Chief Data Officer, Carsome: Changes in Deployment Help Startups Grow Faster, Change and Improve Roadmaps

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Piyush Palkar, Chief Data Officer, Carsome, and Ambassador of CDO Magazine for Malaysia, talks to Chris Knerr, Chief Digital Officer, Syniti, about Carsome's AI and ML-driven innovations and data capability roadmap.

Palkar shares that all startups need to have a perfect data roadmap. It starts with the whole thought process. “The first time, Eric asked me to join Casa as the company's CDO. Then, he asked me to join Carsome. My first thought was, if I had to shape a data roadmap, what would be the plotting process? What kinds of solutions are essential to be built in this?

Next, he advises, “Think about the different pain points in this industry. Is the data boarding solution only going to solve this, or will there be a data science solution?” So, once that thought process is established, the second important step is trying to understand how much budget one has to decide what should be implemented. Then, go into a fixed and variable cost model, which is vital for the roadmap.

The third point focuses on prioritization. You may have 10, 15 ideas, but which one is the most important for your business in this specific year? Do you have the capabilities? Do I have the proper data infrastructure? Do I have the proper data orchestration tool (which is really important for scheduling pipelines)?

A roadmap is usually not planned for just one year, but for a couple of years, he shares, noting that regulatory compliances and stringent deployment processes increases deployment time. You may have to pivot and improvise when changing your roadmap.