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2021/03/16 | Time to read: 2 min
Dr. Prasad Akella, founder and chairman of the Drishti board, is creating his third massive market category that uses technology to extend human capabilities. In the 1990s, Prasad led the General Motors team that built the world’s first collaborative robots (“cobots,” projected to be a $12B market by 2025). In the early 2000s, as cofounder of the social networking pioneer Spoke, he envisioned and helped build the first massive social graph — a category now worth trillions. Today, at Drishti, he is working to combine the cognition of AI with the flexibility of humans in factories in the form of AI-powered production. Prasad is based in Mountain View, California.
Earlier this week, the National Association of Manufacturers shared its list of 2021 Manufacturing Leadership Award winners. We were absolutely delighted to be recognized in the Manufacturing Technology Partner category. Very early in the company’s history, Drishti’s mission statement was solidified in my mind:
“Extending human potential in an increasingly automated world.”
We continue to build Drishti around this principle today. We use innovations like computer vision, artificial intelligence and our own proprietary neural networks to put the plant team front and center, elevating the work they do and empowering manufacturing teams to grow, influence and achieve more. Drishti is giving them the right insights they need at the right time to make higher quality, bigger impact decisions. We’ve seen that exact scenario in action dozens of times when we were able to travel to our customers’ factories; since COVID-19, we’ve heard stories from our customers and seen the footage with our own eyes through the Drishti portal.
It’s rewarding for others to see the promise of Drishti, along with the very real benefits we deliver to customers today.
But I have to be honest. What I’m most excited about with this news is the awards our customers received.
Ford Motor Company and HELLA, and Raja Shembekar with DENSO, were recognized not for having Drishti in their factories, but for the transformational change they were able to make happen because of Drishti. For the openness they showed in adopting a technology that would change the old way of doing things, to the benefit of their line associates, team leaders, industrial and quality engineers and plant managers. For the care and attention to detail with which they deployed our cameras. For the enthusiasm they demonstrated in learning how to use the gobs of data that were now available to them because of our AI. For the innovation they demonstrated themselves using that data — often in ways we never thought of — that resulted in massive savings or improvements on the factory floor. For their willingness to share these achievements with others.
Starting a new company is hard. Creating a new category of company is almost impossible. But working with fellow visionaries and leaders who see not only the technology, but the potential that technology has to change their lives, is unspeakably fulfilling. It makes the hard parts worth it.
I look forward to the next stage of bringing transformational, game-changing technology to manufacturing leaders, and improving the lives of line associates and plant teams in factories around the world.
