Gradient Ascent
Winning in Our AI-powered World

“Disrupt or be disrupted—is the name of the game in today’s business world,” begins Monish Gandhi, the Founder and CEO of Gradient Ascent. With all businesses, products, and jobs being heavily impacted by AI - including data science and machine learning - it is a no-brainer that companies are rapidly investing in AI. PWC estimates that 59 percent of executives intend to use AI within the next few years.Observing this paradigm shift in AI adoption, Gradient Ascent has positioned itself at the forefront of helping businesses start their AI journey by assisting them in developing and deploying end-to-end AI-powered products and solutions. They form win-win partnerships with clients to help them succeed in today’s data-driven, AI-powered world. “Our ultimate goal is to collaborate with clients, whether they are buying or building out AI solutions. We want to help them understand how AI impacts their businesses and then actually deliver positive impact. In doing so, we maximize learning, sharing, and building in-house competencies around AI for clients,” mentions Gandhi.

Gandhi notes that most clients face three major tactical challenges: dataset, skillset, and mindset. The big strategic obstacle is prioritization and lack of a sense of urgency with respect to AI and data. Most AI projects die even before they can potentially take shape due to businesses’ failure to proactively collect, store, process, and maintain their data. Even with large investments in data warehouses and data lakes, CIOs face a huge struggle. In addition, the iterative nature of AI products and projects makes it a lot harder to predict success and ROI. This uncertainty makes it imperative for companies to push toward developing an iterative mindset.

“We believe in the idea of falling in love with the problem because oftentimes even before clients understand the problem, somebody has five different solutions for them,” adds Gandhi. The team at Gradient Ascent spends time understanding their problems, pertaining both to the technology as well as their business strategies. They guide clients through their journey to becoming an AI company. Typical maturity cycle involves: ready for AI, started with AI, and finally becoming an AI company where it becomes a core competency. In doing so, Gradient Ascent educates the clients, performs data audits and data planning, offers training, and builds prototypes to make them AI-ready. While helping clients get started with AI, Gradient Ascent builds, integrates, and deploys these solutions. Having in-house AI competency and homegrown AI solutions has given clients a huge competitive advantage in the marketplace. They also conduct webinars for clients’ end-customers to help them understand the benefits of AI. Gradient Ascent focuses on solving clients’ issues quickly and acts as their trusted advisor throughout their journey of adopting AI. They believe in moving quickly, working collaboratively, and sharing knowledge with the ultimate goal of helping clients win in the marketplace.

Our rapid growth is driven by our core values: help clients win, move fast, share passion for AI, and care

Even during the pandemic, Gradient Ascent has seen its revenue quadruple and its team triple. The company will continue this growth trajectory by expanding its outreach beyond Canada and the U.S. and has already onboarded clients in Australia and Europe. Gradient Ascent has recently adopted a venture services model and will soon partner with several venture capitalists and other investors to help accelerate the growth of their portfolio companies. The company will continue emphasizing on being a gender-balanced and diverse firm and hiring like-minded talent to its team. “We have worked on almost 50 AI projects now for global, publicly-listed clients as well as startups and diverse small businesses such as rural Canadian hospitals. We always strive to build trust and transparency with all our clients and align our interests with their needs. We win when our clients win.” concludes Gandhi.