IIT Kharagpur alumni start up to help companies make data driven decisions

Mayur Rustagi, Rahul Kumar Singh and Lokesh Anand were all classmates at IIT Kharagpur after which they went on to work with corporates for a few years. All three of them have experience in various domains of technology -- Mayur has experience in building end-to-end architecture for big data applications, Rahul is experienced in solving diversified and complex business problems using data driven approach, and Lokesh has experience across technology and FMCG domain in project management and operations. It was in May 2013 that the trio decided to get together and start up Sigmoid Analytics.

Based out of Bangalore, Sigmoid is in the area of Real Time Big Data Warehousing, Streaming and ETL (extract, transform and load) on Apache Spark. They have a technology infrastructure which companies can use to store their data in a desired format, perform operations on it and generate insights. Their competency lies in the stack that holds data. ETL refers to a processing database usage and especially in data warehousing that:

• Extracts data from outside sources
• Transforms it to fit operational needs, which can include quality levels
• Loads it into the end target

Their revenue model basically lies on three channels: Software Licensing, Support and Professional Services (like many of the other companies that are based on Open Source technology). Apache Spark, is an Open Source cluster computing system that aims to make data analytics fast (both fast to run and fast to write). A demo video:

Spark’s major use cases are where placing data in memory helps:

• Iterative Algorithms in Machine Learning
• Interactive Data Mining
• Data Processing

Spark is also the engine behind Shark, a fully Apache Hive-compatible data warehousing system that can run 100x faster than Hive. It offers benefits like Real Time querying of data, stream processing, and sensor data processing. Since its launch in May, Sigmoid Analytics has managed to get more than 15 customers with the likes of Pearson, Capillary, and NBC, etc. “We help companies to identify use cases to address their big data challenges and help them realize value from it,” says Lokesh. He goes on to give a use case-

For one of our customer our platform processes 4TB's of Log data in real time providing hourly level analytical updates. Our platform reduces the processing cost to 100 USD/TB compared to 1000 USD/TB Hadoop based solution.This has been achieved through usage new processing engine & statistical algorithms to compute analytical metrics.

The company has been bootstrapped and is a team of close to 20 people (Dipa Dubhashi and Asit Parija joined as a part of the core team who are also IIT Kharagpur alumni). Sigmoid is also looking to raise its first round of capital in the coming three months. Sigmoid has been a global company from day one and is also registered as a US company. Most of their clients are in the US as of now and this has been possible because of the value add the company brings in alongside the connections the team had built before starting up. Capillary, one of the clients of Sigmoid, is in itself a success story of building a global technology company from India. As entrepreneurs mature, we’re seeing more and more global companies coming out from India in the technology domain. Big Data and Data Analytics has been a buzzword for a reason. As more companies generate more and more data, it becomes crucial to keep a track of it and make sense of it to improve efficiency. Gramener, Data Weave, Frrole, etc. are promising players in the space, and for Sigmoid, the aim is to keep their heads down and get more and more customers for the next year for which they’d be actively hiring and seeking funds in the coming months.

Website: Sigmoid Analytics