Latest news with #Boston-headquartered
Time of India
14-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
How these Sambhajinagar youth became world-class AI engineers
Shravan V Inamdar (centre, sitting), data scientist at Findability Sciences, along with his colleagues at the company's office in Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar Talk to almost anyone in India's software circles about building global-class products from unexpected places and the conversation quickly lands on Sridhar Vembu's Zoho experiment. The billionaire moved swathes of his SaaS giant from Chennai and the Bay Area to tiny Mathalamparai in Tamil Nadu, showing that high-end engineering can thrive amid paddy fields as much as inside glass towers. But 1,200 kilometres to the north-west, an equally audacious story has been unfolding, quietly, inside an industrial city better known for mediaeval caves than machine-learning models. Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar , formerly Aurangabad, is Maharashtra's fifth-largest urban centre. It is here that Boston-headquartered Findability Sciences has spent the past decade quietly turning 100 young men and women from low-income families into artificial intelligence engineers. Anand Mahurkar, the CEO and founder of Findability Sciences, calls them 'the finest AI engineers on Earth'. Nearly all are first-generation graduates; many grew up in humble dwellings on the edge of the city. None arrived with the skills the company needed. 'The education system simply doesn't teach what we require,' Mahurkar rues. 'So we start from scratch – two years of painful, unproductive work for us, but absolutely transformative for them.' Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Transform Your Child's Confidence with Our Public Speaking Program Planet Spark Book Now Undo Those two years resemble a crash-course in scientific thinking rather than typical corporate upskilling. The recruits begin with remedial mathematics before spending months on probability, linear algebra and statistical theory. Programming comes later. 'Anyone can learn to code today – LLMs can write decent boiler-plate code,' Mahurkar argues. 'But without a rigorous grounding in statistics, you cannot frame or validate an AI model. Maths is the oxygen, while coding is merely the plumbing.' The company partners with Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Marathwada University's statistics department. Professors moonlight as in-house trainers. Recruits handle messy datasets from day one, sales ledgers, satellite imagery, crop-sensor feeds, and must defend their modelling choices at weekly colloquia. By the time their two-year apprenticeship ends, they have built at least one production model for a paying customer. The results are hard to dispute. Findability's Sambhajinagar team now designs, trains and maintains every one of the company's enterprise-AI products, serving more than 60 large customers across the US, Japan and India. They have built demandforecasting engines for Daikin's vast Texas air-conditioner manufacturing plant. 'We give them annual savings of 20 to 30 million dollars,' Mahurkar says. 'We tell them which models will sell in which regions, and where to stock those models, which distributors will buy them, and why. All this with 95 per cent accuracy.' Another success story comes from a sugar manufacturer in South America, where Findability's AI optimisation model increased sugar yield by 2.5 per cent, adding $5 million to the company's bottom line. Retention is also startlingly high for the company: many engineers have stayed seven or eight years, an eternity in India's jobhopping tech culture. The reason, Mahurkar believes, is clear intellectual ownership. 'They are not anonymised resources on a bodyshopping bench. They see the sugar yield tick up because of their optimisation loop. They hear the Daikin foreman say he finally knows what to stock in Florida.' Humble beginnings That global footprint belies Findability's bootstrap origins. Mahurkar grew up in Ambajogai, a village 400 km east of Mumbai. A national scholarship trimmed his college fees at Sambhajinagar's Government Engineering College to Rs 250 a year. In the 1990s he joined Mumbai-based Datamatics, rose through the ranks and was shipped to Boston to help flog document-management software. 'I watched American salespeople fail, encroached on their turf, and grew the business from $4 million to $40 million,' he recalls. By his mid-thirties he was Datamatics' president, responsible for 10,000 staff. Entrepreneurial itch prevailed. In 2010, he registered the neologism 'findability' with the US patent and trademark office, 'I own that word, it's very common now though,' he tells us with a laugh and set about building a platform that could stitch together a corporation's scattered data. 'Every organisation needs the ability to find information,' he says. 'That was the simple idea.' That idea, that organisations would find it valuable to organise and analyse their disparate sources of data, turns out to be incredibly useful during the AI wave we are going through today. But even back then Mahurkar's approach was noticed. By 2014, Big Data mania was erupting and IBM's Watson group asked him to join its advisory board. Findability's plumbing, what Mahurkar now brands 'data logistics' turned out to be precisely what Watson needed. SoftBank spotted the potential in 2018, offering a joint venture in Japan in exchange for a $7 million minority stake. Mahurkar reluctantly accepted, conscious that he had remained profitable and debtfree since day one. The pandemic tested that discipline: 60 per cent of revenue evaporated in weeks. He refused to sack a single employee and clawed back the lost business over the next year. 'Our noses were bloodied,' he says. 'We learnt by failing.' Throughout those setbacks, Sambhajinagar remained non-negotiable. The city's designation as a Smart Industrial Cluster, Maharashtra's new AURIC zone, finally gave Findability the real estate it wanted. Recently the company bought four acres on which it plans a 700-person AI research campus. 'No more Bengaluru, no more Hyderabad,' Mahurkar insists. 'Quality employment must reach smaller towns. When that campus is full, I can die peacefully.' The social dividend matters to him because he remembers what a 1,000 mechanical-engineering degree did for his own life. 'These kids who joined us used to cycle ten kilometres to school,' he says. 'Now they sit opposite CTOs in Boston and Tokyo, explaining Kfold cross-validation.' Agentic future The firm claims compound annual revenue growth of 25 per cent, all selffunded bar SoftBank's minority cheque. Its 'enterprise forecasting' and 'business-process copilot' products account for the bulk of turnover, and both are built almost entirely in Sambhajinagar. The next frontier is agentic AI – bundling multiple models so that they coordinate like a team of specialists. The prototype, unveiled in January at a local conference, was coded by the Sambhajinagar cohort and is already running pilot projects in manufacturing and agriculture. One sugar client now wants a centre of excellence that can take the optimisation playbook across palm-oil, soybean and rice mills worldwide. For Mahurkar, the commercial expansion is gratifying but secondary. He measures success in human capital. 'When I started, I thought an office with a big hoarding would be enough,' he says. 'Two weeks ago we finally put our name on a building in Mumbai. But the real billboard is in Aurangabad. It tells every student from a small village that statistics, not postcode, decides whether you build world-class AI.'
Irish Independent
27-04-2025
- Business
- Irish Independent
John Mullins obituary: Cork businessman and Fine Gael politician who was head of Bord Gáis, stood for election and proved a great supporter of the GAA
He became CEO of Bord Gáis in December 2007, a position he held until the end of 2012. During those five years, Bord Gáis set up an electricity unit and developed significant renewable and conventional power-generation assets. After finishing his time at the company, Mullins and Alain Desvigne co-founded Amarenco, a company in the PV (photovoltaic) sector focused on the use of solar panels to convert sunlight directly into electric power. He became executive chairperson of the company, which promotes the development, financing and ownership of solar PV assets in Europe, the Caribbean, the Middle East and Asia. In a wide-ranging career, Mullins held senior management positions with the ESB and its global energy engineering consultancy ESB International, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (UK) and the renewable energy group NTR. He chaired the Port of Cork Company from 2013 to 2021 and was a director of the Cork-based Tyndall National Institute, a European research centre focused on integrated ICT (Information and Communications Technology) hardware and systems, cooperating with industry and academia to turn research into products. He was also a director of Páirc Uí Chaoimh as well as Wisetek Solutions Limited, also Cork-based, which specialises in IT asset disposition, data sanitisation and re-use, and was acquired by the Boston-headquartered company Iron Mountain in a major deal last year. Born in March 1968, John Mullins grew up in the Cork city districts of Knocknaheeny and Bishopstown, and attended the North Monastery Secondary School. He went on from there to University College Cork and acquired bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering, followed by an MBA from the UCD Smurfit Business School. A Fellow of Engineers Ireland and the Irish Academy of Engineering, he was awarded a Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur by the French government in 2015 — the country's highest civilian honour — for his role in developing the solar energy market there. He joined Young Fine Gael in the early 1990s, serving as its national president from 1993 to 1995. In 1994, Mullins put his name forward as a Fine Gael general election candidate for Cork North-Central. He fell short of getting the nomination by a single vote. ADVERTISEMENT Learn more He was a Fine Gael candidate last year for the European Parliament in the five-seat constituency of Ireland South, hoping to succeed the party's retiring MEP, Deirdre Clune. He told the Irish Examiner that, if elected, his priorities would be to achieve a 'new rural contract' with farmers in Ireland, the creation of 'pragmatic transitional environmental policies' and a 'fair but firm' approach to immigration. A visionary entrepreneur and a passionate climate protection advocate He finished in eighth position on the first count with 33,281 votes and was eliminated on the 17th count. John Mullins served as president of the Cork Chamber of Commerce from 2011 to 2013. He was also a member of the One Cork fundraising committee, dedicated to the promotion of Gaelic games in the county. He was a founding chairperson of the Anam Cara charity for bereaved parents, and he also chaired Energycloud, a charity for people facing fuel-poverty. In a statement, Amarenco described him as 'a visionary entrepreneur and a passionate climate protection advocate. John held executive roles within Amarenco until the end of 2024, driving the business forward in the face of many challenges. 'His dedication, vision and values have left a lasting mark and will continue to guide our company into the future. John will be greatly missed by all within our business, and our industry, for his leadership and friendship.' Cork GAA said: 'John represented everything our organisation stands for — a volunteer, a community man, a proponent of our games, and someone willing to go the extra mile for the benefit of others.' John was a wonderfully gregarious character who had a huge impact in Cork and across the country The manager of the county's senior hurling team, Pat Ryan, said: 'John Mullins was a great supporter of Cork GAA and especially the Cork senior hurlers.' Mullins's friend from his college days, Gary Murphy, now professor of politics at DCU, wrote in his Sunday Times column: 'Ultimately, Mullins simply wanted to make Ireland a better place for its people and it is a tragedy for the country, as much as his family, that he will not get the chance to continue his work of the past three-and-a-half decades. May he rest easy.' Tánaiste and Fine Gael leader Simon Harris said: 'It was an honour to know John, to soldier with him in politics, to canvass with him. I always found it a joy to be in his company. 'For Fine Gael, he was a proud friend of so many and a party activist to his core. The Fine Gael family, especially across Cork, mourns his loss. 'He was kind, witty, intelligent, fundamentally decent and someone who always wanted to do right by his community and his country. His loss is immense and will be felt deeply by so many.' Taoiseach and Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said: 'I am deeply saddened at the passing of John Mullins, someone who made such a distinguished contribution to public life, business, sport and politics. John was a wonderfully gregarious character who had a huge impact in Cork and across the country. 'John had a particular interest in sport, with his beloved Bishopstown GAA and as director of Páirc Uí Chaoimh, and I often enjoyed great banter with him over sporting rivalries. 'John fully realised his potential in public service and in business, but he could just as easily have realised his promise in politics with his deep and abiding interest and involvement with Fine Gael. A great strategist, you would see John at all the election counts over the years.' John Mullins died suddenly after taking ill at his home on April 14. He is survived by his wife Siobhan, children Michael and Sarah, his parents Pat and Maureen, brothers Jim, Pat, Kieran and Brian, other relatives and a wide circle of colleagues and friends. A ceremony in the Church of the Holy Spirit at Dennehy's Cross was followed by removal to the Island Crematorium in Ringaskiddy.
Arabian Business
23-04-2025
- Business
- Arabian Business
Bain & Company doubles Doha office size in Qatar growth push
Global management consultancy Bain & Company announced on Tuesday that it has expanded its Doha office, doubling its footprint in Qatar as the firm deepens its commitment to the Gulf state's economic diversification efforts. The expansion, which remains in Bain's existing West Bay location in the capital, comes after more than two decades of the firm advising clients in Qatar across both public and private sectors. 'Qatar is an important part of our regional footprint and continues to play a vital role in the region's growth story,' said Tom De Waele, Managing Partner at Bain & Company Middle East. 'This office expansion reflects not only our long-standing commitment to our clients and partners here, but also our belief in the country's extraordinary momentum,' he added. The renovated space incorporates design elements inspired by Qatar's natural landscapes and architectural features of the nation's stadiums, while meeting Bain's global standards for technology and workplace design. The firm aims to achieve LEED certification through sustainable building practices. Bain's expanded presence signals continued confidence in Qatar's market as the country pushes forward with economic diversification plans following its hosting of the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The Boston-headquartered consultancy, founded in 1973, operates across 65 cities in 40 countries globally, and has maintained a presence in the Middle East for several decades as Gulf nations seek expertise to help transform their economies away from hydrocarbon dependence.
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
CW Advisors buys New Jersey's Delta Financial Group
Boston-headquartered RIA CW Advisors (CWA) has expanded its national reach with the acquisition of Delta Financial Group. Delta is a fee-only RIA based in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. The acquisition, facilitated by Gladstone Group, adds $1.3bn in assets to CWA's books. CWA CEO Scott Dell'Orfano said: 'We are excited to welcome another excellent group of professionals to our firm. 'The Delta team brings further expertise to our organisation; enhances our greatest asset – our people; and expands our robust presence in the Mid-Atlantic region, which now includes six offices, from metro New York City to Richmond, Virginia.' Besides, CW Advisors acquired Leathe & Associates, an RIA in Eliot, Maine established in 2004 by Jeffrey Leathe. Financial details related to the deals, which were finalised earlier this month, were not revealed. These deals have increased CW Advisors' network to 15 offices nationwide, employing over 125 people and managing more than $12bn in assets. In February this year, CWA purchased Aspire Wealth Management and Fernwood Investment Management. Aspire in Waltham and Fernwood in Quincy, Massachusetts, cater to high-net-worth clients with financial planning and investment management services. Their acquisitions added over $800m in assets to CWA. CWA offers wealth solutions for high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, families, foundations, and endowments. The firm offers financial planning, investment consulting, and management services. "CW Advisors buys New Jersey's Delta Financial Group" was originally created and published by Private Banker International, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site. Sign in to access your portfolio
The Guardian
18-03-2025
- The Guardian
Germany investigates after national with green card arrested at US border
Berlin is investigating whether US immigration policy has changed, after a German national who is a permanent US resident was detained and 'violently interrogated' by US border officials. Fabian Schmidt, 34, is being held at a detention centre in Rhode Island after attempting to return to his home in New Hampshire after a trip to Luxembourg. His mother, Astrid Senior, told the Boston-headquartered public broadcaster WGBH news that her son had been 'violently interrogated' at Boston's Logan airport for hours, stripped naked and put in a cold shower by two officials. A German government spokesperson told Euronews it was aware of the case and those of two other German citizens who were detained when attempting to enter the US and who have subsequently returned to Germany. 'We have recently become aware of three cases in which German citizens were unable to enter the USA and were detained for deportation when they entered the country,' the spokesperson, Sebastian Fischer, said. Two of the three cases had been resolved, Fischer said, adding that the German government was 'monitoring the situation' and liaising with other EU countries to assess if these were isolated cases or representative of 'a change in American immigration policy'. Senior told the US broadcaster that immigration agents had put pressure on her son to give up his green card. He had been placed on a mat in a bright room at the airport with little food or water, and denied access to his medication for anxiety and depression. Schmidt, an electrical engineer, had been returning to the US on 7 March. His mother did not hear from him until 11 March, when he was transferred to hospital after collapsing. She told NBC news she had no idea why her son had been detained, saying: 'I feel helpless, absolutely helpless.' Schmidt and his mother moved to the US from Germany in 2007 and got permanent resident cards the following year. He renewed his legal permanent residence status last year and has no active legal issues, his mother said, although she added that he had faced misdemeanour charges about 10 years ago. The US Customs and Border Protection service told US media the claims about his case were 'blatantly false', without saying which points it disputed. The Guardian has contacted the service for comment. The German foreign ministry said its consulate in Boston was providing support. 'It is clear that we expect from our partners, as well as from all other countries in the world, that prison conditions comply with international human rights standards and that detainees are treated accordingly,' Fischer said. The case is the latest of a foreign-born national being detained and allegedly held in brutal conditions by US border agents, after Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration. Sign up to First Thing Our US morning briefing breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The two other German nationals affected were Jessica Brösche, a 29-year-old tattoo artist from Berlin, and Lucas Sielaff, 25, from Saxony-Anhalt. Both had valid tourist visas for the US and have now returned to Germany. According to Sielaff's fiancee, Lennon Tyler, he was detained for two weeks after incorrectly answering a question about where he lived owing to his poor grasp of English. Sielaff had said Las Vegas, where he was staying with Tyler, when he should have said Germany, where he permanently resides, she said. Brösche – who was travelling with tattoo equipment – was detained for more than six weeks, including nine days in solitary confinement, her friends said – a claim the company that owns the detention centre denies. Meanwhile, a Canadian actor said she was detained for nearly two weeks in 'inhuman conditions' over an incomplete visa, after attempting to cross the border at Mexico-Arizona. Jasmine Mooney was held in a single concrete cell with no natural light, fluorescent lights that were never turned off, with no blankets and limited bathroom facilities, her mother said. And a British woman was detained in 'horrendous conditions' for three weeks, her family said, after a visa mix-up. Rebecca Burke is now reportedly home in the UK. She was arrested by US border officials after attempting to cross into Canada and being sent back to the US. She had been planning to stay with a host family in Canada, where she would carry out domestic chores in exchange for accommodation, but was told by the Canadians she should have applied for a working visa instead of a tourist visa. Burke had previously stayed with a host family in Portland, Oregon under a similar arrangement after spending time sightseeing in New York City, where she arrived from the UK at the start of the year.
