientists, developers and health agencies to fight against Covid-19 on a pro bono basis. Last year, the Government of Karnataka (GoK) embarked on a journey partnering with the technology industry to provide fast care and support to Covid- 19 positive patients by streamlining patient management processes. This enabled thousands of frontline staff with timely and relevant information to manage better patient outcomes. Fractal was tasked by the state war room to build a technology solution that would integrate and harmonize Covid patient data across multiple platforms and applications.

Fractal had also been working in the area of vaccination. This is related to building smart features and innovations to reduce vaccine hesitancy. Fractal’s product businesses include Qure.ai to assist radiologists in making better diagnostic decisions. Qure.ai is now deploying AI-powered pandemic response solutions for Covid-19 management. This includes the Covid-19 progression monitoring tool, pandemic response care platform and technical and operations teams. It has also built a covid detection algorithm. “Multiple countries are using Qure.ai’s (solutions) including X-ray for covid detection,” said Velamakanni. 

Velamakanni sees the government as a big consumer of AI. This involves creating AI-based applications for citizen services, transparency and national health. Last year Fractal formed a technology partnership with Mumbai-based drone company ideaForge. Both organisations joined hands to provide artificial intelligence-based drone solutions useful for crowd monitoring, people and objects detection, object tracking and triggering alerts for actions. 

“Each of these things that we've done actually could potentially be used by the government in a significant way,” said Velamakanni.

He said the company is willing to help the government in the fight against Covid-19. For instance, forming ways to reduce vaccine hesitancy during the time when vaccines would be available but people may be reluctant to take the vaccine. The other aspect is helping to build technology for an efficient supply chain, storing vaccine at the right temperature and seamless roll-out of the vaccine across the country.

“Right now, we are not doing any of that (but) these are all good ideas,” said Velamakanni.

Fractal has also explored the idea of reducing vaccine hesitancy in the U.S. Besides public messaging, it involves the use of behavioural sciences to help create conviction among people to take the vaccine. “It is a good behavioural science and design problem,” said Velamakanni.