Social Impact Tech: Sundeep Reddy Mallu of Gramener On How Their Technology Will Make An Important Positive Impact
Technology is not a solution, but a means to empower the decision-makers and domain experts to achieve the end objective of creating impact.
In recent years, Big Tech has gotten a bad rep. But of course many tech companies are doing important work making monumental positive changes to society, health, and the environment. To highlight these, we started a new interview series about “Technology Making An Important Positive Social Impact”. We are interviewing leaders of tech companies who are creating or have created a tech product that is helping to make a positive change in people’s lives or the environment. As a part of this series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sundeep Reddy Mallu.
Sundeep Reddy Mallu is the Head of ESG and Analytics at Gramener, a data science firm, and Microsoft’s Gold ISV partner. He helps transform the organization through an advisory in building teams and adopting a data culture. As TA head, he drives the hunt for great data science team players across industries and campuses and attracts them to join Team Gramener.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series. Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a bit about your childhood backstory and how you grew up?
Stoked to be here and talking to you, Jilea. I love the intent of the interview series and wish you the best.
I grew up in a tier 2 town in southern India. Dad worked at a chemical factory, and mom was a school teacher. I studied at a convent school that gave me a solid foundation in social skills, math/science, and English. I was a pleasantly plump kid by the time I was in grade 4. I started playing different sports to reduce weight, eventually liking soccer (football), and stuck to it till graduation. I completed high school and opted for Electrical Engineering undergrad. I started my career as a Seeds salesman before finding my footing as a software developer.
Which led me to an MBA, and my career took me to different countries.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
The 2008 financial crisis has been fascinating for me. I got married that year, and markets tanked. I was under tremendous stress. I was working for an iBank in the New York financial district then. Companies were firing employees on the floors/ buildings. The uncertainty of whether I had a job was traumatic. One fine day it was our team’s turn to be let go. The relief I had that day was outstanding. It taught me a good lesson in self-care: you can only control so much in life. Be open to the possibility of things not working out how you hope for or want them to be.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Today’s Sundeep is an outcome of generosity from a large pool of people. Folks who spared their valuable time/hard-earned skill/ committed money for my betterment. I hope to pass that along every single day to anyone I can assist.
My school principal Ms. Shourilu has had the most significant influence on me. She taught me the nausea of using the English language right. That learning has stuck with me throughout my career, and I reap its benefits daily.
Technology changes rapidly, and many colleagues (often younger than me or reporting to me) spared time to help me navigate technology. Courtesy of their generosity, I am a little novice in the technology space today.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
Concentrate on your work, and don’t worry about the results. We are a success-obsessed society. The only barometer for success is that you win (notionally). The fear of losing overtakes our thinking and stops us
from even trying out things. This life lesson helped me focus on the task and not overly worry about possible results. I had my share of misfires (like a failed programmer career ) and success (Solution Architecture).
You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?
I would say my best trait is: strong convictions based on loosely held beliefs. If anyone can approach my opinions differently, I am okay to change my strong convictions.
Relationships take time to build. I invest time in every interaction with colleagues, friends, and family. The intent is not to gain from the conversation or collect chits. Be present in the conversation and, if possible, make a positive contribution. Your word is the only thing that matters. Folks associate with what you said you would do. Any change in circumstances doesn’t take away the responsibility of you honoring your word.
Ok super. Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion about the tech tools that you are helping to create that can make a positive social impact on our society. To begin, what problems are you aiming to solve?
At Gramener, we believe we need to place “business first and technology second.” We mean that addressing business challenges and transforming decision-making takes precedence, and technology is just an enabler in this endeavor.
Decisions that maximize social impact or address sustainability challenges are complex. Precisely because they force organizations to process larger volumes of data across geographies, value chains, or time scales that don’t consider in conventional data applications, that’s where technology comes in — as an enabler to solve the data challenges and free up more resources to make the decisions and strategies needed. Specifically, addressing climate risk, biodiversity & nature-related risks, and public health challenges are some of the critical problems we aim to solve.
How do you think your technology can address this?
Suppose we want to create impact by increasing climate resiliency or designing public health strategies. In that case, this requires aggregating and processing data on the vulnerability of supply chains, customers, or communities. Geospatial technology and AI have become vital tools for monitoring risks that are inherently a location function. Further, to do this at scale, cloud computing becomes a critical aspect of the solution to make the applications more efficient and cost-effective. A case in point is our work with SEEDS and Microsoft to monitor flood risk exposure for urban communities. Satellite imagery and deep learning models enabled identifying the most vulnerable community members and taking pre-emptive measures to save lives during cyclone events.
Another way that technology helps is by vastly increasing the speed we can monitor social and environmental indicators. For example, when it comes to monitoring biodiversity, leveraging computer vision to rapidly identify species from images taken via camera traps or drones is much more efficient than manually processing the data, mainly when talking about thousands or millions of photos.
Again, technology is not a solution, but a means to empower the decision-makers and domain experts to achieve the end objective of creating impact.
Can you tell us the backstory about what inspired you to originally feel passionate about this cause?
We are a family of farmers. Growing up, we experienced severe drought for a decade. The civil engineers designed and developed water irrigation systems that brought water to our farms. Technology innovations have brought vaccines to millions, including the green revolution and many examples. By being in the technology industry for 15+ years, I got pulled into the idea of positively impacting #climatesustainability. I look at my two boys and imagine their future if the pace of #climatechange isn’t tackled. This motivates me to ACT for the cause.
How do you think this might change the world?
COP26 didn’t move the needle in figuring out ways to stay within the 1.5 ‘C increase in global temperature by 2100. I see that technology can be an enabler in accelerating the adoption of newer solutions in carbon mitigation. It can reduce food waste, create new carbon capture solutions and increase sustainability adoption.
Keeping “Black Mirror” and the “Law of Unintended Consequences” in mind, can you see any potential drawbacks about this technology that people should think more deeply about?
AI generally permeates every aspect of our lives, from monitoring pandemics to talking to bots to complaining about late pizza delivery. There are bound to be unintended consequences or a technology that learns from humans or data produced through human interactions. For example, it is now well known that artificial intelligence is susceptible to racial and gender bias. Since the technology is in its nascent stages, we can not predict what innovation will throw other unintended consequences our way. However, this does not mean we can not have controls.
Every organization that works with AI needs to commit to the responsible use of AI and have governance systems to monitor and manage these risks.
Technology is only as good as the original intent of the creator and the end-user. AI and technological advances will create a new class of digital Have and Have Nots. At this time, regulations will require ensuring citizens’ inclusiveness even though they cannot use technology or lack access to it.
Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five things you need to know to successfully create technology that can make a positive social impact”? (Please share a story or an example, for each.)
(1) Failure is a success: When the prototypes, PoCs, or designs fail to achieve the desired objective, it’s a step in the right direction. When you are solving for something new, you need to fail before you can succeed.
(2) Purpose is the glue that binds the team: Until AI is ready to take over the reins of technology consulting, your team will continue to be the greatest asset. A purpose-led organization is more likely to succeed in keeping the team motivated and focused on creating effective sustainability solutions.
(3) Keep it simple stupid: When explaining a technology solution, we risk going overboard as consultants and developers in our messaging. The messaging needs to be simple enough to hold the attention of the people that matter (most likely business leaders).
(4) Collaborate to complement strengths: This is self-explanatory and particularly important to smaller firms. Every organization has its strengths and limitations. Sustainability is an interdisciplinary field — you need the right combination of technology, infrastructure, domain knowledge, and skill sets to have an effective solution. Which may be more practical to achieve via partnerships.
(5) Adopt a design thinking approach: Don’t underestimate the importance of getting honest feedback early in your solution development cycle. Which ensures you are not reinventing the wheel or boiling the ocean.
If you could tell other young people one thing about why they should consider making a positive impact on our environment or society, like you, what would you tell them?
There is no planet B. There is no headroom for turning a blind eye to the scale of the damage already caused by decades of climate change, nature loss, and rising social inequities. These challenges can be addressed with innovation, collaboration, unlearning, and rethinking business models. Necessity is the mother of all inventions. However, as articulated in the feature film “Don’t look up,” we need to look up (or forward) to see what is required.
Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would like to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this, especially if we tag them. 🙂
Chip Fletcher, Ph.D., Climate change Scientist, is from Honolulu, Hawaii, for breakfast. I have admired his passion and work in #climateaction. There is so much he has done to raise awareness around #climatechange. I would love to spend my morning with him and learn from his presence.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
I would love to engage with your readers
Linkedin — https://www.linkedin.com/in/sundeeprm/
Twitter — @sundeeprm
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational, and we wish you continued success in your important work.
Social Impact Tech: Sundeep Reddy Mallu of Gramener On How Their Technology Will Make An Important… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.