AI in Manufacturing with Priyansha Bagaria (LinkedIn Live)

Nikki talks to Priyansha Bagaria, Founder & CEO of Loopr AI a computer vision company solving the complex challenges traditional vision inspection still can't solve. 

She started working in her family's manufacturing plant at a young age and saw what good employment opportunities in manufacturing can do for a community, but also the challenges that can come with trying to automate a process that may not be 100% automatable or just too expensive for a small to mid size manufacturer to undertake. 

They talk vision, quality control, and how the new world of AI and remote work can be a boon to many that traditionally have had limited work opportunities outside the home. 

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hey everybody and welcome to another live episode of Automation Ladies. Today I have a special treat for me anyway, hopefully for you as well. Priyansha connected with me on LinkedIn, maybe a couple of weeks ago, and I was like, Oh, you're in Seattle. We'd love to chat or she offered. And I said, yeah, I would love to meet or better yet come on the podcast.

And here she is. And we actually haven't, you know, we haven't done a pre chat or anything. So I'm here to get to know her a little bit and her story and hear about her company, Looper AI, if I'm saying that right. Just a little bit of, you know, checking and obviously I'm fascinated if you're listening for the first time, by the way, hi, I'm Nikki Gonzalez.

Your host for automation ladies head of partnerships at quote beam My guess is most people that are watching, have already seen some of our stuff, but I should not assume So I used to be a machine vision sales engineer my first job out of college. I worked for keyans if you guys are [00:01:00]familiar with that, it was before ai we were you know programming various different filters and Ways of detecting things and there was a lot going on in the space at the time, and I'm sure advancement has only accelerated since then.

And now, of course, you know, with is not new envision, it's been around, people have been integrating it, dabbling in it for a long time. But as a technology, as a general term, right? Is something that's very quickly evolving and constantly learning. So, it's a space that won't, you know, it's not like you put out a product.

And then that version stays the same for the rest of its lifetime. Now we are looking at products that learn and get better over time. Which is very exciting. I probably will have some dumb questions about vision because I've been out of the loop for a while. But this is a topic that was very interesting to me.

And to find a female founder in the space is also very fun, inspiring. [00:02:00] And I mean, your story. From the brief background that I got from your profile, which is going to be living on automationladies. io attached to this episode after this, made me extremely intrigued to talk to you for coming on the show and being brave enough to just jump on and talk to me.

Thank you so much, Nikki. I've seen your other episodes and I guess. Both of you are doing amazing, incredible work and I actually didn't know that you have a computer vision background too, which makes it even more exciting for me to now have a chat with you and just listening to your story of how, you know, being across different parts of the world.

And I kind of have. Very similar story. So that's also something which I think is common between us. And I'm very excited. I mean, it's fun to actually meet somebody live, so this is completely like, you know, no preparation, nothing. And just on the spot conversation that people are going to give us today, you know, talking to each other.

So this is exciting. [00:03:00] I've had a few people like that on the podcast where I'm like, Hey, you know, I offer people. I mean, just ad hoc, if they want to talk ahead of time, that's great. If you want to, I don't necessarily need to because, I will have some, Oh, you know, I heard this before and really the people have asked us how we screen the guests for our show.

And my answer is, well, if I'm interested in talking to you, that's basically my criteria. If I'm not interested to have a coffee with you in person. Then I probably wouldn't want to have you on the podcast either, right? And obviously, you know, we do this as a side thing. It's a passion project of ours.

 We have a lot of other, like Allie had a customer responsibility. So that's why, she's probably bummed that she can't be here. This is the only way that we're able to do it. It just, it has to be. You know, in the time that we have, and at least not yet, I don't do this full time enough to be able to take an hour to prepare and then an hour afterwards.

So, and I'm sure, you as a founder as well, who's got the time for that?[00:04:00]

So if people like, this very naive and this is like the real true self. We can ever get to because they're like, no crap. Just be out there and talk about things. So that's what automation ladies is. And I've been talking to a few people lately that have been asking me how do we, engage with you guys or other influencers or, you know, people that are creating content, I don't necessarily like the word influencer.

I think, most of us are out here creating content because there's either a gap that we want it to be, or we want to talk about something. I mean, I am not out here trying to, influence anybody, so to speak, right? But it is a matter of, to me, one of the things that I was so passionate about with Automation Ladies, one was to have conversations with other women that I don't see as often happening in the space.

And B, the reason that we do our live demo days is because I am just such a curious person. I want to know about everything out there, but when I'm not a qualified prospect, you know, to get your demo, [00:05:00] it doesn't really make sense, for me to be, going through the sales funnel on your website, just to see your cool stuff when I know I'm not going to buy it.

And so do you. But there's got to be a way for those of us that are curious just to know what's going on out there. Who's building what? How does it work? Yeah, because you never know when you're going to need it or somebody that you know is going to need it. And so I like to try to stay on top of things.

So maybe later, we can do a looper demo on Automation Ladies. That would be awesome. Yeah, and I would love that. And I would just want to add one thing with all the content that you guys are. That you create by having all these people. It's very educational stuff, right? Like, how would people even know?

Like you said, for somebody, who's part of the industry, they don't even know where to start or how to get access to the right companies or who are even a fit. And some of these episodes that you do and you bring in people from technology, who are like in the forefront of implementing these technologies, your sessions actually becomes a source of information for them.

To even know what exists out there, you know, [00:06:00] learn the best practices. What have other companies done, right? And I would say it's always, I mean, it's good to learn from your own experience, but it's even better to hear what people have done in their journey and.

 You know, try to avoid some of the mistakes, which you could, and you get the most out of it. So, I mean, you guys are creating this big, knowledge base, which can really, like, come a long way and you never know who might be the next person who's listening to you. Actually needs this or is looking for something like this and, can be helpful.

So absolutely. So I would love to have and I bring this point back to, all of us that are creating content are doing it for different reasons in different ways. We have different amounts of times and focus. All of us are the real people, like just contact us and ask if you want to get involved.

I try to encourage people, if you're listening, you know, you hear the podcast or if you have any inclination that you want to be involved with us in any way coming on the show, Just reach out like we're just regular people. We can [00:07:00] mostly find us on LinkedIn, right? Inbox us. We'd love to talk to you and.

You know, we try to keep it as real as possible, especially here on automation ladies. We're not very scripted or produced. So I'd love if there are people in the comments, I'm going to check 1 of my favorite parts about doing this live. Oh, we've got our friend Hank from Canada say hi to the junior board of directors for us.

Oh, my friend DC. She does supply chains. She's the person you want to contact if you want to go from baby supply chain to grownups. She's fantastic. Larry from E plan. Thanks for doing. Nice to see you. I hope you're staying warm. I've got my Siemens hat on. Thank you for sponsoring my head being warm today.

And DC. Exactly. So, yeah, I mean, it's great to do a quick, I mean, how would you, so I should get to asking you my first question, our only question that is in our script, which is, can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you get to be [00:08:00] doing what you're doing in automation? Because I think most of us, we're still at a point where most kids don't grow up to want to be automation engineers, or hopefully more of them are growing up to want to be entrepreneurs.

Maybe you get to play both roles. So I'd love to hear your story. Yeah, I know. Thank you. First of all, thank you for having me today. So I come from a business background. My family business is into manufacturing of electrical installation. So, I'm born and brought up in an entrepreneur environment, and that's something, you know.

People. I mean, I always believe that that's something it's in my blood because that's all I've seen. Like my growing up yours, my holidays would be on the factory floor, sitting there learning the art of what I used to see operators doing and trying to participate in that as a young girl and then, you know, the conversations at homes a lot of times would be so learning, like, yeah.

For me, because it would be all about business, what's going around in the world and having that kind of perspective very [00:09:00] early on in my life. So I think I. I owe a lot to like my family, especially my father, who, you know, has always been the biggest, idol I have in my life and has taught me so much of things, so many things while growing up and that, you know, that I could got to use it today with my own business, with what I'm doing.

So coming from the manufacturing background, did hands on work in the business for many years as a trade. I did computer science engineering, so I was a software engineer, joined my business In manufacturing, which is completely different from software engineering, like, you know, coding and manufacturing is very different.

And it's funny, even when I joined with that, my focus was on do business development. So I used to do sales and marketing for the organization. Now, because of that, you know, gone and traveled a lot around the world, like Middle East. I mean, Africa to like us to Europe, like we traveled a lot for the business and got a very good exposure very early on in my career, right?

 That was a big advantage [00:10:00] that I feel now again, because, you learn how to deal with customers because the person in like, you know, how deals happen in Asia is completely different from how people work in us. Like, so then I don't sell for. Yeah, personality trait, relationship, the value of it, what, they're looking for and how even they go about the deal.

Right. Like, so it's been a learning. And one of the challenges that I've saw with phase while I was working for my dance company was we came out. With this line of product, on it was focused based on mica. So mica is a big insulating material and we will make these mica tapes where mica would be packed with glass and there would be some chemical that would be like, it would be like an epoxy or a silicon resin that would act as a binding agent between these two things.

Now, because of what would happen is sometimes The biker and the glass, the curing wouldn't happen well, and they'll be bubbles. Now, when the bubbles happens means that the product is not good quality and you need to stop the [00:11:00] process, recalibrate everything and then get started.

And at that point, this would not happen every day. So, the challenge was, how do you have, you can't have somebody to just stand there, look at this day in and day out when it might not even happen once in a day. Yeah, so it would happen once in two days, sometimes it will happen in a day, but it was like, very, there was no fixed thing.

Right. And so then it was a big challenge and I always wanted and we went out around that time and being a technology, having a technology background for me, it was like, there has to be some technology that I can use that can solve this. But to my surprise, and I'm talking about this in 2013, It was nothing.

I mean, and even if you try to build something from scratch, it'll cost you you know, easily like half a million to a million dollars, like minimum to even get something out there. It was like as a small, I mean, I went back to my dad and say, Hey, I found something you want to try it. And he's like, how much is it?

And I said, a million. He's like, just get out of the door. You don't need to come talk [00:12:00] to me again about this or even deal with this. So. That's just I understand where he comes from, because, you know, for him, it's like, I might just get some 1 person stand and look at it rather than paying all this money, but I don't even know what to get out of it.

Right? But just from there, I moved to Europe, did my MBA in from Netherlands, live there, work for the 1 of the largest daily companies in the world. Kind of saw some very similar issues over there as well. And for me, it was like, how do I really solve this problem? And I was very in very early days at that point of time.

And I happened to do a data science fellowship from Cornell, go to U. S., got into A. I., hands down A. I., and was part of a consulting company. And I was focusing on retail. So for me, it was always like manufacturing is. Like, you know, something that I'm being born and brought up in and it's very, very close to my heart.

So it was no brainer that I wanted to get back. So finally, in 2021, I started working on my product and then the [00:13:00] registered looper build a company and went back and solved my dad's problem. So now our solution is live and that's. That was the biggest validation that I could get for, you know, and was one of the biggest reason of starting this company.

So we implemented it and we got down to a quality of 99%. So that's what we were able to achieve it with this application for my dad's company. That's very exciting to have that 1st customer built in whose problem you've been trying to figure out how to solve for a long time. I can imagine how satisfying that might be.

And I can relate in a lot of ways. You know, the reason I'm in this industry, I mean, in a roundabout way, my dad's not actually in this industry, but he's an engineer and he started his own business and I started working for him when I was young and I tried out all the different types of jobs.

And I found myself, you know, gravitating towards the front of the house, whereas my sister, for instance, who also worked for my dad for years, wanted to sit in silence in the back and solder PCBs and never talk to anyone. And, [00:14:00] you know, just different personalities have different sort of things. Right. But we learned a lot from growing up in the business.

And it actually surprised me when I graduated college, or I was, I hadn't graduated yet, but I was interviewing for jobs. And they ask you these questions, you know, hypotheticals and things. And they're like, well, can you tell me about a time that you worked in a group and somebody, didn't pull their weight?

And I know most people have, you know, Oh, I did this group project in class, or I just, it was very easy for me to speak from my work experience because I had been working for a few years at that point, during all my summers and breaks and things like that. And so I had more real experiences and it was, I think, very valuable to start that early.

 And I know that's an advantage or I guess, I don't know, you call it a privilege of growing up in a business like that harder for other people to, I mean, who wants to give an internship to like a 15 year old? It's a big risk when you're unrelated, but, when it's a family business, it's like, Hey, we need all the help [00:15:00] yet.

And if you show the interest. I think that's also key not forcing people necessarily to be in the business, but let them if they have the interest and we hear that a lot. So I like to ask people this question because it's typically either your parents that prove that example, or maybe somebody else in your close family, or sometimes it's a luck situation.

Like, you found a teacher or. Somewhere along the line, somebody pushed you through this door of finding out about manufacturing and factory automation, but it's not very well known to the outside world. Yeah, would you say? Is it the same when you were growing up? Like, did your friends know about manufacturing and all of that kind of stuff?

Or no, I mean, I completely agree to what you're saying. And I think I definitely feel that I was lucky to be around, a family like mine and my dad being so open, to, like, you know. Being out there. But I would say that it also depends on your family. Like I have had friends whose parents were also into, you know, manufacturing or business, but they had no clue about it [00:16:00] and they never pursued it or they never wanted to get into it.

So it's all about somewhere. It's also about, like, how open your family is to get you involved. And then the second thing is, what's your level of interest is right? Like you said, it's personality. I mean, it's just that, you and your sister being the same family, but like completely different level of interest.

And it was the same with mine too. Like my sister is really smart in finance and doing all the back office work and I suck at it. Like I can't, I mean, it's something that I need to do, but. It's not my biggest forte, whereas like, being out there marketing sales, like all the other things, that's something which, you know, and even the technology, that's something which is close to my heart and I can do, but yeah, so it's just very personality thing.

And I think, yeah, it's a problem, but I would also like to see, right? Like, at the end of the day, when I moved to us, I had no backing. I mean, I had no, I knew nobody. For me, it was all about starting from scratch, like the only thing that helped me. I mean, because I didn't even study here for say, like, in a big degree or did my master's or bachelor.

[00:17:00] So for me, it was all about building something from scratch for myself. And I mean, I feel blessed that I came across some really, really supportive people in my journey who have been open to, guide me like even starting from like, I've had different mentors in my journey and, you know, they play such an important role because when you are in a new country and you're trying to build something from scratch, it's even harder, like, you don't even know who to reach out to, being like for customers, being about like raising money, we get about like, there's a lot of struggle.

I mean, and people, if anybody says it's easy, It's It's never going to be easy, right? Like, that's just, nobody that's tried would ever tell you it's easy. Yeah. So it's just, I mean, I had, but yeah, one thing that it really helped me all along was like, yes, I've seen my father and very early days, I got to experience all that.

 I mean, even when I joined my dad's business, I was 21. Like 21, 22 and it wasn't easy to ask people who are double my age and [00:18:00] be like, Hey, take me seriously. I'm your, and I never wanted them to treat me like you're my boss daughter. Like I wanted them to treat me like, you know, who I am and because of my work, not because of my father, it was always about setting those standards.

Right. Like, and , if I expect somebody to do this job. I would do twice more than what I would expect somebody else to do. So it was always about me, like living by example, not just by going out there and ordering and get this thing done by today. I mean, I never did that. So I think that helped me now.

We're running my own company at such a young age and right now as well. Am I. Executive like my top team leadership team is all you know, 20 years, 25 years experience people and it's it just helps, right? Because you know that you just have to live by example again because, you know, yeah, and I mean, you're not going to get people smarter than you working for you.

If you pretend you're smarter than them, like, and I was just on a call earlier today with the group called women in automation and it's [00:19:00] the women that are part of, a. H. T. D. Which is the association of high tech distributors. Um, and it's a it's an association of distribution companies here in the U.

S. that sell, automation related. Technology. A lot of them do value added services and they're, they call themselves, advanced solutions providers, but there's, you know, minority of women in most of these companies and they have a great initiative where once a month they have a zoom call for the women to get together and they talked, uh.

Myself and my friend Megan Zimba that runs a show called Mavens of Manufacturing. We talked to the group and one of the things that they asked about was how did you, prove yourself as a woman in the male dominated field and do you still run into those sorts of, roadblocks and things?

And then they also asked about mentors. And I think Megan and I had a very similar answer in that we've always had to, work harder to prove ourselves and Whether that's really necessary or not, I don't know, but I just always thought to myself, I'm going to have to work [00:20:00] twice as hard as these people to show them that I'm just as good.

Right. And you'd go the extra mile all the time. I also, I didn't want anybody to know that I was the boss's daughter at my company. I even, I applied for a part time job at Target once after I worked at Target as a cashier after my internship, at my dad's company and my mom happened to be working at Target at the time.

She was like, I don't know, department manager. And I purposely did not put her down on my application. And I didn't tell them that my mom worked there in retrospect. I should have just for disclosure. But I, my thought was like, I don't want them to hire me. My mom works here. Exactly. And, and I got away with it because the way we do last names in Icelandic is different.

We don't have family names, so I have a different last name than my dad and a different last name than my mom. Interesting. My name is not Nikki González. I mean, it is now González is my married name, but my full name from Iceland is Hulta Margrethe [00:21:00] Hallgrímsdóttir González now. And I shortened that whole big thing to Nikki first, and now I just like Gonzales.

 But yeah, I got that job, and then afterwards he was like, wait. You didn't tell me that Fiola was your mom and I was like, I know I didn't want you to give me the job because of that. And he was like, well, I can't put you in that department now because your mom's not allowed to be your manager. But I know exactly that kind of drive to make sure that you earn what you get.

You know, it makes this kind of maybe at least for me, I think it took me too long. To then realize that, hey, I don't have to do everything on my own. I can use some help. Because when I moved here, I was in middle school and, my parents grew up in a small place where things were fairly easy to, just go to the school that's there and, you know, things work a certain way, right?

And then you come to the country, a new country where everything works differently. And I couldn't rely on my parents to know anything about it because they had never [00:22:00] been to school in the US. And so I had to very quickly learn to advocate for myself. And figure out how things work, but then I think I became a little bit overly reliant on just myself.

I'm like, I have to do it. I have to do it all. And last, I mean, lately, I've been trying to learn and get more comfortable with asking for help and utilizing mentorship and things like that because right. It can make all the difference. Having support and also having kids, I learned that, I also can't do that on my own.

None of the catalysts for me leaving the Bay area. I had my 1st daughter, in 2018, really early, she came 7 weeks early. I was at an AI conference when my water broke again afterwards with the premature baby and everything I, I completely underestimated how much it matters to have a support system when you're.

Whether it's, I don't know, raising a child or building your company or whatever that is. So how did you go about finding your support [00:23:00] system when you came to the US and how did you choose to be in Seattle? Yeah, I mean, I got married and my husband is my biggest, biggest, biggest cheerleader. I would say, I don't think I could do anything of this today, which I'm doing without him and without his support.

So he, he was the first person to like completely trust on me. And there was a time when I was like, I'm going to even do this. He's like, Hey. I'm going to be the first one to write a check, invest in your company, in your idea, because I trust that if anybody can do it, it's going to be you. And that kind of says a lot, right?

 So it's really started from there. My dad, my father, of course, has always been there to support me in the best way he could. And then I found a lot of people. I mean, it's funny, right? Like, I had one college alumni. She was here. Right. She was running, Chakra. She's, she runs women in cloud, amazing, amazing incubator.

And really, really no big supporter [00:24:00] of women entrepreneurs out there. And she was like, Hey, you can come engage with my accelerator. I got to meet a lot of folks over there. And then it's like a multiplier effect, right? Then you meet one person and then you meet the other one.

And then, yeah, like it's being, I've come across you know, so many. Really, really nice accommodating, supportive people out of nowhere, it's even in customers, right? Like, at the most unexpected places, I have found people who have come along and have trusted me in my ideas and they be like, yeah, we would even including, , my first, like, real investor.

He came to me when I was not even looking for fundraising, like, I was not even thinking about it seriously. And that's when it's just you know, that motivation that support came in. Yeah. I mean, he's 1 of the biggest, like, I don't mean again, the biggest support I've had in my journey. Like an angel sent to basically help you with what you're trying to do.

So it's just [00:25:00] been all along, a lot of people, one after the other, who came along for something or the other, like, you know, they bring in brought in a customer contact or they help in with fundraising or they help in team building or even two. Just be there to listen to you, because then I'm sure you'll be having those days Nikki when you're like out of 10 things, nine things are going wrong, but you just need one person to listen to you and say one good thing that compensates for all those nine things.

So, I mean, even having those friends right around who are just there to listen to you when you're having a bad day and. Give you the confidence back that he can do it. It's just momentary. All of those things comes and adds a lot of value, and they're part of the journey.

So, yeah, I've been blessed and lucky. And at the end of the day, I feel that if I'm on this journey. It's because there's a superpower that's looking at me and it's supporting me. I mean, I always believe in that, that it's not me who's able to do all this. I'm like nobody, but there is somebody else who's[00:26:00] you know, like a super God or whatever, anybody who's ever believes in more, but I strongly believe that I have that kind of support, you know, that no matter what, if everything goes wrong, there will be something or the other good that'll come out of it.

So I very, very. Strong optimist by heart. I think you have to be to be an entrepreneur to especially if the founder of a company that tackles challenges like this, that, you know, it's different from, let's say, like, running a small business, right? You're usually trying to do things that are very hard.

They take a lot of time to perfect. They take a lot of investment, both monetarily and then big pieces of you, right? Your life and you kind of have to be a crazy optimist. Because most people look at those odds, and they're not in your favor, right? So if you're purely a pragmatic, you know, person, and you look at those, like, why would you invest all of you right [00:27:00] into an endeavor of some kind, and you're not going to be able to change your mind two years down the road and do something else, right?

That's one of the reasons why I'm not a founder of a company yet, because I have not been able, like, when I look at myself realistically. And think, can I devote my next five to ten years of my life to solving only this problem? I'm not the one that like, is that invest? I work with founders. I'm a great early stage player and I try to be very authentic about, you know, how my interest can wane over time or, things like that.

Right? So the last thing you can do is, I mean, you have to be all in as a founder and you have to be all in for your team. They have to trust that you're all in that you're putting everything into it. You know, so it is a big deal. And I want to just say, I really respect. Thank you. You and every other founder out there, we're putting yourself out there.

We're taking that risk. I mean, we wouldn't have the innovative economy, you know, the innovations that we have, if people weren't, maybe a little bit too optimistic [00:28:00] sometimes, because you'll, as a founder, get, you know, a hundred people that tell, you know, before you get somebody that tells you, yes.

And sometimes you're lucky and you get a few yeses early on. And that really helps propel you. Sometimes you just, you know, it's also a numbers game. Like Ali, she's an engineer and she's like, Oh man, I hate, you know, having these sales conversations. Cause when they don't. You know, when they don't want it, it doesn't feel good.

And I was like, well, think about. The goal is not to get a yes, the goal is to get 99 no's so that you get a yes, like you have to be willing, like, think of it as a success when you get a no, it's too close to a yes, right? And I think you have to be able to work on your mindset a little bit when you're in this type of position, would you agree?

Because the lows will come. The fires are always there burning in the background. Yeah, I mean, I completely agree, Nikki. And I can tell you, like, especially this year has been so tricky with everything that's going wrong, starting from all the [00:29:00] layoffs that happened, only your interest rates going off the roof, businesses slowing down.

Like, you know, I mean, the approval processes, which used to take like six, three months are taking like. Six months to a year. You need way more approvals now for any decision, any process start projects. You want this? So there's a lot of uncertainty, right? Like dealt with and you, but you said it's so true.

Like you need to, if you If they won't be anybody in this world, I could very positive say who have not had the share of struggles. It's a part of this game, right? It's a part of business. Like, you need to deal with that and it's frustrating at that point, but sometimes like, I'll give an example for one of my customers.

It's funny. We started with them. We found a use case, we went three months with them, down the line, but the use case business case, we got everything adopted right before signing the contract. There was a bummer, like somebody in the team said, Oh, I don't think this is [00:30:00] feasible.

We should look for something else. That day for so frustrating. I remember. I mean, I was so excited about it. And it was the day of closure. You know, it was getting signed that day. And I was like, what's going to happen now? Nikki, we got in the call with the guy who rejected and we spoke and he said, you know what?

I have a better opportunity for you guys. And that opportunity was 3 times more than what we've been coding for the 1st 1 and that opportunity has the biggest massive scale of implementation. We could imagine that was like, what are the. I couldn't even think that we would, we can even get that kind of opportunity.

And so. Just imagine for that moment when it felt like, hey, this is all falling apart. Yeah. Yeah. There's something better, you know, that was out there, but at that moment, right? Like, it, you just feel like, it's end of the world. Like, whatever it's. It's very normal, it's natural, but [00:31:00] just with my experience, I've realized that, you know, when one door closes, you just need to hang in there.

You need to be patient and there's something else that'll come up. Oh, that's so true. That's so true. I've had a share number of those days recently. One of which I had a thing happen during the day. And then I came home and I was like, you know what? I'm just going to shut this up. I'm going to play with my kids.

You know, just worry about it tomorrow. And I decided to play Monopoly with my kids. So cool. On the very first round, I immediately had to pay all of my income and income taxes. So I went the whole round without making anything the second round. I went to jail the third round I again paid all of my income and income taxes and I'm like, you know what?

I think I just need to go to sleep now not try to do anything else because today somehow is shot like whatever

I'm like the biggest loser at this point, but I don't care. I can't deal with this Like I've already had a crazy day And now I'm like [00:32:00] sitting and dealing with this in a game. I mean, oh, wow. Yeah, I was taking pictures too and texting to my little group of automation ladies like, what the heck is going on today?

 I can't even win at home at like, a fictional game, right? And then, you just have to get up again the next day and the next day will be different or the following week, whatever that is, right? Um, Yeah, it's gonna be fun. Like, we should play Monopoly sometime. It's so much fun.

You remind me. It's been long. It's actually gonna be fun. I mean, it is my and my kids are three and five and I thought that, you know, oh, it'll be too like, they won't have the attention span for it. Yeah. Especially, I mean, the first time we played, my three year old just threw the stuff around, or just wanted to move everything.

But, surprisingly, it took him like three games to get the hang of it. And, he still needs a little bit of help from me, to read the he doesn't read yet, so like, read the cards, and I'll suggest to him, like, hey, do you want to buy this? You have enough money, or you don't have enough money. He beat me and my [00:33:00] daughter.

Last time we played, he got two hotels. A three year old managed to get two hotels and bankrupt both of us. So, I, I, I'm pretty... I'm pretty happy with that. And I'm like, okay, well, as much as I worry sometimes that I'm not the perfect parent, I think you'll be. Okay. Sure. I'm sure you're doing a great job.

And I can't even imagine how hard it is to have 2 kids to manage at such a young age and to do everything else that you are currently doing. I mean, hats off. It's never. I also have to give a big shout out to my husband. Because I couldn't do it without him. He stays home with the kids and, you know, I, he doesn't cook me dinner.

I wish he's not quite the housewife that I would love. But, uh, no, we work is really well as a team and I wouldn't be able to do any of this. If we, I didn't have his support work for startups. Right? We know. I'm sure you know, right? Your employee number one or your early team, they probably work just as hard as you do or close.

Never, never, you're not, I'm not [00:34:00] the founder, right? But I have that kind of skin in the game that I treat it like my own. I work, you know, the early stage startup work world is very different from the corporate job type situation. And you have to have a family that understands what you're doing because I would be divorced right now if that wasn't the case.

Um, and yeah, I honestly could not do it without a supportive, family at home and they have to accept that. I'm a little bit crazy. We're different. Right? I'll never be that PTA mom or whatever. Uh, but I try. I've been, uh. Brewing kombucha with my kids and we have a sourdough starter that we've been feeding this week and we plan to bake this weekend.

I'm trying to think like, what stuff that I already have to do, right? I have to feed them. And I'm trying to do a better job of, doing it healthier and then, you know, chores and things like that. I'm like, I'm trying to make that a thing that we can do together because I honestly just don't have time to go out and do other things.

But we're off topic now, but like, I do, honestly, like, startups and children [00:35:00] are very similar in a lot of ways. For sure. All of you. But it's also so satisfying. So how did you I know why you chose to tackle this problem, right? You worked through it or you tried to work through it years ago at your dad's company, but from a machine vision, and it's interesting.

You say computer vision, right? Because you come from that programming, you know, computer science background, the early, you know, machine vision settings. Was very different from the computer problem. I think 1 of the early things that I saw, because I used to follow research on computer vision early on was, I would just laugh because I'm like, these people, they don't have to worry about getting the pictures to me in a factory setting.

That's the hardest part. Sometimes back in the day, right? The problems we could solve. Oftentimes you could solve them by creating the right Picture rather than the sophisticated [00:36:00] algorithms, right? I would still say a problem like yours with the bubbles. It really depends. Some problems back then were really, like you said, unsolvable by traditional machine vision.

So, I tried, I used to work in Silicon Valley, and I would take on a lot of the heavy R and D projects that the, you know, the all in 1 sensor camera couldn't do. And that was my, you know, way in. Oh, I, I will try to crack that really hard to crack that with you. Like, let me go try this in the lab. And sometimes I was successful and sometimes I would come back and say, you know what, the error rate here is still too high or there's still use cases.

There's, you know, samples here that I can't confidently say that my system is going to catch. I remember 1 particular 1. I think it was in the solar cell manufacturing situation where quality control people were looking at the glass for a certain amount of haze and there would sometimes be a haze on the glass.

That made it less efficient. It wouldn't pass, you know, QC, but a camera couldn't really reliably detect that. And I had to [00:37:00] walk away from that application. So I'm assuming your application was something along those lines, right? So, machine vision and what is the biggest difference between machine vision and computer vision is that for machine vision, right?

It works out really well when there's no change. You kind of have the same thing going. You know, you build that system, which detects it, which computer vision, the advantage that it has, it's a self learning. It's a learning process. It has. So if there is a change, it can adapt. To that change in a better way, so you don't, you know.

That is 1 of the biggest differentiation that I see between so when you have, like, it's very wrong to say that computer vision is a solution for everything. No, it's not. I mean, you know, there are limitations and there are some things where economically doesn't make sense, right? Like, I would not, with our customers.

We are very clear. For example, sometimes even measurements do with like old, metrology process using those tools, you know, you cannot ever get that kind of you know, accuracy with the mission [00:38:00] system. It's not possible. It's always good to see, understand where it plays a very important role, and where it's going to bring it.

And some of the things you just should do the traditional way. It's not saying like, it's going to completely change everything. So that's, but when we really see a lot of value with computer vision is especially on the workforce side. Right. So like we have, like people have been doing like one of our customers, basically they are on, you know, We're looking into medical parts.

Now, these parts that they do, they have, it's very critical part because it goes inside human body. So you need to have a really good check. Like, you can imagine the precision it's required because even this little bit of bend tip, tear your internal linings and can lead to bleeding and eventually, something really bad.

So you basically want to control, your checks becomes very important. But then is it, does it make sense to have like three checks? It's, it's expensive, right? , and then check, right? It's very subjective, [00:39:00] like, your understanding the key of a defect can be very different from my understanding, because, and it might even depend on years of experience.

Maybe you are 10 years in this job. And I'm a year old in this job. My judgment. It's gonna be very different because it's all subjective and, maybe you're thinking about something and you have to go back. It's a kid's birthday party and you're like, Oh, I have to go back and prep and do all of that work.

But I still have to do this job and do the check. Of course, you'll be a little absent minded. I mean, we all humans at the end of the day. So what we see this coming in is like a robot. So, you know, basically a human is doing its job, but it's And helping it's really making you more efficient. So, it's like this extra pair of eyes.

 So you're doing it. You're taking like, say, a minute to go through everything. This can give you like, an additional decision that can bring down your. Time of judgment to couple of seconds. So with this customer, they had three, like, you know, one person make it, check it, second person would check it, and then the third person [00:40:00] would check before packaging.

Now we got the second person out the loop. So now the one person who checks it with the system and then the second person finally gives a glance over it and packs it. So you can see like a direct impact. And that person can be, was Reutilizing because they were struggling with hiring. So they just, you reutilize that person to bring in.

More production, and adding more value to it. So it's all about bringing efficiency on the factory floor. Otherwise, other customer we have, it's on the aerospace side. Now, they basically have to do this on the, check where they would put 50 percent of the time in checking and 50 percent in production.

That's okay. Wow. They're looking at, I mean, so now, and if you want to increase your production, you were making, like, 100 things in a day, and you want to make it to 200 things. What are you going to hire? Like, to 2 people to come in? It's not possible. So then it's all about how can I make my person more efficient?

Bring down the percent of the time. To like, [00:41:00] you know, 10 percent 20 percent and then do you to like that person's time and checking? So we really see like, and the executive order that came up right now, and I was reading through that. I was looking into what are the key things that, you know, that some things which I found very interesting was like, you know, around the worker, like, you know, where I see this makes a lot of sense.

It's about upscaling your. People to do the job in a more reliable manner, right? Like, if you have somebody 30 years on the job, that person leaves tomorrow, it should not impact the quality of your team. Right. Because that all that knowledge is in that person's head. But now if you can have this system, which can eat the other person who's new to the job with the job, it's so much better.

So these are the things where, right, you know, you can get the objective, subjective part out of the scene, but make it more objective. Like, you know, it's a yes or a no and have that kind of system train, which can help your next person come in and do the job. That's where I see a big [00:42:00]differentiator with what you're talking about with respect to computer vision.

And then, you know, that's huge. Yeah, being able to augment people with technology rather than the replace them. And I think that's an old, you know, it's a dichotomy that we've been in the automation industry. Yeah, when I 1st came into it over 15 years ago, it was, oh, you're going to automate my jobs away or you're going to remove this.

By Larry, you have a fire to fight. We are familiar and we know how that goes and go put it out and nice to see you. I was usually not coming in saying, you know, oh, the of this solution is for you to get rid of this operator or this quality control person. And maybe, there have been times in our economy where that was really the only way to justify this type of thing.

 But as of right now, with the skills gap, the workforce challenges that we have, they're not going away. Right, and I've been saying this for a long time, you're very short sighted. Operator, or, you know, a company or owner or [00:43:00] management, if you think that the way to. Uh, our wife for automation is to replace your people.

I mean, unless they're terrible and you just can't wait to get rid of them irrespective of the automation part. Yeah, you know, that might be a way to do that. But if you have anybody that is willing to work for you, and is willing to continue work for you, and they know something about your operations, hang on to those people at all costs, make them feel.

Good about coming into work, make them, you know, feel invested in what you're producing and hopefully automation can make you. So. More efficient and give you more opportunity, more projects, more profit. So hopefully you can pay these people. Well. Give them benefits so they can have a good life at home.

And I think that's all of us that are out here in the workforce. That's what we're trying to do. Right? I'm very, very hopeful. That these technologies, and, you know, related technologies, right? Because it's not always the answer, but [00:44:00] automation really is a helper and it should be viewed that way. And I would implore everybody in manufacturing.

If you're looking at, how do I justify the investment in something like this? Think about how you can grow your organization and support your people that you have. Yeah, don't fall into that trap of how many man hours can I reduce by replacing it with this machine machine will never. You know, have that organizational that tribal knowledge.

A lot of things can't be automated. 100%. I'm sure a lot of the processes that you're looking at. Like you said. It's not feasible to all of the people leave the process and just decide 100%, right? Yeah, there's no way you can do that. And the target always, like, always say the low hanging fruit, like, for my dad's company, you saw it or something, but it didn't make sense to have somebody just stand there and monitor.

I mean, there are so many of those use cases. We are currently doing something around mining industry where it's [00:45:00] about safety monitoring, https: otter. ai Basically, you cannot have somebody go in every part of the mind and look into if there is a leak somewhere or if there is like something that is broken or there's an obstacle.

I mean, it's very hard. We're talking about very critical, in places to go in and check. And it's not even see you forget about that. Like, you know, you would not want somebody to go in there. But if you don't check that, and it can lead to big disaster. I mean, that just that I was just seeing that Kazakhstan transit, my incident that happened that killed 46 people, 

like, last week, I mean, it just happened recently and that was because there was a leak in the mine and they were not able to identify that methane leak. So it's just that you sometimes, you know, what we are suggesting is how cameras doing real time monitoring. And as soon as it detects, it can lead to an alert where, you know, you can see it on and you would know that, oh, I need to go check that part.

So, yeah, this, these are the places where it's [00:46:00] just so critical to have, something like that, which can lead to savings of life and because. So it's it should be about targeting mundane work. Nobody wants to do very repetitive, which is not adding any value and you can reutilize those people at much more like, value adding places in the factory.

So I think that should be more the mindset, like bringing more efficiency and. Helping your people to do their job better, right? Like, that's something that is, I mean, if I kind of, I've seen always that if I've tried to make my team feel more comfortable and give them the right resources, I've seen their output to be much, much, much more.

Rather than I keep thinking about, oh, how do I replace this person? I mean. You shouldn't have hired the person of the 1st place. If that's like the 1st thought that comes to your head, it should always be about how can I make them more efficient? How can I provide them the tools that can help them do the job better?

So these are the things I think where we see [00:47:00] where I see a lot of opportunities for technology and automation to come in. Absolutely. You have a bit of a mission as well, um, to use your, you know, I, I guess your position, right? Your company, to try to empower women to, to work in this industry in this sector.

 I also just want to give a shout out to 1 of our early guests on the show. Christie Corbier, I think, and if I'm saying her last name wrong, sorry, Christie, she runs a company called indigenous tech consulting. Um, she's up in Canada. And, she actually used to work in a diamond mine, and we talked quite a bit about safety in the mining setting is 1 of the things that we talked about.

So I would highly encourage you to connect with her on LinkedIn. And vice versa, because again, I don't think that there's a ton of women in the space with experience in mining. Um, so that's really interesting. And then if you don't know, Dr Jennifer, I think again. I'm terrible with pronouncing things, right?

 She's in the Bay Area, [00:48:00] and I don't remember what the name of her current company is, but she has a rich history, of leading companies in the AI space and, data label, labeling and training and all those sorts of things. For ML operations, and so if you don't know her, uh, would love to make that connection as well.

But can you tell me a little bit more about that mission and how you see your technology actually empowering women in the workforce. Yeah. So one of the key things, right? When you talk about model training, I mean, I would like to see why this cause is so important. So, it goes back to my days when I was working for my dad's company.

So I remember in my area, I come from a small town in India, like, it's not a big town. It's just that there's, there are some You Like, you know, factories. So it's a small, town and the closest airport we had was five hours away. So you can imagine, I mean, it's quite like, it's not like a big, but he had good schools, like convent schools.

And it was really great. But so there were a lot of rag pickers in my area and my dad used to see them. And then one [00:49:00] day he decided that why don't we teach them the art of business? Well, what we do in the factory and I mean, Nikki, it's been like, what now, 30, 30 years, generations of them working in the factory.

And they don't have to beg. They don't have to. They've learned the skill and they've got a way to employ, and now they are teaching the kids, the kids go to school, they are leading a good life. And I've seen the difference, not just with the men of the house, but even the women usually want them.

And, you know, when I was working for my dad, I always used to have the kids come in for extra classes with me and I would sit with them. And it used to be so much fun. And it was such a, I would say fulfilling feeling something like that. And that was the thing for me always about how do you give back to the society?

Because it's not just about, you know, I mean, you've been the lucky one, but you got lucky, but they've been, there are a lot of people out there. Who needs that kind of [00:50:00] like, you need to get back to the society. So, for me, it was always like, this women empowerment children is very close to my heart.

And so, as part of like, a company, you know, with terms of data labeling and some of those kind of jobs, we try to hire women remotely who don't have access to their educated, really smart women, but you don't have access to real time opportunity. And, you know, they can work with, they have really small babies, so they can work.

From the comfort of their house without worrying about leaving the kid and they make money, you know, they can buy some extra stuff for the kids. They don't have to worry about, like, depend on their husbands completely. They're empowered. So that has been very, like, you know, those kind of jobs we trying to provide to them so that they can.

Make money and lead a good life. So that's just, one way, we kind of engage and give back and we try to also participate and engage with other organizations that are really active in women empowerment. And I just try to [00:51:00] support as much as I could by maybe employing them directly with or trying to support in other way.

But that's just 1. No 1 meal for giving back that I'm trying to do my bit as much as I could. Yeah, and I think I really also is a multiplier for, you know, a lot of these women, right? Especially if they do have young kids, they can't go work a shift in the factory, but they can do something at home with the time that they have.

If it's flexible. Yeah, and that's part of what's so exciting about this type of technology. It removes the borders of who can come into work. It removes the constraints of when they need to come in. Exactly. And that, I think. Opens up opportunities, economic opportunities to a lot of people because I think most people want to work.

They want to be useful. They want to add value to their household by doing something that they can be proud of and learn. You know, instead of taking a handout or whatever, right? And I think that's 1 of the things that we've seen, providing micro loans to women and developing [00:52:00] countries, you know, there are, they are resilient and entrepreneurial if they are given the opportunity.

And I'll give a shout out to Allie and processing controls, engineering LLC, because their systems integrator and they also have doesn't have kids, but she says she has 12 now. Because her employees have kids and she makes a point to try to hire, you know, parents with kids or veterans, people that maybe are overlooked by other companies because they have, I don't know, gaps on their resume or just different things that, you know, off the bat don't seem like, oh, you're going to be the perfect employee.

Um, Because you find oftentimes, too, that these people end up being much more invested in your company and your mission. It's a 2 way street, right? People want to feel like you're investing in them and then they'll invest back in you. And I know, at least for, like, for instance, from my husband's perspective.

1 of the reasons why he supports me so much with quote beam and all of that is because he feels [00:53:00] comfortable with he's met my team. He's met my CEO. He knows that. You know, they support me, right? It's not just a job. I mean, it is a job, right? It's an employment relationship. But at the same time, you kind of want to know that you're like on the ship together.

You're steering it towards a common goal. And I think sometimes business owners, um, underestimate their employees ability to get invested in the business. If you let them, if you let them in on the mission, or let them, you know, have a kind of a skin in the game in some way. Right. Um, it's a little bit off topic from the women empowerment thing, but, um, yeah, those are my thoughts.

And I think about during these interviews a lot. So that's me. And I would just like to add 1 thing, which you said is so true, because an entrepreneur, I mean, a founder is important, but the 1st few hires are even more important because, you know, as 1 You can't build the company. I mean, you can't build the empire you need.

And if none of these things, you know, if even [00:54:00] 1 is a problem, it impacts you in a big way. So for me, if you ask me, it's not just my, I mean, it's not my company, but everybody who I have in, you know, in my team is playing a very, very critical role. And I'm like, really, really tripled.

For everything, you know, because working in a startup is never easy. So, you know, I'm very, very thankful for them to like, I mean, for example, I was supposed to fly next week to Sweden and my visa didn't come on, like it couldn't process on time. So now I requested somebody from my team and he's, he's stepping up.

He's like, okay, I'm gonna travel in such a short notice. It's such a big blessing, right? These are the things which is so important because, and you need such people. So I would say if a founder deserves like you, I mean, if I'm doing my job, my team is doing even a bigger and a better job. So I wouldn't be able to do anything today if I didn't have this team.

So, hundred percent. Absolutely. So, with that looks like we're at about a time. [00:55:00] So I'm going to ask my second question, which is, can you tell us, where we can find you connect with you? If people hear this, whether it's now, or, you know, later down the road, they listen, if they think they might have a need or an application for looper AI, where should they go?

And if they want to connect with you and, you know, just follow your journey, or maybe work with you, tell us where people can find you. And what should we expect to see from you in the near future? Okay. Yeah, so you can reach out. I mean, our website is www. nupr. ai. So that's a good point. You know what we're doing.

We constantly update on different new use cases. We've been working on the exciting stuff. There's a lot going on because AI is the biggest buzzword right now. And there's a lot of opportunity that we see across different industries, be it, you know, med device, be it the aerospace manufacturing, be it, Safety opportunities in mining CPG, we having a lot of traction right now across different industries and very exciting stuff.

So, like, you know, keep following our page and then [00:56:00] LinkedIn is, I mean, the best way to reach out to me. I'm very accessible, you know, people can reach out to me on LinkedIn and also follow the page where we also keep updating some exciting stuff that we have been working on. So I think places. And then, you can always go to automationladies.

io once this episode airs on the podcast, there will be a guest profile, where you have all those links and I will probably ping you once a year to update your links, because the internet is forever and keep it up to date. So I'll be very excited to, follow. You guys, as you grow your journey, I really appreciate you coming on the show and best of luck and don't be a stranger.

Thank you so much, Nikki. Thank you. Thanks for everybody that joined. Thank you. Have a great day. Bye.