CEO, DvSum • Data-AI Thought Leader • Helping companies add data intelligence to fuel their digital goals
Founder/ CEO of DvSum. DvSum is a cloud-based data intelligence platform that makes it remarkably easier for your data and analytics teams to discover, monitor, and govern data. Before DvSum, Aashish worked for 15 years in the supply chain, focused on data analytics, and enterprise applications. Aashish worked with Fortune 500 companies in manufacturing, consumer goods retail, helping them improve forecasting, planning, and optimizing their supply chains.
What attracted you to data management or IT, and why did you choose to pursue this career?
It was data quality. Before DvSum, I was part of more than 25 supply chain analytics implementations. And in every single one of those engagements, data, and its quality was the single biggest factor that drove success or failure. And that led to a realization. It doesn’t matter which industry it is, which business function it is, the ability to manage data will impact business outcomes.
Modern data management software existed but was primarily targeted towards the financial services industry. That was the opportunity we saw and that was the inspiration to start DvSum as a venture in 2014.
What has been your greatest career accomplishment so far, and why has it been important to your career?
Transforming from being a Founder to a CEO of DvSum. Running a company has given me an appreciation and invaluable learning of non-product, non-services functions of a business, especially marketing and sales.
What are the two or three biggest challenges you face as a data management professional / CDO and how can we address them?
#1. Data governance is more than a little overwhelming, so much so that many organizations (especially non-regulatory and compliance use-case) struggle to get started. Educating decision-makers to shift their mindset from thinking of data governance as frameworks and policies to embedding it strategically into the way the organization works every day.
#2. Bringing lean, sustainable, scalable AI-driven data management capabilities to small but growing enterprises. Data management coming from the legacy world is heavy on people, processes.
How do you see data management / the role of the CDO / IT changing in the next 2 – 3 years?
Data management has often focused on master data created by people and a monolithic data landscape. But as the data landscape has shifted to big data, processed in data lakes and data platforms, data management processes and technology have to adapt. Enterprise rule-based data quality gives way to ML-based data observability and monitoring. Enterprise data governance has to give way to lean, adaptive data governance that supports data democratization but still brings standardization and control to the frenzied pace of data.
Do you have any planned next steps for your career?
Right now, my focus continues to make DvSum a high-growth, high-value business
What is the single best piece of advice you have received in your data management / IT career so far? Why has it been so important to you?
That data management is and will remain as a second-class citizen compared to data analytics. But, just like profitable businesses need finance and HR processes to protect and optimize business value from physical and people assets, data-driven businesses need data management to protect and optimize business value from data assets.
Can you share something about yourself as a person that people wouldn’t know about you?
I hold a national record for endurance swimming. In 1997, I swam for 85 hours non-stop. The previous record was 78 hours.
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