Flipkart Executive Urges Businesses To Prioritize Customer Relevance Over Tech Hype

Businesses must understand new technology before incorporating it into solutions, avoiding hype, said Ravi Vijayaraghavan, Chief Data Analytics Officer and SVP at Flipkart. In a fireside chat session during the 4th edition of AI @Walmart 2024, he said businesses often get caught in the 'fog of the hype' around any new technology.

Building customer-centric use cases is crucial, he emphasised and advised against becoming overly focused on technology.

'Whenever a new technology comes, today it is GenAI, it was something else in the past...there is what I call the fog of hype, it is some sort of a need or urgency to incorporate that technology into your products or services. I would resist that and first understand the problem that one is trying to solve,' he said.

In 9 out of 10 cases, he further spoke, data beats algorithm.

'When you're building a solution, make sure that you have the right data, that would make it a powerful solution,' he said.

He mentioned that finding the right balance between simplicity and complexity is crucial for businesses. 'Simpliciity is key. ..I ask my team to not complicate things but to use the simplest model that will solve the problem in a meaningful manner.'

However, one should not be afraid of complexity, he said, 'Some problems are truly complex. to be able to balance when you have to be simple and when to be complex is a skill in itself...keep simple problems simple and understand complexity where there is complexity'.