Rigvinath Chevala, Chief Technology Officer, Evalueserve talks about how have their product developments changed the AI domain.
1. Could you tell us more about your role at Evalueserve?
Rigvi: Evalueserve is a leading global firm that empowers enterprise clients with AI-driven products and solutions that optimize decision-making and drive actionable outcomes. As the CTO, my role at Evalueserve is to drive our product strategy across our lines of business. Beyond the day-to-day aspects of my job, I focus mostly on fostering product innovation, value articulation, value capture, opportunity identification, and assisting with the go-to-market and partner strategy and change management.
In my early months at Evalueserve, I focusedon switching our organizational mindset from being service-led to product-led. I receivedtremendoussupport from our CEO and the board, which helped us accelerate toward our long-term goals. Evalueserve is an extremely dynamic organization and though we are global, we operate in a very nimble way. I love the globally inclusive culture here, and the people are just amazing.
2. Can you give us a brief of your career before Evalueserve?
Rigvi:Prior to joining Evalueserve, I worked at several software product companies in various verticals such as marketing automation, real estate software, and transportation and logistics. I started my career as a software engineer and my passion towards understanding end-users’ and customer problems led me through an incredible journey of creating solutions while understanding both the “how” and the “what”. Fortunately, the basic principles of product development are industry agnostic and that’s truly what allowed me to explore new areas and challenges but stay true to my strengths.
3. What does your typical day at work look like?
Rigvi:That’s a dangerous question (smile). Where do I start… A typical day for me involves a lot of “context-switching” and decisioning. I normally work with our engineering leadership and architects, product teams, finance, sales and marketing, executive team and admin functions every week. I also interact with our customers, stakeholders and partners as needed. Because our teams are globally dispersed, and I am in the US, my day starts pretty early.
4. What are your flagship products that have changed the AI domain?
Rigvi:We have a few flagship products that leverage AI for both descriptive and prescriptive analytics required for effective decision-making. Our customers can confidently take strategic actions while avoiding rabbit holes created by data overload. These products are delivered in both SaaS and on-premise modes, providing flexibility for our customers, especially the ones with tighter regulations around data protection.
5. Could you give us a sneak peek into the product developments at Evalueserve?
Rigvi:We have a globally diversified engineering team that takes pride in creating robust and scalable products. My team currently develops around 11 products (not to mention we are always evolving based on new ideas and/or the market traction of existing ones). All of them are web-based applications.
Each product team follows the Agile Scrum process that helps us understand market needs and feedback from customers and internal teams to shape a dynamic product roadmap. Every release is carefully planned and delivered in a predictable manner to ensure we solve the problems with the most impact first. Our customers love working with us because we tend to over-communicate and ensure they feel invested in the solutions we develop.
6. What sets Evalueserve apart from the other companies in the same space/domain?
Rigvi:This is a great question. In fact, we did market research to find out the answer and realized that we are indeed the trailblazers on a product-led services journey and that strategy really differentiates us from our peers.
For a typical professional services company, it’s often a race to the bottom on cost arbitrage, but we set ourselves apart by constantly innovating and creating technological products that are core to our existing services. In addition, our services generate more value and revenue for our customers than merely saving costs. This creates a synergistic scenario where our services and products complement to provide a “whole product”.
7. Which industries do you mainly cater to?
Rigvi: We service a wide span of clients ranging from the financial sectors, consulting and advisory firms, and energy companies, to CPG and retail and more. We are a global company at the forefront of using product-led solutions to enhance and accelerate decision-making throughout enterprises. Our client base includes over 30% of the Fortune 1000 companies, including more than 25,000 platform users who rely on Evalueserve to develop uniquely crafter solutions that merge the power of AI-driven platforms with the skillset of over 4,5000 domain experts to deliver results that drive success.
8. How has data analytics changed the decision-making process for corporates?
Rigvi:When data analytics first entered the corporate world in the 80s, it was quite simple with basic Excel sheets and PowerPoint graphs. We are engaged in decision-making analysis across different industries and organizations and see how many of the world’s top companiesapproach this.
Using the power of data and analytics, corporations can make real-time decisions, get in front of the challenges, and predict market demand and trends.We actually talk quite a bit about these topics on our podcast, Decisions Now, where we chat with different industry experts who leverage AI and data analytics in a variety of industries. We ask them how and what they’re seeing in those respective organizations, and it’s a lot of great information. So, the question, I would ask is “what ways HASN’T data analytics changed the decision-making process for corporates?”
9. What motivates you to get up every morning? What do you take pride in when it comes to your company?
Rigvi:My professional motivation has always been to increase my sphere of influence and make the largest possible impact on the organizations and people I serve. Evalueserve has the reputation and the reach to cater to a wide spectrum of industries, geographies, and cultures. That really keeps me going and I must admit that I have never had symptoms of the “Monday morning scaries” in the last three years. The fact that we’ve earned the Great Place to Work award for consecutive years in multiple regions is a great reflection of truly how awesome it is to work at this organization.
10. What is the biggest piece of advice you could provide to company leaders about helping them fulfill the needs of their team?
Rigvi: Working in the technology space for my entire career, I would like to inform all leaders that creating technology solutions is the easiest and the least complicated part of solving a given problem. In other words, the “how” is the easiest part, but the “what” and “why” need a lot more deliberation and focus.
The bottom line is, don’t get overwhelmed by the perceived complexity of technology and application development and instead drive your focus on the end impact of your solution first.
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Rigvinath Chevala,
Chief Technology Officer, Evalueserve
Rigvi Chevala is Evalueserve’s chief technology officer (CTO). He has more than 16 years of experience leading high-performing product engineering teams in building enterprise-scale products and applications.
In his current role, he is the global head of all technology teams within Evalueserve and works with multiple lines of business to assess, strategize, and deliver software products and projects based on market and customer needs. Prior to joining Evalueserve, Mr. Chevala served in various leadership roles at Trimble, MRI Software, and Brandmuscle to lead strategy, delivery, and implementation of enterprise-scale SaaS products. Mr. Chevala started his career as a full-stack software engineer.
Over the years, he has worked with several technology components such as C#, Java, JQuery, AngularJS, SQL Server, Oracle, Github, TFS, Jira, Jenkins, Teamcity, and several other toolsets. Mr. Chevala holds a master’s degree in computer and information sciences from Cleveland State University and a bachelor’s degree in computers and electronics from Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University in Hyderabad.
