CXO of the week: Nishant Rajawat, CEO & Founder, Bird AI

Bird AI is a global collaborative technology company, leading the way to create interactive meeting solutions, enabling people to communicate and collaborate more effectively together. Launched in 2021, Bird AI is currently present in over 20 countries across 3 continents, and with its next-generation collaboration technology, the company is focused on revolutionizing the future of work and the future of education for everyone. Bird AI has consistently been positioned among the fastest-growing Intelligent Collaboration tech start-ups worldwide and recognized with international prestigious awards, With constant innovative leaps, Bird AI is dedicated to delivering an exceptional collaborative experience to everyone.

Nishant Rajawat, after being in stealth for over 2 years in foundational R&D, Bird AI was launched in 2021. Bird AI is Nishant’s second startup, who previously was the founder of Cybernetyx and creator of EyeRIS interactive sensor technology. Nishant and his team have embarked on a new mission in transforming dull meetings into engaging collaboration experiences with Bird AI.

Recently we have engaged in an interview with Nishant Rajawat, CEO & Founder, Bird AI. He shared his views on the trends and future of the Education Tech industry in India and also share his journey so far.

Introduction.

Bird AI is a global collaborative technology company leading the way to create interactive hybrid teamwork solutions that bridge the gap between physical and digital workspaces and support people in communicating better and working efficiently together from anywhere. We offer intelligent conferencing systems integrated with digital meeting platform to instantly transform any space into a hybrid collaboration space. Established in 2021, our goal is to enable teams to collaborate effectively and effortlessly from any location. We are currently present in over 20 countries across 3 continents, and with our next-generation collaboration technology we are focused on revolutionizing the future of work and education.

Bird AI was launched in 2021 by Nishant Rajawat, the creator of EyeRIS Interactive Camera Technology and the founder of Cybernetyx Group, the global market leader in Portable Touch Sensing Solutions. Over the past decade, EyeRIS technology has been a major redefining factor for the Global IWB industry, licensed and sold to major players of the AV industry like Sharp-NEC Display, SONY and ViewSonic, among others, clocking over $200 Million worldwide in gross product sales and touching more than 15 million users in 80+ countries.

With what mission and objectives was the company set up initially?

Collaboration is the engine of success for mankind. Bird AI aims to propel the world forward by empowering teams to effortlessly work together and have engaging, successful collaboration experiences. The genesis of Bird AI is rooted in the founding team’s experience of being part of globally distributed workforce and observing the frustrating limitations of collaborating digitally.

Inefficient, frustrating, and rarely collaborative meeting experiences are the norm when using the existing conferencing tools for teamwork. The location also significantly impacts a hybrid team’s access to collaboration tools, meeting content, and overall experience.

We realized that the future of communication and knowledge work is via more connected and intelligent assistive tools that can amplify team collaboration. So, we wanted to build a next-gen collaboration technology to make hybrid team meetings as good as or better than face-to-face meetings. Through this, we aim to transform any space into a digital collaboration hub so that people get an exceptional collaborative experience no matter where they are and make it easy to work together.

Tell us about what kind of products and conferencing solutions you offer for employees and students.

To help people collaborate seamlessly in the hybrid world, we provide smart meeting room devices and collaboration applications powered by interactive AI-powered technology.

We have two product lines -BirdHub&BrightClass, targeting the workspace and education tech space, respectively, and each product offers distinctive solutions.

BirdHub- for the Enterprise Segment – BirdHubis an all-in-one portable interactive video-enabled collaboration system, elevates the team meeting experience to the next level. The Bird Hub is industry’s first product with a built-in 3D sensing camera that converts any display, monitor, or TV into a touchscreen via our proprietary technology. It has a built-in neural-powered vision engine, and voice recognition sensors that allow members to see, hear, and share information with each other as if they were in the same room.

The Bird hub comes with the most advanced cloud-based collaboration software, which allows users to join anywhere and anytime and facilitates synchronous and asynchronous collaboration on the content & application. The real-time editing of documents helps in the co-creation process of knowledge workers and professionals. During intensive brainstorming sessions making the notes is a complicated process—putting the thoughts together on the same document and sharing them later with other participants is easy.

BrightClass- for the Education Segment - Generation Z has specific educational needs, and BrightClassis a digital classroom platform that was created to meet those demands. In addition to its powerful hardware, it has a robust suite of instructional tools that can be used with any learning mode. Using BrightClass teachers can make their lesson more engaging and students can access the lessons and content even after school from their own devices.

What were the challenges and obstacles you faced while establishing Bird AI?

Introducing the brand name into the market and creating the brand identity among the tall industrial players, was a big challenge. The product rightly suits the need of the hour so we are pushing ourselves hard to create brand awareness and identity for our products in the industry.

Cracking our first set of customers and partners during the complete lockdown through virtual means was challenging. We had to devise a strategy for recreating the real-time product use case scenario. We received a huge appreciation from customers for this approach. Customers can receive the hybrid meeting feel with a unique way of demonstrating products. This encouraged the buyers to take a quick decision.

Bird AI builds products whose strength is their artificial intelligence. This can be obtained solely by embedding the sensors. We are no exception to facing a global semiconductor crisis. Our team was the strength of our company. Despite the shortage, we worked on alternative ways to deliver the orders on time, and we were successful.

What, as per you, are the five important things that Bird AI should be looking at today?

Adding more flags to our geographical presence

Bird AI wants to be one of the top companies in the world when it comes to collaboration technology. It is not going to happen in a day or two. It is a steady process of development. We have appointed distribution channels in 10+ countries in South &South East Asia, Europe & South Africa. We are working towards expanding our reach in the North American region. The pain points we are addressing are not niche problems but a central issue related to a global hybrid work and learning trends, so we are extensively working to expand our presence in the coming months.

Build a strong system to ensure customer success

If selling the products is the primary step keeping the customers happy with timely support and response when they face issues and need guidance is more critical. Bird AI believes that great customer support can always keep us ahead in the race. We never ignore the voice of the customer, which adds up so much value in planning our produce feature pipeline.

Creating products that add value Innovation that should be zero to One, not incremental

We constantly push ourselves to innovate on products with new features that can bring value to our customers. We never stop questioning the shortcomings in our approach to building great products. It is a vital point we always keep in mind to propagate innovation. We imbibe the mindset of innovation into our company’s culture and encourage our teams to have a zero-to-one approach to creating products.

Strengthening our Bi-channel approach to reach customers globally

We continuously strive to investigate routes to strengthen the GTM strategies and reach customers. We tap the prospective buyers via online channels like eCommerce platforms and market the product digitally. For our enterprise series we reach out via our partner ecosystem. With a systemic channel connect program in place, we are putting our efforts to build a strong partner community who can be our extended team and support us to reach the customers in a more effective manner.

Build a strong team for penetrating the collaboration technology market

We always keep our eyes open to catch the right talent that can bring energy and adds value to the team. We are focused in building a strong team who can fit our ecosystem well and contribute their best to build a world-class collaboration technology company.

What are the recent trends and future of the Education Tech and AV industry in India?

Trends and future of the Ed-tech industry

• The internet preparation rate is expected to hit 55% by the end of 2025, so it has become a compulsion for governments to focus on digitizing the classrooms and enhancing the teaching and learning experiences. Students got used to learning from all possible sources, and that too in a very engaging manner during the pandemic.
• The education field has greatly changed and grown in the last few years. Especially during the lockdowns caused by the pandemic, when education went digital for the first time, and everyone realized how important technology is. It was a new experience for all of us, especially the students. With the help of technology, several trends have moved to the forefront of the education field. These trends have completely changed how the field works and are here to stay for the foreseeable future. Some of these key trends are:
• A futuristic technology in the classroom: The learning patterns of students are altered permanently post-pandemic era and the expectations of students are growing. They need a smart classroom with robust feature packed technology that support them to learn from anywhere and anytime.
• Personalized Education: As classrooms become more diverse and complicated and technology becomes more readily available, personalized education is quickly becoming the new norm which allows students to learn at their own pace, place & path. Outside the prescribed curriculum, technology tools can assist teachers in providing students with varied learning experiences. The software must assess the status the students hold on the subject and guide them personally.

Trends and future of the Enterprise level AV industry

• Hybrid work culture:During the pandemic employees are accustomed to working from their comfortable locations and expect the same level of ease post-pandemic. 89% of enterprises are switching to the hybrid work model to encourage flexibility at work.
• Upgrading workspaces with video-enabled conferencing technology: Now enterprises are out looking for a holistic solution in the meeting room that can provide an inclusive video conferencing experience and world-class collaborative experience to the users.
• Intelligent workspace tools: The meeting rooms are where the most ideas are exchanged. An intelligent workspace solution is essential for visual presentation, and real-time editing possibilities can enhance the teams' productivity. Since the pandemic, individual performance has risen, but the collective efficacy of the teams has gone down. To keep this up, collaboration has to happen as before the pandemic in the meeting rooms, allowing all the team members to give their inputs and work on the same board.
• Collaboration devices with BYOD support: "Bring your own device" (BYOD) describes the growing practice of workers bringing their mobile devices or laptops to the office to connect to the company's network and use company-issued apps and data. BYOD solutions have become more common as companies encourage employees to work remotely, keep flexible schedules, and stay connected during work-related travel and commuting.

What changes is Bird AI bringing to the industry?

The software first approach amalgamated with the power of artificial intelligence and machine learning helps us create products that bring a new dimension to the collaboration industry.

• AI helps achieve features that are not possible in legacy Video conferencing hardware. The existing players in the market are working to improve the hardware aspects of their products, but now the users are more dependent on software with AI algorithms to access the content from wherever they are and need auto-generated analytics to have a hassle-free collaboration experience.
• AI helps achieve a more integrated solution in video conferencing equipment. The interactive vision-sensing camera from Bird AI has revolutionized the way we interact with displays. With this instead of investing on a full blown interactive display, our customers can experience a natural digital whiteboarding experience on their existing displays
• Bundling the industry specific collaboration software for Enterprise & Bright Class for Education along with our products create more personalized user experience.

What advice would you like to give the younger generation who are coming into the tech industry?

Keep your foundation strong

Determine your core area and play within it. Never leave the root cause that encouraged you to start your enterprise. Keep yourself passionate and update your knowledge daily. Build your vision and mission statements, your core valuesand keep revisiting them often.

Validate your problem

Innovating a product always starts with fixing a pressing problem facing our world. Knowing clearly what you are solving for can always lead you to create the best product. It can help clearly define your market and get the most appropriate prospects.

Estimate the level of risk

Yeah, you need to realize that starting up is an adventurous journey. Most entrepreneurs fail to stick there for a long time. This is because they don’t understand the risks and are not mentally prepared to face them. Starting up has never been an easy task. You need to be equipped with the right knowledge to thrive, or else the risk factor can shoot up, and you can perish in these cruel markets.