MAIA Intelligence, launched in 2006, was the first business intelligence software product company in India. Its product, 1KEY Agile BI Suite, is designed with the vision of serving the analytics and reporting needs of an entire organization from the operational end users to the top executives. In this interview, CEO and founder Sanjay Mehta discusses the product benefits and the importance of customer feedback in developing a market-leading product. This article is brought to SandHill readers in partnership with ProductNation.
SandHill.com: What is your company’s mission and what was your original vision?
Sanjay Mehta: MAIA Intelligence is a young and innovative company committed to developing powerful BI reporting and analysis products. MAIA’s mission is to democratize BI and take it from a few expert users to the operational managers, and from frontline executives to the back-office team.
While at my former company (Udyog), we realized that for ERP software there are too many challenges in creating reports as and when required. The Udyog customers wanted a reporting tool to the business software as a plug-in. These customers then started asking for enhanced reporting capabilities and features in other business applications such as CRM, HR Management, etc.
Business intelligence is a domain which traditionally is aimed for the top decision maker. But what we have observed is that with adequate information at hand, operational-level decision making also improves drastically — improving productivity, increasing revenue and market share. We now have more than 45,000 users across India and are the largest BI software product company in India.
SandHill.com: Is there a story behind your company name?
Sanjay Mehta: MAIA is a female given name of Greek origin. MAIA also means the eldest of the Pleiades in Greek mythology, also identified with an Ancient Italic goddess of spring and the most beautiful. Similar to Laxmiji, goddess of prosperity.
SandHill.com: Please describe your product suite and your market.
Sanjay Mehta: Our flagship product is 1KEY Agile BI Suite, which is a comprehensive business intelligence software application catering to strategic, tactical and operational data analysis and reporting needs of multiple vertical industries. An integrated offering with a choice to pick and choose modules (business user interfaces), it enables organizations to deploy the BI framework with minimal investments and have a secure, enterprise-wide, dynamic reporting platform in six weeks, irrespective of existing applications.
We also have other products such as 1KEY Touch (an advanced interactive dashboard and reporting software), 1KEY FCM (a financial consolidation management solution) and postXBRL software (an XBRL reporting tool). Our upcoming product is 1KEY HPC (high-performance computing analytics software).
Our 1KEY BI application is suitable for small businesses as well as enterprises. We have been making good inroads in almost all the industry verticals, especially BFSI, Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals, FMCG, Consumer Durables & Retail. As of now we have customers largely in India and the Middle East, but we are looking to expand soon in the other global markets through strategic alliances.