Embodying the words consistent, persistent, and resilient, Shekhar Gupta, has developed new revenue-generating products and services with his research and determination.
Shekhar is an accomplished, result-oriented, and decisive leader with over 20 years of proven success. With a global executive management experience in engineering, innovation, technology development, delivery, systems integration, and strategic market positioning of products and networks, he has developed small start-ups into capable companies ready to take on the bigger competition.
Donning the position of a CEO at MYANIML, Shekhar constantly challenges himself to get better and make the company dynamic. The company works on an animal disease tracking technology designed to predict and track diseases in cattle. It uses artificial intelligence to take and analyze pictures of faces of cattle to predict and monitor diseases, enabling the cattle farming industry to cut costs, lower disease spread, deaths and look after the welfare of livestock.
Bringing Technology to Animal Welfare Sector
Shekhar started working in a fortune 100 company in the late 90s. He had the pleasure of working for other large corporations. In between working for large corporations, he had his own startups and it provided him with the ability to use the same methodologies in corporate jobs.
Shekhar has been working in the technology field since the beginning of his career. He shares, “I’ve seen it all and experienced it all. I have been partying to the praises and blames. I have seen and experienced the biases and have learned from all the positions I’ve had. My career started as an engineer, moved into architect role and leader role. I have led teams of hardware and software engineers. I’m knee deep in technology and know that it can solve many of our challenges today and throughout my career, I have used the technology to solve whatever challenges were needed to be solved at that time.”
MYANIML is an early disease prediction solution company for the cattle industry that can provide notifications 2-3 days before the symptoms are visibly seen by the owner. It aims to lower the disease spread, treatment cost, and potential deaths, and increase revenue for the owner. With a vision to help lower the disease spread in humans, MYANIML is taking efforts to bring technological advancements that aren’t targeted in the sector.
A Fun and Celebrated Work Environment
“It is a fact that the sooner you find a sickness, the faster you can cure– An ounce of prevention is better.” However, detecting a disease which is already in the body is different from predicting it. The company spends its resources to predict diseases faster while analyzing the body or looking for the visible symptoms. Shekhar utilizes his years of expertise to develop cutting-edge technology to solve complex process of early disease prediction.
The company values diversity while respecting everyone and their opinion. Shekhar states, “We strive to make sure that we all own this company and we all put in our best to make sure the company is a success. Everyone brings their knowledge and their expertise and know the end goal. We have fun when we achieve something no matter how small it is. Since our work is very novel, any new advancements are celebrated because they are bringing us one step closer to our end goal. We recognize the teammates who have done good work to get us closer to our reality and none of us are afraid to share our thoughts.”
Striving for 100% Perfection
Technology is playing a significant role in every sector and MYANIML uses technology to make lives better using advanced chips to make the calculations faster than imagined before with the help of AI and cloud infrastructure.
Shekhar explains, “When I talk about a disease prediction by analyzing a face and muzzle of a cow, since there are no papers on it, many dismiss it. When we first started, there were no algorithms we could use. There were no libraries we could borrow from. We built our own facial libraries and are still adding more. We developed our own algorithms. This is where the challenge and the satisfaction resides.” MYANIML is working ahead of the industry by introducing prediction model surpassing the current disease detection mode that is widely used in the market to identify disease at early stages.
The company is thriving the industry to look into the prediction model; however, AI has its flaws to accurately identify the disease. At instances, it may not be possible to detect all diseases at an early stage, but if the company can provide a notification early enough, at least that entity can be isolated, and disease spread can be reduced if not halted. However, the notification must be based on certain criteria and not force isolation.
Shekhar further states, “I believe that as this industry advances, there will be more entrant who would start to tackle the prediction model. There are already research going on with using AI to predict dementia or stroke and those advancements will continue. These advancements have to be done outside of human race in the animal sector for us to be protected from disease spread. Our company tackles it in cattle industry for now. Many of our food supply come from cattle industry so a disease spread in cows, have an adverse effect on us. Limiting that spread or even stopping it will have impact on human race.”
Building Futuristic Technologies
Building technologies involves an investment of time, attention, and clarification from the people involved. It is a huge market and the company is detecting much more than just diseases; The company is unearthing many different aspects, which have not been realized before.
MYANIML isn’t Shekhar’s first company and definitely won’t be the last either. He is finding many other things that would be predictable with his company’s software outside of disease prediction,.
Shekhar isn’t shy to collaborate with the technological partners. “We are in the partnership conversations with few other significant technology providers in this market. We are looking at adding some very high impact diseases in the dataset and not just diseases but how healthy a cow is or can be,” Shekhar concludes.