[00:00:00 – 00:00:08] Nitin Bajaj

Everyone. Welcome to the industry show. I’m your host, Nitin Bajaj. And joining me today is Shrinath Acharya. Shrinath, welcome on the show.

[00:00:09 – 00:00:13] Shrinath Acharya

Thank you for this opportunity, Nitin. Indeed excited to be part of the show.

[00:00:14 – 00:00:17] Nitin Bajaj

Pleasure is all ours. Let’s start with who is Shrinath.

[00:00:18 – 00:01:36] Shrinath Acharya

Alright. Well, I’m the CEO and cofounder of Excelfore , and Excelfore  is based in Silicon Valley and is the leading provider of automotive data connectivity solutions, which include things like over the air updates, which what does Tesla does for its cars, remote data aggregation, and edge AI anomaly detection for predictive maintenance. These are really multibillion dollar problems and, hence, opportunities. And these are really approaching trillion dollar potential in the automotive industry now. And I’ll talk about that, once we delve deep into that. On a personal note, I’m married to Malti. She’s a physician practicing integrative medicine.

It’s a fascinating field focused on holistic health. Really talking about health care rather than sick care, which is the, system today, unfortunately. And our first son, Pranav, works at Google, and the second one, Pradhyam, is graduating from UCLA and looking to do some really creative things. I think of myself as a marathoner. I take a long view of things at work and in personal life. I enjoy running and have run the Chicago marathon. And my wife calls me an optimist to a fault.

So that’s just in a shot, what I am.

[00:01:37 – 00:02:07] Nitin Bajaj

Amazing. And you are surrounded by high achieving personalities. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting three quarters of you. Ah, okay. So really looking forward to meet, Pranav pretty soon.

Now let’s talk about Excelfore . What is the mission, the vision, and I’m most curious about why someone does what they do. So tell us how you got started with this, journey in the first place.

[00:02:08 – 00:02:39] Shrinath Acharya

Okay. I should not say me alone because I have got cofounders and they were partners in Crimea in my previous startup. And so what we have done, at least after our first startup, was sold to a public company and then we are running the in vehicle multimedia systems within that, organization, we noticed that the vehicles were not really connected. And they were so disconnected that every problem had to be solved at the dealership

[00:02:40 – 00:02:40] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:02:40 – 00:03:29] Shrinath Acharya

Which is fine for mechanical, replacements. But for software, it made no sense. And Apple has been updating phones remotely for a while, so why not cars? Finally, software is software. So we started thinking about it, and then we left that company and started Excelfore  with a focus on data connectivity solutions to provide an ability for remote management of vehicles. So our solution is making software recalls a distant memory, basically. Mhmm. By enabling full remote management of software at the convenience of your home.

And won’t that be better than spending your Saturday at a dealership? So that’s really what the core goal. It still remains so, and the industry has taken a while to really catch up to some of our visions, but it’s getting there now.

[00:03:30 – 00:03:39] Nitin Bajaj

The cool thing is you get to define the vision and then the others just follow along. Yeah. You’re like the Pied Piper. You’re leading every everyone in that direction.

[00:03:40 – 00:03:48] Shrinath Acharya

Slowly, it’s happening. Yes. I think, it’s not, easy, unfortunately, if you are a bit ahead. But I think now the industry is catching up, so we are glad for that.

[00:03:48 – 00:04:11] Nitin Bajaj

And give us a sense of size and scale. I was fascinated when we had talked certain numbers. I just didn’t know the magnitude of the work, not just you’re doing, but also the size of the opportunity. So just give us a sense for along this journey, what kind of impact you and the team have been able to create so far and what should we look at here in the near term?

[00:04:12 – 00:05:39] Shrinath Acharya

So when I when I mentioned earlier about the size of the opportunity, if you look at just recalls, it’s two to 3% of the revenues. I think that’s the extent to which companies set aside the warranty, numbers. So I think it’s a huge problem in the industry. And even now, you can see recalls happening where the cars are being sent to the dealership. You are you just have to go there. Whereas a lot of things are happening by Tesla. They just say, hey. Okay. There was a recall, but don’t worry.

It’s all done. You don’t even notice it. So that is the simplicity is what we are trying to help other car companies, I think. And if you just look at OTA as opportunity, it is tens of billions. You look at the data portion of the opportunity, hundreds of billions. And if you start looking at applications and solutions which come below because of that, it’s literally in a trillion dollar range. When I say application solutions, what I mean is you have heard of this Tesla offering, like, for $10 a month premium connectivity or hundred dollars a month self driving ability and so on.

These are all the solutions we are building on top, and that is the value of what some of the things that we are providing. In fact, one of our customers is gonna launch our solution with it, and it’s going to be really helping them drive hundreds of million dollars of extra revenue beyond the seat of the car. I think that’s where the value lies for everyone, not just for the car companies. Even I would like to pay for something new

[00:05:39 – 00:05:39] Nitin Bajaj

Right.

[00:05:39 – 00:05:49] Shrinath Acharya

If it’s truly valuable to me. And, and not having to buy these premium package for $2,000 or a super premium of 5,000, and I don’t I’m not even use going to use 10% of it.

[00:05:49 – 00:06:40] Nitin Bajaj

So this is a multifactor approach. One, where you’re helping companies drive top line by enabling this marketplace ecosystem where they can promote and push newer features as a subscription in in many cases that helps them just straight up drive top line and add to the bottom line. The second is you’re helping them cut down their cost by just not having them deal with a lot of these things in a point to point basis, but just pushing out these over the air updates. And then you’re also obviously, because of a lot of these efficiencies, you’re allowing them and helping them do better things that help them drive in the direction and remain a a player in the market because a lot of these things are now becoming table stakes.

[00:06:40 – 00:06:46] Shrinath Acharya

Totally agree. I think there is something nowadays called SDV or software defined vehicles.

[00:06:46 – 00:06:46] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:06:46 – 00:07:54] Shrinath Acharya

And now it’s a common buzzword. And it means really designing a vehicle based on software rather than the rather than the mechanical components based approach. I still see the mechanical component. Otherwise, you cannot go somewhere. But, fundamentally, those are a lot simplified process. And it’s been happening for hundred years, so it’s very well known. So what is happening now is how do you make the experience better?

I think that’s really what we are trying to help our customers. And the connectivity and the fact that you can connect the data gives you so much insight that you can truly drive innovation. I think that’s where our, vision is and was from when we got started here. So not just connecting the cloud to the vehicle, which means there’s usually a modem or a cellular modem inside and you just connect and say, oh, I’m connected. To us, that’s not good enough.

What about the airbag controller? What about the chassis controllers? Every component has to be connected so you can truly manage the vehicle. And once you do that, it becomes remotely configurable, remotely updatable, and fully manageable. And that’s the value for innovation.

[00:07:55 – 00:08:09] Nitin Bajaj

Exciting times ahead for sure. Now as you work across a lot of OEMs, a lot of these logos and brands, I’m curious to know what’s the one big challenge you’re facing.

[00:08:11 – 00:09:25] Shrinath Acharya

This this actually is a very important time because so many things are happening globally. To me, at least, attracting and retaining top talent is a big challenge for us. Just to give you a scale of all you’re asking or the scale of the opportunity, and I mentioned that. But just to give a scale of our company, we are headquartered here in Silicon Valley. We have offices in Tokyo, Bangalore, Frankfurt, Ho Chi Minh City, and Shanghai. Our and our SDV Connect solutions are deployed in about 20 plus global manufacturers in US, Europe, India, wherever they manufacture, vehicles, including China, in fact. So the issue is really comes down to that this hiring and retaining is a very important challenge and will remain so for some time.

And so they have any opportunities, the employees, but we our job is to create an environment of innovation. And so the individuals can be proud of that. I think that’s what the way we look at it. Right? So people do care about money, but that’s not what the sole reason why they work.

[00:09:25 – 00:09:25] Nitin Bajaj

Right.

[00:09:25 – 00:10:01] Shrinath Acharya

So we have to we have got in our company, we have got a take responsibility, take risk culture. And people make mistakes, that’s fine with us. We we have to learn and move on, and we need to keep working at making this culture just very compelling for current and even new employees. And that’s the only way to do it. And we have a a benefit. In fact, I would say this distribution is a huge benefit for us because if we are unable to find somebody in Silicon Valley, we are able to find somebody else, possibly Tokyo or Bangalore to solve our challenge. True.

[00:10:01 – 00:10:03] Nitin Bajaj

That’s a good challenge to have, but a challenge nonetheless.

[00:10:04 – 00:10:07] Shrinath Acharya

It’s it’s a for a distributed company, it’s a challenge for sure.

[00:10:07 – 00:10:14] Nitin Bajaj

Yes. Now on the flip side of challenges come opportunities. Yeah. What’s the one that you are most excited about?

[00:10:15 – 00:10:44] Shrinath Acharya

Had you asked me this question about a year ago, I would have had a completely different answer. But today, it may sound like a cliche almost. But AI is truly providing a level of hyper efficiency that I have not seen before, and it’s creating exciting opportunities in our business. So I’ll give you a few examples. We are, first of all, using AI to transform our products and also our internal operations.

[00:10:45 – 00:10:45] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:10:45 – 00:12:20] Shrinath Acharya

For instance, at CES, while you were there last month, Microsoft were very excited to launch our Copilot integrated orchestration of remote vehicle management. And what this can do is that I was talking to one company, and they’re so excited about it. They said, oh, I can do the whole thing with voice now. Run your whole system. Mhmm. I said, yes. And because it’s LLM, its integration can learn shrink the learning and deployment of complex features by our customers.

And so they are showing it at their suite and booth at the Consumer Electronics Show. Another innovation that we have developed is the edge AI solution that can detect anomalies across 50 to 60 dimensions of parameters in the labels. And Amazon Web Services AWS has published their blog on that with us. And this is truly a game changer since you don’t want to be shoveling gobs of data across the telecom bandwidth into the cloud and then spend more money to analyze that gobs of data. That’s a huge problem. So what we are doing is that we just cut the data right at the source. So you get the narrowest dataset based on the anomalies we have detected.

May be some false positives, granted, but then you teach it and say, no. That’s wrong. Update the model. Mhmm. And so you keep improving it. So you get the narrowest data set that require the button to detect the anomalies, and this is more cost efficient, time efficient, and and truly transformative. So I think the AI is changing, and we have made some really good strides in the last one year.

[00:12:21 – 00:12:33] Nitin Bajaj

That’s fascinating. And I’m sure it’ll keep evolving. So I’d love to stay up to speed with everything that’s happening, which is a lot, but we’ll figure out how to do that. Maybe AI can help with that too.

[00:12:34 – 00:12:35] Shrinath Acharya

Truly. Yeah.

[00:12:37 – 00:13:00] Nitin Bajaj

Now I’d love to take a moment to reflect on your previous personal and professional life and ask you to share two moments. One where things did not work out as you had expected, and there was maybe failure, some lessons. And another instance where things exceeded your own expectations and became a success beyond your imagination.

[00:13:02 – 00:13:52] Shrinath Acharya

I’ll just give you one one example, and this is a story from many years ago. And we are trying to land a large account, and we had proven, to the customer without beyond doubt that our technology was very superior to what they had or they were planning to deploy. And, also, we had heard that this was an innovative company and would pay a premium for innovation. So we priced it accordingly, not too high, but even then we lost the deal. We just could not figure out what the hell happened. So we went through, did some more homework, and realized that while we had thought and assumed a few things, we are not fully met the customer Sure. Landscape. And that was a big mistake.

So you have to be careful to assume more than or just depend on some hearsay, I would say.

[00:13:52 – 00:13:52] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:13:52 – 00:14:28] Shrinath Acharya

So what I know now is that for large b to b design wins, it is essential to recognize the full customer behavior, layout a plan, and not just push the tech. In Silicon Valley, we are thinking we are the super tech guys, and we should just say, why would you not pay for it? And I think even the prices we’re offering would have saved them money in the long run, but does not matter. Yeah. Because once you lose a deal, it’s a loss for everybody. It’s a loss for you, loss for the customer. But, finally, I would just blame us because we should recognize that psychology almost of how decision making happens.

So it’s very critical. So

[00:14:29 – 00:14:31] Nitin Bajaj

I agree. It’s the emotion, not always the

[00:14:32 – 00:15:36] Shrinath Acharya

Exactly. Yeah. So it’s not the numbers that matter. It’s not the tech which matters. All the how emotionally because customers are making decisions sometimes on a long scale, sometimes on a very short scale. And if you’re not fitting the bill, one or the other, you don’t get it. So and you talked about the what caused probably, I think, a success or something you said. So Mhmm.

And that I thought could be addressed Nitin a single way because a single point of accomplishment is simply a bit difficult to do. I mean, during our dozen or so years in our business, we have really built the company almost one brick at a time. So I would say it’s truly a culmination of all that incremental work and customer wins, which has now made us the leading provider. It’s really our global team that has done it, and we’re very deliberate in the selection process and of when we onboard employees and have a very low attrition. So I am proud of the team, and so if you have to say one accomplishment, it’s just a global team that has been humbled. So I think that’s one.

[00:15:36 – 00:15:48] Nitin Bajaj

Okay. That’s good.

So well, that’s a great accomplishment to be proud of, having a a global team that is thriving, under your leadership. That’s an amazing feat. So congratulations on that.

[00:15:48 – 00:15:49] Shrinath Acharya

Thank you.

[00:15:50 – 00:16:05] Nitin Bajaj

Now as you work with this global team, I’m sure you have extended hours, lot of travel that, you take on. I’m curious to know what do you do to de stress, relax, and, maybe sometimes even escape from these long hours.

[00:16:07 – 00:16:53] Shrinath Acharya

Actually, I have a closure on that, but I will talk about your what do you do otherwise? You said.

I enjoy running. I mentioned I’ve run the Chicago marathon for instance, and I do long distance running. It just helps you sweat out and not really worry about really short term things very clearly. I I enjoyed traveling with my wife very recently in Patagonia, and I enjoy reading books. I try to squeeze in skiing if possible, not yet to actually prepare for it. So it takes time and so you have to put it in. And one thing I want to mention about closure, people talk about work life balance.

And to be in a start up, it’s really work life integration. It’s not the the balance. Because you can talk about balance, but really, if you integrate it, you’ll just be happy. At least, I find myself.

[00:16:53 – 00:16:53] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:16:53 – 00:17:36] Shrinath Acharya

So that if you have to do something, which is in the middle of the day on a personal front, you do it, not the other way around. And if some of the calls go on till midnight, unfortunately, but business calls, they have to go on. You cannot just say, I shut off at 06:00. So it really becomes a continuum and, especially since COVID, it has really became even more, I would say, built into the system. So you got to enjoy what you do, and you need to take breaks whenever needed, not just at predefined time. That’s the way I think it helps me maintain a even keel. So we are talking about personal things during the day.

We are talking about business things during the evening, but that’s how it makes it worthwhile.

[00:17:37 – 00:17:56] Nitin Bajaj

I agree. And I think that’s a smarter and more holistic approach because the world is now connected smaller. There is no set times or or rigid time frames that we can work off of. So that’s, I think, become the norm, for most of us that are especially operating in a global environment.

[00:17:58 – 00:18:13] Shrinath Acharya

Totally the case. I think it is really world is changing, and we can keep talking about keeping things separate and work life balance. But if you don’t like what you do, then it’ll not work out anyway. So you might as well figure out what you like and do it. And that way, it is always enjoyable.

[00:18:14 – 00:18:20] Nitin Bajaj

I agree. Any book or podcast you would like to recommend or share?

[00:18:20 – 00:18:27] Shrinath Acharya

I’ll give you both. How does that? So I regularly listen to this podcast called We Study Billionaires, and

[00:18:27 – 00:18:27] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:18:27 – 00:18:31] Shrinath Acharya

What I really like about that is they talk about macro trends.

[00:18:31 – 00:18:31] Nitin Bajaj

Yes.

[00:18:31 – 00:19:18] Shrinath Acharya

I never pay attention to macro. So I think that’s a good way to look at macro trends. And sometimes I say, I wish I knew that all the QE coming into the thing would have really raised interest rate. I said, how stupid am I? And, anyway, so that is really are the things to really figure out. And whether you learn from it and use it in your own investment philosophy, that’s fine. But they also talk to and talk about great investors like Warren Buffett.

So it gives you an insight into how other people do things. You don’t have to do it, but at least it gives you a perspective. And regarding a book, I’m reading a book, called the Passive House, and it provides design ideas on how to make homes energy efficient neutral, in fact.

[00:19:18 – 00:19:18] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:19:18 – 00:19:37] Shrinath Acharya

Whether it’s a summer or winter, it’s just fascinating, what you can do. So you don’t have to be really stuck in homes which are running the heater all the time or the air conditioning all the time. In fact, I was just reading this in that the Berlin Beach in LA which got burnt out.

[00:19:37 – 00:19:38] Nitin Bajaj

Mhmm.

[00:19:38 – 00:19:47] Shrinath Acharya

Three houses had survived, which are all passive homes. So done right, you can actually make homes which actually can withstand the vagaries of today’s nature.

[00:19:49 – 00:20:03] Nitin Bajaj

It is fascinating. And thanks for sharing that both the podcast and the book. Onto my favorite part of the show now, which we call the one line life lessons. I would love for you, Shrinath, to share your one line life lessons with us.

[00:20:04 – 00:23:07] Shrinath Acharya

I really had to scratch my head for this because I would say, holy cow. What what is this? So anyway, then finally, I said, okay. So let’s come up with a few of them. So the way I, look at it is, number one, I would say is think black and white but act gray. And what I mean by that is there always many reasons to do or not to do something big. Okay? But there has to be one thing that needs to be the true north for that.

And so you cannot say, well, I’m doing this for these five reasons. Easy to say that because then there’s nothing to point at. But those can be supporting cast in my view. But having a true north will help you navigate the waters when inevitably you’ll encounter problems and say, what was the goal? It’s not five goals. It was that goal. And if it’s not spouting out, you can change course back out or keep blowing around.

So that’s something. Few others, one of my favorite thing is start from the end. What I mean by that is when you’re getting started, imagine what needs to be where you need to be. So like Michelangelo used to say that he carved the statue of David. Just remove what is not David. Simple. For him, it’s simple, but, was simple.

But, some call it addition through subtraction. Some Amazon calls it working backwards. And in Silicon Valley, we are running so fast. Sometimes we forget where we are running. And so it’s important to start from the end so that at least you know where you’re heading and you can course correct. So that’s one thing. Another one, is really distinguishing bad outcomes from bad decisions.

To me, it’s easy to blame yourself or someone and something comes out. All of us feel terrible, like, when you lose a deal. But it in most cases, you cannot control the outcome. That’s the problem. If you don’t realize that, then, like in football, you really have to focus on the game, not on the scoreboard. That’s at least my thinking. On staying even killed, then you don’t blame.

In Sanskrit, they say It really talks about focus on doing stuff, not on the results. Another one I’ll just say is impossible is hard in the beginning, but at the end, there’s nothing. And the reason I say that is I’ve done many startups, and it’s always exciting in the beginning. Then the going inevitably gets very tough, and it seems impossible. You just have to plow through it, and then it’ll be great. So and just to wrap up, I’ll just say, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

And the reason I say that is our CTO is is just he’s my brother and cofounder too. He’s great at this. His initiatives have led to the creation of a standard called the eSync Alliance, and we could have done a proprietary solution. Mhmm. But we said no because we have learned this from our previous, startup as well. Innovation is very expensive. So why not have the industry carry the load Mhmm.

Rather than just us? So at Excelfore , we truly value ecosystem and believe in it.

[00:23:08 – 00:23:38] Nitin Bajaj

Love that. Ashwin, thank you so much for sharing your journey, your story, your online life lessons, and also for being a true community entrepreneur. And as you just exemplified with that last example, I’ve seen this even at CES. You had many partners on the floor that were showcasing the work that you and your team have put together, and you’ve essentially brought the industry along.

Kudos for that. Congratulations, and thank you.

[00:23:39 – 00:23:53] Shrinath Acharya

Thanks a lot, Nitin. I truly enjoyed talking with you on this topic. And I think your back background always also tells me that there are many things that you can do beyond just the short things that many of us try to do. Enjoyed it.