Capgemini Qualified ScaleUp Pypestream Podcast

Mary-Ellen Harn

Hello and welcome. I am Mary-Ellen Harn, from Capgemini and today, we’re talking about startups and collaboration.

I’m here with Evan Kohn, the Chief Business Officer and Head of Marketing for Pypestream and from Capgemini with Elias Ghanem, our Global Head of Market Intelligence for Capgemini Financial Services, and Conrad Wade, Corporate Innovation Ecosystem Lead Applied Innovation Exchange in the US.

So Pypestream recently completed the qualification process by the Capgemini ScaleUp Qualification and in this podcast, we’ll listen to Pypestream’s experience with Capgemini’s ScaleUp Qualification. And you know, if you do find our podcasts informative, please like them on SoundCloud and do share them with your network of colleagues.

So welcome all of you and thanks for joining me today. Could you introduce yourself?

Evan Kohn

Hi, I’m Evan Kohn, Chief Business Officer at Pypestream. Excited to be part of the Capgemini ScaleUp program. Thanks for having me on today.

Elias Ghanem

Bonjour, everyone. I’m Elias Ghanem and I run our Global Market Intelligence.

Conrad Wade

Hi, I’m Conrad Wade and I am the Ecosystem Lead for Capgemini’s Applied Innovation Exchange in New York City. I’m responsible for sourcing, and evaluating relevant partners and startups that Capgemini can collaborate with.

Mary-Ellen Harn

Thanks Evan, Elias, and Conrad.

To all of our listeners, this is not the only podcast from the FinTech team. We sit with our experts and all the qualified ScaleUps to discuss their experience with Capgemini’s ScaleUp Qualification process. You can find all of our podcasts at Capgemini on SoundCloud and check out our playlist entitled Driving Applied Innovation and Financial Services with Capgemini ScaleUp Qualification on capgemini.com. We will continue to have many more podcasts like this, so stay tuned.

Let’s start with Elias and let’s talk about the different parameters we look for in a ScaleUp to qualify them for effective collaboration in the financial services space.

Elias Ghanem

So when we meet with our clients, they always ask us four big questions about the maturity of the ScaleUps. First, do they have the right people, is the team the right one? We call it people. The second one is where are they financially? Would they be here in the next 12 months? We call it finance. The third and the fourth are even more interesting for us is where are they on the business: have they sold, have they delivered, have they been delivering on their numbers? We call it business. And the last one is technology and privacy. Do they have the solution that is built to scale and do they have a solution that is built with the right privacy into it? Because our client, financial services, require a solid, capable solution to grow.

Mary-Ellen Harn

Evan, can you introduce us to Pypestream and what you do?

Evan Kohn

Sure. So Pypestream is a conversational AI company. We partner with large enterprises like Shell, Sling TV, JPMorgan Chase to position them as leaders in this new business-to-consumer communication paradigm shift where consumers have always-on lifestyles and expect to be able to engage with a brand any time a day at rapid speed with real utility available for them to get whatever they need.

So our platform enables digital conversational experiences backed by powerful AI and automation whereby consumers can not only retrieve relevant information, but actually transfer bank account funds or change their TV subscription or even book a cruise.

We were founded in 2015, we’re based in New York, we have an outstanding team, and we’re just getting started.

Mary-Ellen Harn

And Evan, could you also talk to us a little bit about your experience with Capgemini’s ScaleUp Qualification program?

Evan Kohn

Well, the evaluation process was quite thorough, but in that, it became clear to us that Capgemini was vetting for the top startups that are already making significant business impacts in the market. Capgemini spoke with our clients, interviewed us, our team, took a look at the evolving technology landscape not only in enterprise software, but in conversational AI specifically, and how our platform and team stack up to the market’s needs so we’re glad to have stood out.

Mary-Ellen Harn

I’m going to turn back to Elias. Could you talk about how important the people aspect the organization structure of a ScaleUp is when you go through this evaluation and the ScaleUp qualification process

Elias Ghanem

It’s no surprise people is the doer or the killer of any startup and any collaboration. At the end of the day, it’s the people’s business and when we present a ScaleUp to a client, the culture fit is essential. Let’s face it, these two beasts are very different; the ScaleUp and the corporate. Corporate is driven by the short term and by the low risk and the ScaleUp is driven by let’s get it quickly to the market and make big things happen. People is the only way on both sides to make it work so we insist a lot in meeting with the management of the ScaleUp and looking at the maturity of the ScaleUp when it comes to collaborate with large corporation.

Mary-Ellen Harn

Conrad, you’re a business expert. Could you shed some light on how ScaleUps are leveraging AI to improve their solution offering for large financial corporations?

Conrad Wade

Yeah, absolutely. So historically, financial institutions have reportedly for customer experience, but what we see is we see more and more ScaleUps leveraging AI to not only improve the end-user experience but doing it at scale.

So with Pypestream, that’s the challenge that we’re seeing them attacking in the market today. Being able to improve the end-user experience while at the same time streamlining business process operations.

Mary-Ellen Harn

You’re also an expert interviewer in the Capgemini ScaleUp Qualification program. How was your experience interviewing the ScaleUps and tell us what did you learn from these ScaleUps that you interviewed?

Conrad Wade

Pypestream has a professional, business savvy, and forward-thinking team that has deep market knowledge. Pypestream’s team understands moving market dynamics and where conversational AI can have a significant impact for enterprises. The organization provides an end-to-end solution for process automation that easily integrates with most legacy and core systems.
I actually had the pleasure of working with the ScaleUp in an ideation workshop for insurers. I think the team did a great job identifying different use cases for the technology where significant ROI could be achieved for clients.

Mary-Ellen Harn

I’m going back now to Evan. Could you tell us what value you saw for Pypestream after going through this qualification process and how do you plan to leverage this going forward?

Evan Kohn

Sure. Well, Capgemini has a global reputation for being at the center of so many business and technology transformations, so we’re excited for a partnership where we can share what we’re seeing as brands work to stay ahead of this business-to-consumer communication paradigm shift and also, to learn from Capgemini’s experience as its leaders and teams have such widespread exposure to the latest and greatest technologies and business thinking. So our team’s honored to be in the program and we look forward to a long-term partnership.

Mary-Ellen Harn

I want to go back to Conrad. Looking at this from a business standpoint, what are the major challenges for ScaleUps today and how do you see Capgemini’s ScaleUp Qualification program addressing these challenges?

Conrad Wade

Yeah, absolutely. So historically, financial institutions have very poorly for customer experience, but what we see is we see more and more ScaleUps leveraging AI to not only improve the end-user experience but doing it at scale. So with Pypestream, that’s the challenge that we’re seeing them attacking in the market today; being able to improve the end-user experience while at the same time, streamlining business process operations.

Mary-Ellen Harn

Elias, can you talk about how do you plan to take the relationship forward with ScaleUps like Pypestream and help them improve their collaboration with financial institutions?

Elias Ghanem

Capgemini in fact, has presence in forty markets. Across all these markets, there is always a financial institution asking us to bring them some AI solution and Pypestream is definitely the one that will be promoting as we know them quite well through the ScaleUp Qualification. In fact, it works really in a push and a pull, as we meet with clients who ask us for this kind of solutions where Pypestream can deliver, we will be pushing them with us there.

On the other side, Pypestream also will be meeting with plenty of clients on their own and as the client will look at them and saying, “With whom are you working, who will be your integrator, who will you be your consulting partner?” They would say, “Capgemini,” and that’s how on a push and pull, Capgemini and Pypestream or Pypestream and Capgemini will be getting closer and closer servicing our customers bank and insurance.

Mary-Ellen Harn

And I have another question for Evan. Can you explain a little bit to us as to how Pypestream integrates with one of our clients and is Pypestream a service that I subscribe to or how does it all fit together? I think that’d be something really interesting to learn about.

Evan Kohn

Sure. Well, a starting point there is as most of our customers are brand new to conversational AI is rather than testing it from purely an innovation standpoint, really starting with what are the use cases that would pay the highest dividends to automate and leverage conversational AI force.

So we always start implementations with that question: what business objectives are we looking to solve? From there, we then proceed with implementing together in partnership with a large enterprise to solve for specific user pain points. And from there, based on the scope of use cases, we’ll integrate with a variety of backend systems, whether they’re homegrown legacy technologies or the latest platforms. And that’s a key element of conversational AI is being able to pull backend data to the frontend to really enable transactional utility as opposed to just information lookup.

So whether it’s an insurance or financial services or telecom, Pypestreams integrated with dozens and dozens of backend systems to really deliver up frontend experience for the user that increases satisfaction and ROI for the enterprise.

Mary-Ellen Harn

Well, that’s really fascinating and thank you for that further elaboration on what Pypestream does.

This has been a great session. Thanks for joining us today Elias, Evan, and Conrad and thanks to you for listening in on Pypestream’s Capgemini ScaleUp Qualification. And if you’re interested in finding out more, visit capgemini.com/scaleupqualification. You also can connect with us on LinkedIn and Twitter and check out Pypestream and what they do at pypestream.com. And as a reminder to all of our listeners, you can go on SoundCloud and all major podcast apps in search listen and subscribe to our Capgemini podcast. Thanks for listening and we’ll be back soon with the next podcast.