In the spotlight: Anakage Technologies Private Ltd., a Bangalore-based company, is setting a new bar in taking end user support automation to a new level

With the rapid rise of IT, today’s firms are forced to resort to a high degree of digital dexterity in order to survive and compete. Therefore they need to invest in effective tools for IT Service desk automation and incident management while also reducing the mean time to resolve recurring issues. And service desk operations too need to be improved to foster greater collaboration, productivity and optimum end user experience.

In the view of the above mentioned, it is indeed a pleasure to introduce Anakage Technologies Private Ltd., a company, that offers a unique End User Support Automation platform for IT Service Desk combining automation and human intervention to reduce tickets at source.

Founded in 2013, Anakage Technologies initially catered to the Learning and Development segment using its proprietary technology but realized quickly that there is larger problem to be solved in End User Support domain. The available products for automating the domain offered little value for money as the ROI did not justify the investment. Founders, Prosenjit Ghosh and Rajeev Kumar, recognized this flaw, took the challenge and repurposed the Platform and Business model. Anakage platform is now quietly becoming an integral part of any Service Desk toolkit for End User Support Automation and user delight.

Interview Excerpt: Prosenjit Ghosh and Rajeev kumar, Founders of Anakage Technologies Private Ltd.

Can you tell us about how your company is positioned in the recent market scenario?

Anakage is uniquely positioned as a one stop shop for all End User Support needs with the USP of blending in Automation with In-Application user guidance (Cobotic guidance as we call it) swinging up Self-Service where automation fails to address end user issues. Automation is talk of the town. But it has its own limitations. You cannot automate things which need human intelligence, decision and intuition. We extend the reach of automation by involving humans.

Anakage improves user productivity leveraging one or more components from its End User Support platform, be it In-Application intelligent Self Service, Self-Healing, or RPA. The pricing is modular to ensure client only pays for the components that generate value in terms of user delight and reduced support costs.  In the domain of End User Support, Anakage is a category creator by lift shift of a Physical Service Desk model to a Bot augmented platform empowering users to self-resolve issues without Service Desk engineer’s intervention. While Chatbots are a great aid for process guidance, Anakage Cobots are great when users actually need a Technical fix or need guidance inside live applications both at navigation and data/configuration level.

Can you provide brief information on your service and product offerings and how do they benefit your clients?

• Our core offering is intelligent self service (Cobotic assistance) which is more like a live agent troubleshooting day to day issues you face while using machine and applications. Rather than just telling you how to resolve your problem it actually detects and resolves it automatically. For problems that cannot be resolved automatically, it guides you on top of real system how to do it. This is a paradigm shift from Chatbots which only provide a conversation and not a real fix of the issue that the user faces.
• Self-heal corrects the problem before it even occurs. Also it gives you relevant data points which could be indicator of a larger Problem Management area, helping you move from Incident management to Problem Management. The Proactive Cobot can enforce standard workflows besides helping Management with employee communications by flashing media on end points followed by an optional guidance on a workflow.
• Using the above and Robotic Automation Process technologies, which is extension of our product, we also automate any repetitive IT support processes freeing up support engineers for more value added work. Clients benefit from our Process Automation As a Service offering by avoiding the Capex of a Platform and capability build besides the ongoing Opex of managing the RPA capability, this presents a very strong business case when the number of IT Support processes to be automated are limited in number.
• Our toolkit is being used to reduce End User support tickets, maintain compliance and improving user adoption of Enterprise tools besides various other use cases like Employee Communications, Alerts on screen.

How satisfied are your clients with your services?

The relationship and value we provide to client are our biggest strength. Being a young and agile company, we have seen cases where we were selected over very large names in industry. And we upheld the trust clients have shown in us.

We have received recognition from Industry, Academia and even Government of India. When we started we were mentored by IIMA visiting professor. CIIE IIMA helped us raise our angel round through CIO Angel Network which comprises a group of CIOs. Getting funded by CIOs also gave us market validation as typically they are decision makers of our offering. We are also recognized under Start Up India program of GOI. We were also selected for Bosch accelerator program which helps us access markets that by ourselves we would not have been able to access so early. We are also seeing a renewed interest in B2B SaaS Technology investing based on the multiple enquiries we get from investors. We are continuing to focus on the current set of engagements and the conversions from current pipeline to ensure we mature before we scale up in size.

What are your present and future focus areas?

Getting right set of people, having system and processes in place for next round of scale up and supporting our clients and partners is our focus now. Creating an organization structure that continues to innovate and correct with agility any discovered imperfections in technology and processes will ensure Anakage has a sustainable growth over the decades to come.

The thought leaders

Both founders bring in deep industry experience and complement in Business and Technology domains, and being friends since their college days at NIFFT helps them sustain and thrive through the ups and downs of the journey of building a world class product firm from India.

Prosenjit Ghosh

Prosenjit is a Post Graduate from IIM Ahmedabad and has worked for more than a decade across the globe with companies such as IBM, HCL and Accenture helping global companies with technology driven transformations right from defining Enterprise Architecture to implementations and change management.

Rajeev Kumar

Rajeev has worked with Adobe and Geometric Software developing world class products from India with patent under his belt. Rajeev brings in tremendous amount of knowledge and wisdom in product development and team building.

“We have all the technology stack but we start with determining what is effective in client’s environment and the value we can bring. Based on this we repurpose our technology so that it is not resource / cost heavy and client is only paying for what is relevant for them.”