Meeting Title: Brainforge x Infuse AI Collaboration Date: 2025-11-06 Meeting participants: Uttam Kumaran, Naheed Quaisar
WEBVTT
1 00:01:37.120 ⇒ 00:01:38.290 Naheed Quaisar: Hello!
2 00:01:41.040 ⇒ 00:01:42.720 Uttam Kumaran: Hello, how are you?
3 00:01:42.950 ⇒ 00:01:44.300 Naheed Quaisar: Good, how are you?
4 00:01:45.100 ⇒ 00:01:47.810 Uttam Kumaran: Good, really nice to meet you. Thanks for taking the time.
5 00:01:48.290 ⇒ 00:01:50.250 Naheed Quaisar: Absolutely, absolutely.
6 00:01:50.540 ⇒ 00:01:52.220 Uttam Kumaran: How’s everything going?
7 00:01:52.650 ⇒ 00:01:56.650 Naheed Quaisar: Everything’s good. I guess we never bumped into each other.
8 00:01:57.110 ⇒ 00:02:01.530 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, it was actually a really productive event, though, like, we…
9 00:02:01.810 ⇒ 00:02:06.269 Uttam Kumaran: me and my business partner went, it was… it was really fruitful, it was great.
10 00:02:06.530 ⇒ 00:02:08.959 Naheed Quaisar: Yeah, you got, you got a lot of leads, and…
11 00:02:11.090 ⇒ 00:02:22.869 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, definitely a lot of leads, and yeah, we ended up working with a company that we met there, and my business partner, Robert, moderated a really great roundtable at ShopTalk, and that was really good.
12 00:02:22.960 ⇒ 00:02:26.030 Naheed Quaisar: We do a lot of work in, in sort of CPG.
13 00:02:26.030 ⇒ 00:02:33.729 Uttam Kumaran: retail, e-com, so… it’s also just nice to see what other companies are doing, and, like, bump shoulders with
14 00:02:33.910 ⇒ 00:02:36.170 Uttam Kumaran: All the operators that are there, so…
15 00:02:36.350 ⇒ 00:02:39.409 Naheed Quaisar: Absolutely, absolutely. I’m sure, I’m sure.
16 00:02:39.870 ⇒ 00:02:44.949 Naheed Quaisar: We’re all seeking for the… you know, we’re all trying to do the same thing, right? We’re all in different spheres.
17 00:02:45.190 ⇒ 00:02:47.759 Naheed Quaisar: Networking and learning from each other, yeah.
18 00:02:47.760 ⇒ 00:02:48.540 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
19 00:02:48.540 ⇒ 00:02:51.630 Naheed Quaisar: So, tell me more about Brainforge. What are you guys doing?
20 00:02:51.950 ⇒ 00:03:11.089 Uttam Kumaran: Sure, yeah, so we’re a data and AI consultancy. My background is in data engineering, and leading data teams, at a number of companies, and then started this business a few years ago. Primarily, we’ve worked typically with e-com, B2B SaaS, and more increasingly health and more professional services.
21 00:03:11.150 ⇒ 00:03:17.720 Uttam Kumaran: everything kind of around, like, decision intelligence, I would say, is sort of how we’re coining it, but basically everything is around
22 00:03:17.750 ⇒ 00:03:32.960 Uttam Kumaran: for centralizing data, building data models, supporting, you know, basically using analytics to support decision making. And then, additionally, we’re doing a lot of work on the AI side for just automating, you know, workflows, or helping teams, you know, build
23 00:03:33.140 ⇒ 00:03:49.259 Uttam Kumaran: you know, internal automations, to sort of save time and, you know, kind of trim down a little bit of, you know, time expenditure that’s going to really monotonous tasks. So typically, you know, we’re working with, you know, I would say our ICP is usually, like.
24 00:03:49.330 ⇒ 00:03:58.719 Uttam Kumaran: 10 to 20 million in revenue and higher, and we have some clients that are exceeded, $100 million, you know, in revenue that we’re supporting.
25 00:03:58.720 ⇒ 00:04:11.649 Uttam Kumaran: But we’re a small company, a young company, so we’re just sort of growing. I would say both of our backgrounds aren’t from consulting, traditionally. Both of us have worked in industry, at companies, so…
26 00:04:11.900 ⇒ 00:04:16.950 Uttam Kumaran: We don’t have, like, the consultant mindset, necessarily, of, like.
27 00:04:17.380 ⇒ 00:04:19.850 Uttam Kumaran: Putting together flashy decks and, like.
28 00:04:20.220 ⇒ 00:04:37.039 Uttam Kumaran: saying, okay, great, that’ll be, like, 100 grand. Like, I think we’re probably too committed to, like, actually making sure that every dollar that gets spent with us is, like, worth it. And, we’re learning, sort of, the consulting things as we go. But we’ve always been confident in
29 00:04:37.080 ⇒ 00:04:55.200 Uttam Kumaran: in the service that we deliver on the data and AI side, and so we’ve never sort of compromised on that. I think we’ve… we’re figuring out more about, you know, communication, doing, you know, how do we actually structure, engagements, you know, and things like that, but yeah, it’s… it’s just, like.
30 00:04:55.290 ⇒ 00:04:58.809 Uttam Kumaran: Been crazy running this business, so it’s, it’s been a lot of fun.
31 00:04:58.810 ⇒ 00:05:01.360 Naheed Quaisar: How long have you guys been in business?
32 00:05:01.610 ⇒ 00:05:03.609 Uttam Kumaran: A little over 2 years.
33 00:05:03.610 ⇒ 00:05:04.980 Naheed Quaisar: A little over 2 years? Okay.
34 00:05:04.980 ⇒ 00:05:05.680 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
35 00:05:05.940 ⇒ 00:05:11.399 Naheed Quaisar: Nice, awesome, awesome, yeah. Well, it’s exciting, lot, you know,
36 00:05:11.710 ⇒ 00:05:16.190 Naheed Quaisar: Your baby, your startup, your journey, everything just…
37 00:05:16.540 ⇒ 00:05:21.959 Naheed Quaisar: The first few years are the most exciting of all, I think, and then slowly kind of gets into that whole…
38 00:05:22.590 ⇒ 00:05:29.120 Naheed Quaisar: Yeah, I’m, I’m ancient when it comes to this. I’ve been doing this for 23 years now.
39 00:05:29.320 ⇒ 00:05:31.060 Naheed Quaisar: It’s a long, long time.
40 00:05:31.310 ⇒ 00:05:38.539 Naheed Quaisar: But health products for you is not my only baby. I just launched Infuse AI, which is a startup in the AI space.
41 00:05:38.690 ⇒ 00:05:45.179 Naheed Quaisar: Yeah. And we’re doing the same thing you guys are doing, automation, you know, we’re building agents.
42 00:05:45.370 ⇒ 00:05:47.830 Naheed Quaisar: For work tours and process automation.
43 00:05:48.430 ⇒ 00:05:52.189 Naheed Quaisar: Is your team in India, or is it… is your team here?
44 00:05:52.510 ⇒ 00:06:08.589 Uttam Kumaran: No, it’s sort of scattered everywhere. We have a fair amount of people here in the States, like, within New York, LA, and I live in Austin. And then, yeah, no real centralization, so we have remote folks sort of wherever I can find great people. Yeah, so there’s no, no real, like.
45 00:06:08.700 ⇒ 00:06:12.959 Uttam Kumaran: Density anywhere except for the U.S.
46 00:06:13.340 ⇒ 00:06:18.350 Naheed Quaisar: Okay, all right, so I actually was interested in meeting with you, because I thought there was…
47 00:06:19.010 ⇒ 00:06:26.199 Naheed Quaisar: I think there’s some collaboration, that we can, you know, work on together.
48 00:06:26.780 ⇒ 00:06:32.259 Naheed Quaisar: And I’m… I don’t have my decks ready today. I just got back from India yesterday, so I’m like.
49 00:06:32.260 ⇒ 00:06:33.630 Uttam Kumaran: Oh, no worries, no problem.
50 00:06:33.630 ⇒ 00:06:36.800 Naheed Quaisar: I’m still waking up, so to speak.
51 00:06:36.910 ⇒ 00:06:47.869 Naheed Quaisar: So, but, I’d be happy to share with you what we’re doing, and then see what you guys are doing, and then maybe, you know, brainstorm on how we could partner and collaborate.
52 00:06:47.870 ⇒ 00:06:48.500 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
53 00:06:49.100 ⇒ 00:06:53.640 Naheed Quaisar: There’s a… my team is in India.
54 00:06:53.810 ⇒ 00:06:59.079 Naheed Quaisar: So, I get… I have… I guess I have access to talent.
55 00:06:59.180 ⇒ 00:07:01.260 Naheed Quaisar: But at the right price, too.
56 00:07:01.420 ⇒ 00:07:04.339 Naheed Quaisar: So it kind of helps in building…
57 00:07:04.660 ⇒ 00:07:09.789 Naheed Quaisar: And offering our customers the economy of scale.
58 00:07:10.030 ⇒ 00:07:12.920 Naheed Quaisar: Along with the solutions that they’re looking for.
59 00:07:13.200 ⇒ 00:07:13.800 Naheed Quaisar: So…
60 00:07:13.800 ⇒ 00:07:20.229 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, and what’s been, like, sort of the ICP for the team so far? Like, what have been, like, some of the wins?
61 00:07:20.480 ⇒ 00:07:29.470 Naheed Quaisar: So we’ve, we’ve built, we’ve done, browser automation, workflow automation, RAG agents,
62 00:07:29.470 ⇒ 00:07:30.020 Uttam Kumaran: Great.
63 00:07:30.020 ⇒ 00:07:34.169 Naheed Quaisar: For e-commerce companies, where they can, you know, basically get everything
64 00:07:34.200 ⇒ 00:07:53.759 Naheed Quaisar: centralized, and the RAG agent is offering all their, you know, answering all their questions, and it’s wonderful. And then, we’ve done inbound and outbound agents calling, for both the sites, customer service and sales lead generation. We’re also working on media generator.
65 00:07:53.810 ⇒ 00:08:00.580 Naheed Quaisar: And social media automation. So, a lot of great products.
66 00:08:01.000 ⇒ 00:08:03.930 Naheed Quaisar: The team’s really smart, really good.
67 00:08:04.100 ⇒ 00:08:09.400 Naheed Quaisar: And… Gung-ho at this time, so we’re, like, all gearing up to grow.
68 00:08:09.400 ⇒ 00:08:10.409 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
69 00:08:10.450 ⇒ 00:08:17.899 Naheed Quaisar: we’ve done this, you know, I guess, been in the e-commerce for so long that we kind of understand e-commerce so well.
70 00:08:18.060 ⇒ 00:08:24.999 Naheed Quaisar: Health Products For You, at one point was Inc. 5000 for 5 years in a row, so we’ve kind of…
71 00:08:25.000 ⇒ 00:08:28.129 Uttam Kumaran: Great. Route and seeing the…
72 00:08:28.340 ⇒ 00:08:31.639 Naheed Quaisar: Seeing the growth and the challenges that come with it, and all of that.
73 00:08:31.850 ⇒ 00:08:32.210 Uttam Kumaran: Brands.
74 00:08:32.210 ⇒ 00:08:43.609 Naheed Quaisar: So, so I’m leading both the teams, so in that sense, I have the experience to… Cool. From e-commerce side, that I bring into AI,
75 00:08:43.610 ⇒ 00:08:44.210 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah.
76 00:08:45.320 ⇒ 00:09:04.209 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, certainly, I think there’s some opportunity where, you know, we’re selling a lot, and I think, you know, our challenge is, as you mentioned, like, finding talent, and there’s also a lot of companies that don’t exactly fit our ICP that, like, we should totally collaborate on. I think we’ve found it challenging to find other partners
77 00:09:04.230 ⇒ 00:09:05.560 Uttam Kumaran: building…
78 00:09:05.600 ⇒ 00:09:17.780 Uttam Kumaran: you know, sophisticated AI, I would say, that aren’t just, like, one-person freelance shops, or don’t have, like, sort of the professional experience in, like, structuring a consulting agreement, right? A consulting engagement.
79 00:09:18.990 ⇒ 00:09:29.560 Uttam Kumaran: And so I think there’s a lot of value, and similarly, I think when we come into a client, we sort of start pretty narrow, and then we quickly expand. I think clients are…
80 00:09:30.060 ⇒ 00:09:38.820 Uttam Kumaran: like, often surprised at, like, how urgent we make our work, and how, you know, quickly we drive towards outcomes, so I think there’s a lot of…
81 00:09:39.100 ⇒ 00:09:40.930 Naheed Quaisar: You know, opportunity for sure.
82 00:09:41.470 ⇒ 00:09:48.039 Naheed Quaisar: Okay, sounds great. So, do you want to schedule something for next week, or maybe the following week, whenever you have,
83 00:09:48.180 ⇒ 00:09:50.220 Naheed Quaisar: I just need a couple of days to kind of get.
84 00:09:50.220 ⇒ 00:10:05.849 Uttam Kumaran: No, no, no problem. Yeah, let’s do that, and I’ll also send… I’ll send some email… I’ll send some materials over from our side about, like, some past case studies and, like, our sort of capabilities deck on the AI side, and then happy… I’ll definitely have, you know, one or two people from my team
85 00:10:05.850 ⇒ 00:10:12.359 Uttam Kumaran: That can kind of walk through, you know, we do a lot of partners, partnerships with other vendors and agency partners.
86 00:10:12.360 ⇒ 00:10:18.829 Uttam Kumaran: Both, you know, folks that, you know, are sort of adjacent with us, or larger and smaller, and so…
87 00:10:19.090 ⇒ 00:10:19.450 Naheed Quaisar: Okay.
88 00:10:19.450 ⇒ 00:10:27.390 Uttam Kumaran: that’s the thing I learned, sort of, about this game, is just to make as many friends as possible and deliver for clients, you know, so there’s no other way…
89 00:10:27.390 ⇒ 00:10:35.440 Naheed Quaisar: Yeah, yeah, that’s the best way to do this. And who knows, you know, you might have a solution that I’m looking for, and I might have a solution that you’re looking for.
90 00:10:36.120 ⇒ 00:10:47.280 Naheed Quaisar: We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, just, you know, use our network too. With media generation, are you working with agencies on media generation also?
91 00:10:48.290 ⇒ 00:11:07.090 Uttam Kumaran: No, we don’t have anybody, and we don’t have staff internally that’s doing anything on image video generation. We have had inquiries into it, and at that point, we did source some partners that could fulfill that. I’m also happy to share, like, yeah, I mean, there’s… we have some people that have called us about
92 00:11:07.430 ⇒ 00:11:22.070 Uttam Kumaran: image creative generation that I wasn’t going to be able to fulfill, and then we were starting to basically look for partners. So there’s totally opportunities for me to circle back with those leads, and given, like, your expertise, and we could put something in front of them. So that’s something that
93 00:11:22.070 ⇒ 00:11:33.289 Uttam Kumaran: definitely I don’t see us developing a skill set for. Most of our work is a lot on, like, what you would basically say is, like, traditional data engineering, but it’s a lot of, like, data movement, data structuring.
94 00:11:33.310 ⇒ 00:11:43.460 Uttam Kumaran: And then we implement RAD systems as well, and then we’re building mostly internal-facing agents. So we’re not doing as much also that are… that is a customer-facing. We have… we…
95 00:11:43.530 ⇒ 00:12:03.470 Uttam Kumaran: we haven’t been playing… I mean, it’s mainly because our business is mostly on internal reporting and optimization, but we do have clients that, of course, are like, hey, I want to take what we built and put it in front of customers, and it is just not something that we’ve invested a lot of time, and I don’t know how far we’re going to go in that direction. We have done a lot of browser automation, and headless browser work.
96 00:12:03.470 ⇒ 00:12:10.089 Uttam Kumaran: for, you know, sort of internal reporting and automation. But I think certainly hearing from your background.
97 00:12:10.110 ⇒ 00:12:26.359 Uttam Kumaran: anything that is, like, sort of customer-facing, whether it’s outbound or inbound processing. Additionally, yeah, I would love to see kind of, like, what y’all have done on the creative side. We get inquiries and we have connections into media marketing that have asked us about that.
98 00:12:26.420 ⇒ 00:12:32.730 Uttam Kumaran: I just know it from just being in the industry, like, everything that’s going on, but it’s not something that we have expertise on internally.
99 00:12:33.130 ⇒ 00:12:44.649 Naheed Quaisar: Right, right. So, yeah, so there’s all these areas that we can definitely collaborate on. So, do you want to bring your partner in also next week? And I can bring my head of, ID, the…
100 00:12:44.650 ⇒ 00:12:45.120 Uttam Kumaran: Fair.
101 00:12:45.120 ⇒ 00:12:57.189 Naheed Quaisar: the architect behind our, our, you know, AI solutions, and he, you know, you guys can actually, we can, we can talk deeper into the solutions that we have, and what you guys are looking, you know.
102 00:12:57.770 ⇒ 00:13:01.939 Naheed Quaisar: what are the potential collaborations that we can work on? So…
103 00:13:02.100 ⇒ 00:13:05.570 Naheed Quaisar: Yeah, so maybe Thursday next week? Does Thursday look good to you?
104 00:13:06.230 ⇒ 00:13:07.799 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, let me just check.
105 00:13:09.420 ⇒ 00:13:15.840 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, if we can do Thursday, even around… This time, basically, Would… would be great.
106 00:13:15.840 ⇒ 00:13:16.910 Naheed Quaisar: your viewers.
107 00:13:16.910 ⇒ 00:13:18.579 Uttam Kumaran: We can do earlier, too, yeah.
108 00:13:18.870 ⇒ 00:13:21.679 Uttam Kumaran: Yeah, I guess, tell me… Tell me,
109 00:13:22.000 ⇒ 00:13:24.559 Uttam Kumaran: 10? Yeah, 10 a.m, Eastern?
110 00:13:24.770 ⇒ 00:13:26.280 Naheed Quaisar: Yeah, that works.
111 00:13:26.670 ⇒ 00:13:28.299 Uttam Kumaran: Sure, okay, yeah, let’s do that.
112 00:13:28.500 ⇒ 00:13:32.000 Naheed Quaisar: Yeah? All right. Okay, so let’s,
113 00:13:32.240 ⇒ 00:13:40.249 Naheed Quaisar: Yeah, let’s, we’ll schedule, like, a 45-minute window where we’ll show you what we’ve done, and then you guys can show us what you guys have.
114 00:13:40.500 ⇒ 00:13:47.210 Naheed Quaisar: And, yeah, we can start looking at where we can collaborate and find out how best to do that.
115 00:13:47.850 ⇒ 00:13:48.420 Naheed Quaisar: Okay.
116 00:13:48.420 ⇒ 00:13:49.220 Uttam Kumaran: Perfect.
117 00:13:49.220 ⇒ 00:13:50.289 Naheed Quaisar: Alright, nice to meet you.
118 00:13:50.290 ⇒ 00:13:52.450 Uttam Kumaran: Thank you so much, really nice to meet you, talk to you soon.