00:00:00 – 00:00:13 Nitin Bajaj

Hey everyone, welcome to The Industry Show. I’m your host Nitin Bajaj, and joining me today is Arpit Mehta. Arpit, welcome on the show. Great to have you here. Let’s start with who is Arpit.

00:00:14 – 00:00:37 Arpit Mehta

So everybody, I am Arpit Mehta. I am a PhD in computer science. I don’t go on the degree. I’ve hated studies since I was a kid. I always was a problem solver. So I was like to open up radios, open up TVs at my home, got to use, get in a lot of trouble because of that. Never was able to fix them back. So I was like, okay, maybe education will help. Hence my inclination to study.

00:00:38 – 00:00:55 Arpit Mehta

So I’m a scientist, I’m an entrepreneur, loving to solve the problems for nonprofits, association, community has always been something which I wanted to always go back and serve to. So since I was a kid, I was part of a lot of associations trying to support a lot of nonprofits. In multiple ways. And that was my journey.

00:00:55 – 00:01:15 Arpit Mehta

And then came to US, studied computer science, published about 28 papers in computational biology. So I have 28 peer-reviewed publications in cancer diagnostic, different kind of diseases, but all computational biology related. And then thought about, hey, it’s time to solve some problems for nonprofits and associations through my technology knowledge. So I created Unify AMS.

00:01:16 – 00:01:32 Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing. Tell us about Unify AMS. You briefly mentioned about why you started it, but I know there’s a little more behind it. And give us a sense for, since you’ve started this, what is the impact you and the team have been able to create?

00:01:34 – 00:01:49 Arpit Mehta

Yes, absolutely. So Unify, I think the name, and if you go and look at the logo, it connects multiple people with different backgrounds, colors together, forms a circle. So it’s like people holding hands and in circle. Unify represents community. Unify represents unification.

00:01:50 – 00:02:10 Arpit Mehta

For me, I think as I’m progressing in my career, as I said, the community was a very important part of it. So I wanted to, you know, see how we can solve some problems for the community. And being a president of multiple nonprofit organizations and associations, I realized that technology was there. There were some softwares which can help you to build all of this.

00:02:10 – 00:02:36 Arpit Mehta

But the data was very fragmented. So you would have one tool which you use for website, one tool which you use for your fundraising. You go do GoFundMe, you do WordPress, then you go maintain a CRM, then you have a Mailchimp. So eventually as these modules kept growing, the number of licenses also kept growing and hence your expenditure for association also kept growing. While when you wanted to actually extract the data, you have, you don’t know which tool actually had hold the real truth.

00:02:37 – 00:02:51 Arpit Mehta

So we thought about it and we were like, okay, we need to create a unified operating system, which brings all of these different licenses into one place, right? And with AI, we were able to do it very effectively. So we brought this all together, created Unify AMS.

00:02:52 – 00:03:10 Arpit Mehta

AI— AMS stands for Association Management Software— and it does it end to end, whether you have events, whether you’re hosting workshops, webinars, whether you’re trying to do a fundraising event, whether you’re going for trade shows. Whether you’re trying to sign up sponsors, vendors, everything in one unified operating system. And that’s Unify AMS.

00:03:10 – 00:03:35 Arpit Mehta

And since then, we have been able to help a lot of organizations which has, let’s say, 50,000 users all the way from starting from smaller organizations or small religious institutions like temples and churches, which has 500. And Unify AMS is starting to impact them in a way that their revenues are growing, their memberships are growing. They are actually able to measure the impact what they create on, on, on the, on the community as a whole.

00:03:36 – 00:04:06 Nitin Bajaj

Arpit, it’s amazing the amount of impact you guys have been able to create in such a short time. Kudos to you and the team. It’s fascinating to see you able to go in and help the constituents, the beneficiaries of these nonprofits. And we’ve been very fortunate to experience a couple of these instances where the membership of these organizations that are now on Unify have been able to get so much more out of their associations. So congratulations to you.

00:04:06 – 00:04:07 Arpit Mehta

Thank you. Thank you.

00:04:08 – 00:04:20 Nitin Bajaj

Now, as you’re helping these organizations, help them get past a lot of the challenges they face, I’m inclined to ask you, what is the biggest challenge you are facing?

00:04:21 – 00:05:05 Arpit Mehta

I think the biggest challenge is many times the pain of change. When you go to organizations and associations and they’re leadership which has— is coming from community. There’s leadership which is coming from employees and staff. And a lot of time we are used to the way we work with some systems, right? Even though it takes me like 5 more minutes, but in the morning my brain is auto-set to do that, right? To break out of that shell is where I think the challenge lies, right? Like, how do you convince them that learning this or investing in a new software is going to actually give them better ROI? And better metrics, right? So that has been a big problem. And I think it increases the length of the sales cycle as well, because then you have to make sure that everybody’s on board by the time that idea comes in and is, it gets moving.

00:05:07 – 00:05:13 Nitin Bajaj

So true. Now on the flip side of challenges come opportunities. What’s the one you’re most excited about?

00:05:15 – 00:05:39 Arpit Mehta

I think one of the most exciting opportunity coming through with us is one of the biggest retail association. Which is we are in talks with, right? So with retail associations, I think the idea is that the membership are all small, medium business owners, right? A lot of time they are so busy in 12-hour or 20, 14-hour shifts, it is very hard for them to go out and be at an association or to learn what is beneficial for them, et cetera, right?

00:05:40 – 00:06:15 Arpit Mehta

So Unify AMS is actually building platform for retailers association in order for them to access all the things what you can see in a real convention in a virtual world at the same time. Being able to access all the vendors and exhibitors which are coming with the deals over there, right? So trying to bridge that technology gap where remote gas station or store owner, how would they get access to all of these wonderful deals going on around? So I’m very excited to actually solve that problem for them. How do we have this impact of a single dollar saved brought from the exhibition or the trade conference all the way to their store and into their pockets? So that’s— I’m very excited about that project.

00:06:15 – 00:06:49 Nitin Bajaj

That is amazing. I’ll love to hear about that as you continue to make progress and super excited to see that change coming in. Now, as we look forward, I like to pause and reflect. I would love for you to share two moments from your past life, one where things did not work out as you’d expected. There was disappointment, failure, lessons. And another instance where things exceeded your expectations and became a success beyond your imagination?

00:06:50 – 00:07:26 Arpit Mehta

Yes, absolutely. So I think one of the life lessons for me is that failure teaches you so much more that a win would never teach you that, right? So, you know, we had— we started the company in 2025 last year, and our first, very first event, right, when that is a big deal for any startup and you’re going into a big ticket event. This is our largest client. They have the owners, the members of this association own about 60% of American hotels right now. This is the scale of the convention we are talking about. There are 6,000 to 7,000 people attending it, and you are given the task of managing it end to end in terms of technology.

00:07:26 – 00:07:58 Arpit Mehta

Very confident pilot, everything works flawlessly, right? The day when you go there and now, you know, the registration is not working. Now we realize why would that be? So we trace and figure out that there are instances where there’s a constant DNS server overload attack happening. And you’ll be surprised at who would be interested in looking into or keeping a conference, which is a hotelier conference, at trying to stop it. So we’re all panicking, right? And now you have these all hoteliers, which like own 40, 50 hotels.

00:07:58 – 00:08:12 Arpit Mehta

They’re coming at the registration counter and they’re like, oh, The system isn’t working. What is going on? We told you not to trust the new company, et cetera. Now my team is in a frenzy. They’re all panicking. And this is what I told my team. I took the team out for a coffee and I was like, you know what?

00:08:12 – 00:08:18 Arpit Mehta

Leave the counter. It’s okay. They’re yelling. They’re yelling at me. Let’s go to the coffee room. I told them to relax. I told to give them some coffee.

00:08:19 – 00:08:42 Arpit Mehta

I told them that no matter what happens, I know you guys did the best, but now is our time to learn from this. Let’s figure out how we can solve this problem. In next 1 hour and bring the registration up. It doesn’t matter. You don’t have to talk to the client. If you have anybody comes to you for asking this question, you let them talk to me. So we went there, we learned what the problem, what were the problematic IPs were.

00:08:42 – 00:09:14 Arpit Mehta

We isolated them. We brought the server back within, within 2 hours of time and then get it going. Now the biggest lesson was you can never be fully prepared, right? Which meant that we went back, we wrote our technical documentations back, we wrote our protocols back. And included even the remotest of scenarios where something like this could happen. And then protected print, added firewalls, got Cloudflare, all sorts of things, what you can do to protect such kind of an attack. But what that made us do is this year, every single action what we took in this convention was flawless.

00:09:15 – 00:09:25 Arpit Mehta

And everybody was very happy. We got excellent reviews from this conference and they were like, we never expected this kind of professionalism from a company we just started a year ago. So problems, they make you stronger.

00:09:27 – 00:09:49 Nitin Bajaj

So true. Agreed 100%. And that transformation, that 180 transformation, again, I was there to see it and it was fascinating, right? We attend a lot of conferences and the speed at which people were able to register, check in, move on. Fascinating. So again, congratulations to you and the team. Amazing job.

00:09:51 – 00:09:51 Arpit Mehta

Thank you.

00:09:51 – 00:10:12 Nitin Bajaj

Now, keeping all of this aside, right, you’re a workaholic, you in a good way, right? You are a multibagger. You’ve accomplished many different things across multiple different streams of professions. What do you do to de-stress, to relax, to step away from all of this?

00:10:13 – 00:10:30 Arpit Mehta

Yes, I think that’s a very good point you bring because I get this complaint from all my friends, family, and also my employees, etc., that Arpit, I don’t know how you keep this energy going. How are you awake at this time when everybody is— and then you were like, after that, you’re also okay, let’s go eat there. Let’s go celebrate. Let’s go do this.

00:10:30 – 00:10:58 Arpit Mehta

So I think the gist of it is everybody got 24 hours in, in, in your daily routine. Right. But if you’re passionate about the things which you’re doing, every second expands and it tries to accommodate your priorities. So time is not linear. Time is very relative, right? Time can go be slow for things. Which we don’t like. Time can go very fast for things which you actually love to do. And time can actually slow down to accommodate all of your priorities if you really are passionate about all of them.

00:10:59 – 00:11:43 Arpit Mehta

So for me, I think keeping focus on the things, what I’m doing at the present. I’m not a multitasker. People say that, Arpit, you are a multitasker. I’m like, I’m not. I just switch between tasks, but my focus at one time is at 100% one point. So what I do is focus on one task, do it with my passion, do it with love, energy, whatever you can provide to that task, and then move to the next one. And then whenever I’m de-stressing, a simple act of walking and being focusing on my breath, looking into things as is, not worrying about past and future, but the present moment where, let’s say, I’m walking down Miami and there is a river and there’s a boat going on, I’m actually interacting with the people who are on the boat. I’m observing, and that kind of keeps me away from any kind of stress and really helps me deliver the maximum output.

00:11:43 – 00:12:03 Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing. It’s beautifully said, and I agree with you. Time kind of expands or shrinks based on you. So yes, 24 hours is set on everyone’s clock, but what you do, how you optimize time, is really where the trick is. So again, kudos to you for being able to do that in such a meaningful way.

00:12:04 – 00:12:04 Arpit Mehta

Thank you.

00:12:05 – 00:12:12 Nitin Bajaj

Now switching to books and podcasts, Is there any recommendation or favorites?

00:12:13 – 00:12:19 Arpit Mehta

I think I do read a lot of books, especially I’m into theology. I read books coming from religion, books about history.

00:12:20 – 00:12:47 Arpit Mehta

One of the book which I really like, it gave me a lot of perspective, was Sapiens. It’s from Yuval Harari and he’s a very accomplished author. But what it told me was that we are more similar than we are different, right? As human beings, right? I think there is a reason we share, everybody is almost identical except for very small part. Part of your genome which is different. And then it applies to animal kingdom. You know, you’re very similar to other animals except for some parts which are different.

00:12:47 – 00:13:10 Arpit Mehta

And that gave me so much perspective on understanding things that all of the differences what we’re looking at, eventually everybody’s moving or thinking in the same psychological patterns, right? And we can get convinced about certain things in a block. We can don’t like, like maybe not like certain things in a block. Our our humanity moves with a shared consciousness. And that is very impactful thing from that book which I learned.

00:13:12 – 00:13:24 Nitin Bajaj

I agree, beautifully written book, very thoughtful and thought-provoking. Now on to my favorite part of the show. We call this the One Line Life Lessons. Arpit, I would love for you to share your life lessons with us.

00:13:26 – 00:14:32 Arpit Mehta

Yes, I think again, this is something where some people said something when I’m interacting with people, when situations, things come up, right? And you would not believe that this, this quote, which I’m going to tell you, came from a 6-year-old or 7-year-old. And she’s my niece. She was in— she was 6-year-old, 7-year-old when she said that. I asked her a question and then she was the youngest, probably, entrepreneur of the world. She was featured in Time magazine. She created a coding game for kids, right? So her dad was like, oh, you should learn coding since you’re early. And then she picked up and she’s like, why don’t I— there’s no game available online. Why don’t I create one? So this is what she said when I asked her, how do you manage creating a game and also your primary school work? I am just struggling with this. So she said what I said earlier in the show as well. When you’re passionate about something, time expands to accommodate your priorities. And I was like floored. And this goes as my favorite quote of all the time. I still quote her. Her name is Samaira Mehta. She’s now 14 and probably doing a lot of better, like, good things for the world. She, she has a 1 Billion Kids Can Code initiative, which she is taking part in. So very inspiring.

00:14:32 – 00:14:58 Arpit Mehta

When I’m looking into situations where I’m stuck or I have some ideas and I’m like, maybe, or maybe I cannot do it, I look in the mirror and I say, if not you, then who? Because at that time, I am the one who’s thinking about that problem. I am the one who has the most knowledge about the situation. And if I am not going to do it, who’s going to do it? Who’s going to solve this problem? And that really helps me get back into the perspective where I am on to do that task right now.

00:14:58 – 00:15:33 Arpit Mehta

There is another thing which, which goes with my ambition and expanding the time into things, which I really tell myself a lot of times. So when you’re learning math, right, when we are counting, there is no limit to the numbers. The numbers can go to infinity. But then why am I stopping at a particular number? And I’m like, if the book says that you can keep going, right? Why is there a reason for me to stop and say that this is my target? There’s always, always keep your ambition infinite because it is infinite, right? If let’s say you have all the resources, all the time, all the energy in the world, you would reach infinite, right? And that’s what it is about.

00:15:33 – 00:16:03 Arpit Mehta

So these are a few ones which I’ve used. I hope they were, they will be useful to anybody else listening. But I do come up with some quirky ones here and there. So, you know, if you ever meet me, I will always have something. To say in that regard always. But one thing is believe in yourself. I think you should be the best fan of you. So when I look in the mirror, I don’t need anybody else’s validation but myself. I look at myself and I say that, yes, you’re right, you did it right. Yes, no, this is wrong, you did it wrong. So I’m best fan and best critic of myself at the same time.

00:16:03 – 00:16:30 Nitin Bajaj

I love that. Arpit Mehta, thank you so much for making the time to share your journey, your story, and your life lessons with us. And once again, congratulations and kudos to you and the rest of the team for making such a huge impact in such a short time. And I know you’re just getting started, so I’m super excited for what’s to come and many more successes to you and the team.

00:16:31 – 00:16:51 Arpit Mehta

Thank you, Nitin, and I am very grateful for the Industry Shoot to give a startup an opportunity to come and talk to you. I wanted to tell you one thing in the end, which we are also very excited about, and which was a challenge which we completed, that Unify AMS was able to sign a contract with Television Academy, the Emmy Awards. So this is our biggest client till date.

00:16:51 – 00:17:22 Arpit Mehta

We are doing their Televerse conference in, in August 12th to 14th. So we’ll be in LA to do that. This was an opportunity which came through community. Somebody referred to us, and then we— they gave us a task which which they were struggling with in their association, which was data fragmentation problem. They were not able to get their VIP members get on-site status tickets, right? So basically if they’re VIP, how do the other team know that they are VIP? So we solved that problem. We gave them a POC and they signed us up. So Unify AMS is going to Televerse conference for Television Academy.

00:17:23 – 00:17:36 Nitin Bajaj

That’s amazing. Congratulations and looking forward to welcoming you to LA. And also congratulations on the recent win. At the competition you were at and Scale to Miami.

00:17:36 – 00:17:37 Arpit Mehta

Yes.

00:17:37 – 00:17:46 Nitin Bajaj

Yeah. And super excited for the, the fundraise that’s happening. Many congratulations and all the best wishes for it.

00:17:47 – 00:18:07 Arpit Mehta

Thank you. Thank you, Nitin. I think this, this was a validation of all the efforts. I think we make efforts, we do a lot of things, but an external jury telling you that you guys are going in the right direction was a much needed boost. And also capital boost for us. I appreciate Scale to Miami community to recognize us. And thank you. Thank you for, for having us on the show again.