Flipkart executive urges companies to prioritize customer importance over technology noise

Companies need to understand new technology before incorporating it into solutions, thereby avoiding hype, said Ravi Vijayaraghavan, director of data analytics and senior vice president at Flipkart. During a fireside chat session at the 4th edition of AI @Walmart 2024, he said companies often get caught up in a “fog of hype” around any new technology.

He stressed that building customer-centric use cases is key and advised against over-focusing on technology.

“Whenever a new technology comes out, today it’s GenAI and in the past it was something else… there’s what I call a fog of hype, there’s some kind of need or urgency to incorporate that technology into your products or services. “I would oppose it and first understand the problem that is being tried to solve,” he said.

He went on to say that 9 times out of 10, the data beats the algorithm.

“When you build a solution, make sure you have the right data to make it a powerful solution,” he said.

He mentioned that finding the right balance between simplicity and complexity is crucial for businesses. “Simplicity is the key. ..I ask my team not to complicate the matter, but to use the simplest model that will significantly solve the problem.’

But you shouldn’t be afraid of complexity, he said: “Some problems are really complex. the ability to strike a balance between when to be simple and when to be complex is a skill in itself… keep simple problems simple and understand complexity where there is complexity.