Four Indian American founded firms on CNBC Disruptor 50 List

Four companies founded by Indian Americans are features on CNBC’s 12th annual Disruptor 50 list which highlights the pervasive influence of artificial intelligence in the business landscape.

Zum, Tala, AlphaSense and Glean are among Indian American disruptors in industries ranging from cybersecurity to agriculture.

“It’s fair to say that AI is all over the CNBC Disruptor 50 list,” says the channel noting, “Roughly two-thirds of the 50 companies making the Disruptor 50 list describe artificial intelligence as ‘critical’ to their businesses. And it starts at the very top: for the first time ever, a company repeats as the list’s No. 1: OpenAI.

Zum, ranked 31, is continuing on its journey to disrupt the $50 billion student transportation industry, aiming to make it safer, more reliable and sustainable, says CNBC.

Thanks to a $140 million Series E round that valued Zum at $1.3 billion alongside a more than $26 million grant from the EPA’s first clean school bus program, both coming in January, the company is accelerating key efforts around decarbonization like transitioning its fleet of school buses to 100% electric and expanding its AI-driven technology platform that sends stored energy from EV school buses back to electrical grids.

READ: Eight Indian women among 50 CNBC Changemakers (March 1, 2024)

Launched in 2015 by Ritu Narayan, a first-generation immigrant and mother, Zum set out to change the lives of working parents — a reflection of the struggles she felt while managing her career while also ensuring her kids got to and from school. Taking on that challenge has resonated with parents and school districts, according to CNBC.

Zum now provides transportation for more than 4,000 schools across the U.S., including in Massachusetts, Maryland, California, Washington, Texas, Illinois, and Tennessee, and with plans to launch this year in Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Connecticut.

Tala, ranked 37, is out to disrupt legacy finance in developing markets by providing loans, credit, insurance and bill pay to consumers who lack access to banks, insurers and lenders, and who lack a financial track record.

Launched in 2014 and led by CEO Shivani Siroya, the fintech startup works with the so-called unbanked and underserved in Kenya, India, the Philippines and other emerging countries.

Last year, Tala increased its total loan volume to $5 billion across nine million people across three continents. That’s up from $3.4 billion in credit dispersed to about eight million consumers the year before.

The digital lender offers micro-loans between $10 to $500 to consumers and small businesses in emerging markets through its smartphone money app. Tala checks users’ phone data and their bill paying activity to create credit scores that determine the loan amount it can offer.

READ: Two Indian Americans in Fortune’s annual 40 Under 40 list (November 15, 2022)

AI-powered search engine AlphaSense, ranked 40, is carving out a niche for detailed, real-time financial information analysis for analysts, investment research, competitive intelligence and corporate strategy. This past year, it passed the $200 million mark in annualized revenue and added $250 million in venture finance in two separate rounds.

AlphaSense competes indirectly with Dow Jones-owned Factiva for news and industry trends, S&P-owned financial database and company analysis platform Capital IQ, and CB Insights for data-driven insights in emerging technologies, startups and venture capital.

This first-time Disruptor 50 company has an edge over these closely aligned rivals in launching advanced AI tools for peering into wide-ranging industries and gleaning insights.

Last year, AlphaSense upped the ante by releasing its first generative AI toolset, Smart Summaries, which works to speed up the research process and gives users more insights from equity research, earnings calls and expert interviews.

Founded in 2011, the New York-based company is led by CEO and former Morgan Stanley financial analyst Jack Kokko, whose previous experience includes founding chair of doctor search engine BetterDoctor, acquired by Quest Analytics. Along with his co-founder, fellow Wharton MBA graduate Raj Neervannan, they have spent more than a decade building out the startup’s AI capabilities and data stockpile to optimize its language models and algorithms.

AI-powered search startup Glean, ranked 43, recently lured in Citigroup and other strategic investors at a $2.2 billion valuation after annualized revenue nearly quadrupled to $39 million, riding the boom in gen AI and widespread corporate fear of being left out.

The Palo Alto-based unicorn competes with a herd of well-financed gen AI startups as well as tech giants, taking on Microsoft Copilot and chatbot Amazon Q while aiming to disrupt a field of cognitive search tool providers such as Perplexity, Coveo, Sinequa and LucidWork.

Enterprise spending on generative AI is projected to skyrocket to $143 billion in 2027 from $16 billion in 2023 worldwide, and account for 28 percent of overall AI expenditures, a 13 times faster growth rate than for information technology spending, according to tech research and advisory firm IDC.

Founder and CEO Arvind Jain, who is also a founder of recent successful IPO company Rubrik, created Glean in 2019 with other former Google engineers. Starting out as search engine for enterprises, Glean soon transitioned to new gen AI technology. Jain has described Glean as both Google and ChatGPT for the business market because of its conversational and chat-based functions to sort through internal data, retrieve information, and present quick answers.