PDFs, emails, websites, and social media all exist within and contribute to a company's (or industry's) data repository, but how do you get this disparate data to "talk" to each other and really find what you are looking for when it's all structured differently?
With deep expertise in the finance industry stretching over twenty-five years -- including senior leadership experience at Discover, Morgan Stanley and Citibank -- Ashoke Dutt personally saw the challenges of having to make business intelligence analysis with 'unstructured' pieces of data and information. Sure, there are plenty of pre-existing solutions for measuring and analyzing revenue figures. But what about measuring those revenue figures against detailed customer feedback, industry white-papers, business emails, personal bank statements, and more?
Typically, with this kind of unstructured data, qualified experts first have to locate the data, extract complex, relevant information, compile and present visually comprehensible data to end business users - who are often not technical. "At times, this process of assembling the data and insights can take so long, you've forgotten what you were asking for in the first place," explained Dutt in an interview with Chicago Inno.
For the last few years, Dutt's company, Chicago-based Semantify, has been quietly building a user-friendly search engine for enterprise search -- essentially, a user can type in a question in conversational English, and the software delves into organizational data to produce instantaneous, customized, visually rich results. Semantify has created a single coded platform and free form query interface that have the underlying domain (or industrial) knowledge, and are able to find information relevant to your question from all available sources, in any format, and across organizational silos.
Available in two offerings - "industry pack" (available, lets say, for the banking industry) and "product pack" (for individual banking offerings like mortgage loans or credit cards), Semantify is able to customize their product by tapping into the client company or industry's already existing capabilities. Their goal is to ultimately empower the user to be self-serving.
Semantify Overview from Semantify on Vimeo.
Dutt, initially the company's primary angel investor, was presented with the opportunity to come on as CEO at a time of organizational leadership transition. Having previously worked on innovative offerings at Citibank -- like launching credit cards in brand new global markets -- Dutt decided to jump headlong into entrepreneurship. Since then, the company has raised more funding from investors like Fieldglass founder Jai Shekhawat, and the late Dick Kephart of KDWC Ventures. Shekhawat continues to be a very active advisor and strong believer in the technology - his presence, in a way, convinced Dutt to keep the company headquartered in Chicago despite employees on the east coast and in India. "Midwest investors are very pragmatic and practical - they invest strategically rather than what you might see in Silicon Valley. While that kind of growth certainly has its own merits, we just weren't ready for it," Dutt explained as to why he chooses to keep Semantify in Chicago.
"Midwest investors are very pragmatic and practical - they invest strategically rather than what you might see in Silicon Valley."
Having been granted 11 out of the 14 patent applications they have filed for, Semantify has been working on improving its UI/UX platform, transforming themselves into a cloud company, working on their pricing models, and developing industry specific solutions. Initially proven by over 40 pilot projects with major banking clients, Semantify has now expanded into the healthcare and insurance spaces, and is working with partners to take the technology to energy, retail and other industries.
Note: The story has been updated to reflect that Ashoke Dutt has over 25 years of experience, not 20 as previously reported. The story has also been updated to clarify how Semantify sources information and the startup's expansion plans.
(Image via Semantify)
