Rashi and Manish Gupta met in 2000 at IIT Delhi as students. Rashi was pursuing a Masters in Applied Mathematics, while Manish was in the final year of the Integrated MTech in Mathematics and Computing. Perhaps, their common love for Maths brought them together; a friendship, which blossomed while solving complicated differential equations, ultimately culminated into marriage in 2003.
Manish, after completing his course in 2001, joined the Seattle-based firm, Leadbyte, as a Team Lead. “My father had instilled in me the value of being self-independent early in life, that’s the reason I began my job early. In fact, I used to take up projects/assignments even while I was studying,” says Manish, 42. He kept climbing up the corporate ladder, ultimately becoming the CTO of RateGain in 2017 before the idea to set up his own automation firm hit him. “All this while, I had been part of a lot of projects (both self-initiated as well as business demanded) with a key focus on automation, which drastically improved efficiency yielding high ROI,” he says.
Meanwhile, after completing her Masters in 2002, Rashi joined the M Tech programme at IIT. Born into a healthcare-research-oriented family, she was keen to study further, and after marriage, she went ahead to do her PhD in Biometry from the University of Helsinki, Finland, wherein she worked extensively with genomics data and built models that got published in world-renowned journals. Post her doctorate, Rashi, first worked as an Assistant Professor at JNU then joined data analytics firm, AbsolutData, followed by the Business Process Management firm, WNS.
“Working with large data sets at JNU, and building products and driving automation at AbsolutData and WNS, helped me understand the importance of automation. So, I too was keen on applying my knowledge of algorithm development to solve real life problems,” says Rashi, 43, recalling the phase when Manish floated the idea to her to build a product that could automate all tasks that happen at a “traditional contact center”. In mid-2017, the couple left their respective jobs and co-founded their own venture, rezo.ai.
“Today, rezo.ai is one of the fastest growing AI-powered contact centers, transforming businesses with its turnkey services for quick scalability and better economics,” says Rashi, who helms data science, sales and marketing departments. “The platform is powered by machine learning, natural language processing and predictive intelligence, and other proprietary algorithms. Now that we have a strong presence in India, we are working on foraying into the US and the Middle East,” puts in Manish, who takes care of Technology, Strategy and Financial departments.
Work Vs Home
One aspect of being life-and-business partners, is getting acquainted with the other’s the strengths and weaknesses, and leveraging those, which is what Rashi and Manish do. “Rashi is like Sehwag of Indian team. If she is in form, just sit back and enjoy the show from non-striker’s end,” says Manish. “And the best thing about Manish is I don’t have to worry about work not getting done once allocated to him,” puts in Rashi.
Arguments are bound to happen, and “healthy arguments”, both opine, are “good and needed” as these bring to the fore multiple perspectives of a problem. But the thumb rule is: if either of the two has a strong opinion on an issue at hand, the other should back off.
With their personal and professional life so intertwined, it becomes difficult to keep work and family life separate, “So, we made a policy that any work-related discussion needs to have a calendar invite, and all such discussions can only be conducted during that duration. Any time outside of that is family time,” says Manish. “And, if we try to cheat on this rule, our nine-year-old daughter, Aishi, plays referee and does a time out. She often checks our calendar,” laughs Rashi.
“Aishi is super close to Rashi. Now, with Covid, she is getting better at pitching Rezo (she overhears our conversations) and even comes up with innovative ideas. Best was when she heard one sales candidate being interviewed and commented that he was not good,” says Manish, with a smile, happy to see their young one taking after them, inheriting their business mindset.
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