00:00:00 – 00:00:08 Nitin Bajaj

Hey everyone, welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj, and joining me today is Akshit Kandi. Akshit, welcome on the show.

00:00:10 – 00:00:12 Akshit Kandi

Hey Nitin, thank you so much for having me over.

00:00:13 – 00:00:15 Nitin Bajaj

Great to have you here. Let’s start with: who is Akshit?

00:00:17 – 00:01:01 Akshit Kandi

I’m born in Hyderabad, then moved to the U.S. when I was almost 17 years old, for my undergrad. Most recently, I’m the founder of SkySync. SkySync is essentially an applied AI company, and we’re calling ourselves the AI ROI firm. We help businesses of various sizes implement AI solutions on top of Salesforce, OpenAI, Anthropic Technologies, right? So that’s kind of the primary business, and we also focus on a lot of marketing-type use cases for our customers. We’re spread across Australia, India, U.S., and Germany, and we have a team across the globe.

00:01:01 – 00:01:35 Akshit Kandi

And yeah, I spent a lot of time working also at Salesforce as a product leader, launched Agentforce from about zero revenue, and also Data Cloud, that’s another product which I launched from zero revenue. And I’ve stuck around for more than a billion revenue for both of these products, right? So that’s really my span of work. While I was at Salesforce, I’ve spoken about this at more than 100-plus conferences across the globe, really going in and helping CXOs around the globe thinking about how to actually get ROI.

00:01:36 – 00:02:03 Akshit Kandi

And it’s a funny thing: right now we even own the website domain, the AI ROI firm, which kind of brings me back to a full-circle moment of thinking about this whole concept and helping people really think about how can they utilize AI agents to improve their business. But ultimately, I think the most important thing is getting out of pilots and actually getting ROI for themselves. So yeah, that’s basically a little bit more about me.

00:02:03 – 00:02:47 Akshit Kandi

And, you know, funny thing, you know, apart from work, I have other passions as well. I love exploring great restaurants across the globe. Another unknown fact about me for most people is I’ve actually been to more than 100 Michelin-starred restaurants in the world, around Europe, Asia, and also the U.S., obviously. So that’s definitely a passion that I continue to kind of explore. But I’m also really into clothing and fashion, and that’s another place I continue exploring, given, you know, my mom is an artist as well. So it kind of runs in the family a little bit, yeah.

00:02:48 – 00:03:00 Nitin Bajaj

True. Amongst the many other things you could have done, why SkySync? And also give us a sense of the size and scale of the impact you and the team have been able to create today.

00:03:04 – 00:03:54 Akshit Kandi

I had a lot of options when I left Salesforce. I worked there for about 9 years, and this is my third company I’m starting in. The previous company that I started, we went through Antler Ventures. I have tremendous experience in startups as well, being extremely lucky to be a mentor at Techstars and a few other, you know, venture capital firms where I angel invested into startups as well. And, you know, I’ve had an opportunity to mentor more than 100 startups throughout my life, and a lot of them got funding and, you know, went through their Series A-plus rounds. And I’ve also had, like, really good opportunities traveling the world. Specifically this year, I had a chance to go to Davos for a World Economic Forum, and also at Cambridge University speaking about AI.

00:03:55 – 00:05:17 Akshit Kandi

And the reason I’m telling you this is because I had a lot of options, like going into venture, raising my own fund for a VC firm, or thinking about, you know, actually working and doing hands-on work for executives and companies to continuously getting ROI. And the reason I focus on this problem specifically is I spend a lot of time talking to hundreds of executives who are very curious about how they can actually get, you know, meaningful returns, whether it’s thinking about AI agents and customer service, you know, improving the quality of service that they offer to their customers, the number of tickets that are being solved by AI, or even making more revenue or closing more deals and utilizing AI workflows to do that, or having really low customer acquisition costs and marketing through initiatives, right? These are all the challenges that, you know, people keep talking about that AI can actually fix, but it’s a very few percentage who are actually able to do that, right? And there’s some operational excellence where, you know, we are able to achieve by managing AI agents as if you would manage employees. And this is the concept that we kind of invented at SkySync, and we were able to make these returns for our customers, right?

00:05:17 – 00:06:04 Akshit Kandi

So just to give a span, right, this initiative now is gone beyond just the U.S. scope that I initially started off. It kind of has expanded to India, Australia, Germany. We have customers everywhere, and we serve customers at every scale, right? And, you know, my first customer was an enterprise customer with more than 6,000 employees. The second customer was, you know, also a customer with more than a billion in revenue. So it’s been kind of spread across these large enterprises, but the real passion that I have is for my SMB customers that are able to get really intense, like, results with very few investments.

00:06:04 – 00:07:06 Akshit Kandi

So I can share you about this particular company, Green Subsidy, and they’re in Australia, and it’s essentially a solar green energy certified company by the Australian government, maybe less than 5 employees working on this company. It’s a very, like, rudimentary, like, type of business if you think about it, right? They do solar installations for their customers, and they’re giving some subsidies because they have some tabs with the, you know, Australian government. And it’s very hard for them to scale, and marketing, they’ve never heard about doing marketing on social media, let alone, like, using AI. And we came in and we automated their entire workflow, right? So we put a couple of agents. So we put a marketing agent which runs their paid advertisements, maintains their social media grid, and thinks about what content it needs to be posting, thinking about what budget it needs to set to generate new business.

00:07:06 – 00:08:10 Akshit Kandi

But also, we put another AI agent which is coming in and actually, like, answering questions that these leads are getting, which are getting generated by social media posts. And it answers questions about various solar panels and batteries. And not only does that, now it automatically even sends a quote out, and it ultimately even helps the customer book a meeting as well and schedule an installation. So if you think about what was happening there, all of these processes, it was at least, like, 3 people’s work or 4 people’s work before, right? And now it’s already taken care of by AI agents, and the returns are just insane, right? We went from, you know, spending about, like, 9,000 Australian dollars in ads and turned it into more than 2 million dollars worth of attributed revenue, right? So if you think about the return on investment, that’s more than 200 times, right? It’s just unheard of before the AI era. And this is the type of returns that, you know, I’m really passionate about getting to the SMB customers.

00:08:10 – 00:09:12 Akshit Kandi

And we have very similar stories in, you know, luxury retail, or we have very similar stories in e-commerce, or we have very similar stories in even large enterprises where it’s a little bit different because large enterprises have a lot of revenue generated already. And there, the innovation is they have 20 different systems that exist. And usually, the best thing that large enterprises can do today is, like, stitch that data together, have that data foundation, and put an AI agent on top of it to create that company-wide unified knowledge and have workflows automated across the board, right? And have data that is not surfaced to certain parts of the enterprise, you know, have that visibility, right? That’s the level of productivity you can, you know, unlock. Especially workflows which are taking more than 2-3 weeks can be, like, reduced to seconds right now because you can just ask an agent which is tied to all the information.

00:09:12 – 00:10:03 Akshit Kandi

And obviously, the most important thing to do with enterprise customers is, like, trust is also very important. So thinking about the governance, and that’s the type of experience that we really have at SkySync because not only do we have people from Salesforce like me who have operated at very large scale, but we also have people who have managed all the OpenAI servers who are coming from Microsoft, or people who invented Microsoft Copilot. And, you know, we’re hiring the best people to make sure our team is able to scale and really deliver this quality of experience, right? But again, I think I kind of missed a little bit about the why SkySync, but why SkySync is really because I’m really passionate about bringing in that return for my customers. So that’s the reason, you know, I chose to do this rather than going into other options that I had previously.

00:10:04 – 00:10:16 Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing. Now, amongst the many things that you’ve come across, the good, the bad, the ugly, what is the one big challenge you would like to call out?

00:10:17 – 00:10:41 Akshit Kandi

So the biggest challenge I would like to call out in the industry today is the mindset of executives or business owners towards AI. And usually, when they’re thinking about, “Hey, I want to do an AI transformation,” or “I want to use AI in my business,” their biggest roadblock is, you know, the mindset, right, that executives have.

00:10:41 – 00:11:25 Akshit Kandi

And the successful ones have a growth mindset where they’re aware of the challenges that come with, you know, the AI, you know, native AI or AI-native companies bring in, right? And there’s various challenges that might come in in the first iteration, but they need to have a mindset which is, you know, almost like a growth mindset, right? Thinking about facing these challenges and overcoming them because the most successful companies that we work with, you know, are in sync with us and are working with us, you know, and allowing us to come in and do the transformations.

00:11:25 – 00:11:49 Akshit Kandi

And whether it could be rethinking about a few certain roles within the organization and how would those roles get affected by this AI agent coming into the picture, right? And how can they even, like, work along with the AI agents and maybe change their day-to-day working habits or tasks, right? So that’s ultimately, I think it really boils down to it.

00:11:50 – 00:12:09 Akshit Kandi

So that’s kind of the biggest challenge in the industry versus, like, if you think about the contrary, the unsuccessful transformations which exist out there have examples of having a very restricted mindset about, “Okay, I just don’t want to be utilizing AI at all,” or “AI is too expensive.”

00:12:09 – 00:12:37 Akshit Kandi

It is too expensive, but the downside is sometimes what is the alternative, right? Like, what is the alternative if you don’t want to utilize AI? Really thinking about that question is very important, but ultimately, it definitely, like, boils down to that mindset for executives at the moment. And I think that really determines if your transformation is going to be a, you know, a success or is it going to be still stuck in pilot, right? That’s the biggest challenge we deal with every day.

00:12:38 – 00:12:44 Nitin Bajaj

On the flip side of challenges come opportunities, what’s the one you’re most excited about?

00:12:47 – 00:13:28 Akshit Kandi

The most exciting opportunity that is getting unlocked today is having time to do things that you actually care about, right? I believe if AI transformations are done properly, it’s going to give you a life of abundance, right? It’s going to give you a life of agency. You know, everyone’s been using this word “agency” now. I think it’s really, really true because, you know, if you think about this again, right, the example I gave you about the solar company, the amount of time and even money at a certain point is saved after that initial, like, hurdle has, like, gone through, right?

00:13:29 – 00:14:15 Akshit Kandi

I see it as a kind of a bell curve which is skewed towards the left side in these transformations. You know, it starts off as a, “Oh, yeah, it’s going to be kind of a rocky wave in the first,” and then it kind of smooths out, like, really well and stabilizes over time, right? And in that period, it’s pure bliss, right? Because this owner doesn’t have to necessarily think about what is going on with marketing every day or managing real people and keeping up with them, following up with them. No, that’s all done and taken care of by AI, and simply this person just goes in and types in every single day into this agent, like, assistive agent, right? And asks it, “Hey, what is going on with my business today?” right?

00:14:15 – 00:14:45 Akshit Kandi

And there’s beautiful summaries of, “Hey, these are the 10 leads came through our Instagram campaign.” You know, 8 of them have been answered by the AI agent. 2 of them actually been escalated to your real people-based, like, sales team, right? But the AI has sent out 8 quotes, and it has scheduled 8, like, installations, and your 4-person installation team is, like, booked for the entire week, and they’re just going and doing their installations, right?

00:14:45 – 00:15:15 Akshit Kandi

And after their installation has happened, you know, he can just ask, like, simply, “How did installations go?” Because we harmonize all of that data as well. He gets that quality of information, like, “Hey, this is how all the installations, you know, went, and, you know, they are very successful,” because you see all the pictures, and then you see all the, you know, data that the installer has, like, stored inside the system, right? And, you know, it’s a proof of record which is now being analyzed by AI.

00:15:16 – 00:15:38 Akshit Kandi

And, you know, that is the way this owner is working now, right? And it is today’s reality, and I think that’s the biggest opportunity. It gives you back your agency, and it also unlocks this, you know, tremendous growth that people would have just imagined that they will achieve that in, you know, like, years, right? But it’s all happening in, like, weeks now.

00:15:39 – 00:16:10 Nitin Bajaj

So true. Now, as we talk about what’s happening today and what’s coming up in the future, I’d like to take a moment to pause and reflect. And I’d love to invite you to share two moments from your past life. One, where things did not work out as you had expected. There was disappointment, lessons, failure. And another one, where things exceeded your expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

00:16:14 – 00:16:56 Akshit Kandi

I’ll tell you one story about maybe failure, right? I have started three previous companies before. Not everything was a success. And I always remember the first company I ever started, it was way, way too ahead of the curve, right? Like, we were trying to disrupt everything. It was the first LLM-based support agent, right? And I think the tail end of it was fine, but when we started off, we actually started off as a live streaming application. And, you know, we got through, you know, the Antler Ventures program, and, you know, it was all the checkmarks you can think of, right?

00:16:56 – 00:17:31 Akshit Kandi

We had, you know, enterprise customers that we were dealing with, piloting with. And but the thing is, you know, there was a lot of competition out there, right? And we realized, like, by real, really, like, hard, hard truth, there was a lot of competition indeed out there. And it took us a while to get into a pivoting mode where we ultimately realized, “Okay, this is the direction where things are heading towards,” right? Because even ChatGPT was super, super early then. Like, we were working with one of the first models that were out there, right? And we were using open-source versions of it.

00:17:31 – 00:18:01 Akshit Kandi

And ultimately, I think the learning from there, right, we were just too early when the market was just not ready for it, right? And everything was super expensive because technology was not ready, but we had that vision, right? So the learning out from there, right, sometimes even though you might have the right idea, you might have the vision, it might not be the right time to do it. Maybe you can be a little bit early, right? So that was the lesson from my first, you know, startup, right?

00:18:01 – 00:18:32 Akshit Kandi

And then I moved on to my second startup, right, which was we were doing medical coding and billing for hospitals, right? Again, the same thing, right? Like, we were a little bit too early again, right? We were covered by CNBC. You know, CNBC talked about this publicly as well. It was, you know, really solving a fundamental pain point. But at the time, and this challenge still kind of exists as well right now, in that industry specifically, in the medical world, the adoption cycle is very low, right?

00:18:32 – 00:18:58 Akshit Kandi

And it’s very, very hard to convince someone who has been in a traditional industry to adopt something new. So again, it kind of goes back to that mindset, right, of you can’t really convince everyone. There’s always going to be a set of people that are going to be the innovators and the people who can actually adopt new technology, and they’re going to reap all the benefits, but then there’s going to be a side of people who are still kind of going to be stuck in that space.

00:18:58 – 00:19:24 Akshit Kandi

But I think going forward and thinking about the startup we’re doing right now, it’s I’ve learned a lot from these two first failures, and we thought about it, you know, very in-depth. And we accepted that these problems are actually going to exist, right? We might always be new to things, right? But I think the most important thing we realized is most of my job is also educating people, right?

00:19:24 – 00:19:49 Akshit Kandi

Educating people about what is possible and maybe why it’s important to a certain extent, but ultimately thinking about, “Hey, where can you actually go be in the next, like, two weeks,” right? Which is going to get you value rather than selling them a vision for the next, like, two years and where things might be possible, right? So I think that’s very, very important, right?

00:19:49 – 00:20:10 Akshit Kandi

And I suggest this to a lot of entrepreneurs as well throughout my mentorship, right? Think about what you can bring in terms of value to your customers in the next two weeks, not the next two years, right? And if you need to educate them, that is your job to actually do that, right? A lot of the times, you’re just evangelizing, right?

00:20:11 – 00:20:39 Akshit Kandi

The whole concept about evangelizing is really, really true. And as a founder, you have to keep doing that throughout the iterations, and that’s really when it’s a repeatable cycle, and it is not going to happen in the first call. You might have to sit with them a couple of times to explain it, and ultimately, those are the ones which actually turn out into, you know, amazing stories and amazing outcomes and amazing returns as well. So that’s the biggest thing I’ve learned so far.

00:20:41 – 00:20:50 Nitin Bajaj

Awesome. Now, onto my favorite part of the show, Akshit, I would love for you to share your one-line life lessons with us.

00:20:51 – 00:21:36 Akshit Kandi

My one-line life lesson that I’ve learned, it’s a compilation of many years’ worth of experience, is take one step at a time, right? That’s the key, right? Everyone probably heard about the book “Atomic Habits,” right? I’m a huge fan. And breaking complex problems into smaller chunks is definitely the key to life, right? Whether you’re starting a company or doing something new, taking that one step at a time is very, very important. And those micro outcomes definitely, like, compound over time. So yeah, that’s my one-line, you know, mantra for life is, you know, take it one step at a time.

00:21:38 – 00:22:14 Akshit Kandi

We can keep talking about this, but keeping it short and maybe even communication, right? I think it’s also keeping it simple, right? It’s also another one I take it very seriously because you have to assume that walking into any room, that most people will not know anything about you. And even if they know about you, they probably don’t know what is going on in your mind and your company to the dot. And leave alone, like, keeping up with all the AI technologies that are going out in the market.

00:22:14 – 00:22:57 Akshit Kandi

So please keep it simple when you’re communicating to people and avoid the fancy keywords. Just try to get to the point and really make sure anyone in the room and they always have a saying, right? If you can explain to your grandmother what you’re doing, you can explain it to anyone, right? That is true. And I think a lot of the times that people just don’t do that anymore. There’s always these notions of technical words or industry language that is going around, but most people, if you’re walking into a room, you should try to keep it simple. And yeah, that’s another life lesson I would say I definitely, like, live by these days.

00:22:58 – 00:23:13 Nitin Bajaj

Awesome. Akshit, thank you so much for making the time to be with us to share your journey, your story, and your life lessons with us. Congratulations again on all of the successes so far. And I know you’re just getting started, and there’s a lot more to come there.

00:23:15 – 00:23:19 Akshit Kandi

Thank you so much, Nitin. It was a pleasure being on this pod, yeah.