Episode 06: Asheesh Mehra – Co-Founder & CEO – Starting a Company, How Values Impact Customers, Digital Transformation in Healthcare, and Building Humane AI
Summary
In this episode, our guest is Asheesh Mehra, Co-Founder and CEO of AntWorks™, a global leader in AI and Robotics.
Mehra shares his inspiration for starting a company, how good company values have an impact on both your employees and customers, the importance of digital transformation in healthcare, and building ethical and humane AI.
Mehra is passionate about his work and company, and it comes through in the way he speaks.
Show Notes
The Inspiration for Starting a Company
After 20 years in the BPO industry, Mehra saw an opportunity to approach automation from a process perspective instead of the usual technology perspective. He and his co-founder had a vision for using technology that was simplified for the every day operations teams. As a result, AntWorks built RPA that was more drag and drop instead of typical OCR that creates templates.
He also shares the journey of starting from an idea to raising capital and registering as an official company.
How Company Values Impact Your Customer
Part of Mehra’s dream to start his own company was instilling meaningful values and getting to build the characteristics of a culture. Everything from the name of the company to their values – Fresh, Fearless, and Fast – speak to the intentionality of a company on a mission.
But it’s not just for AntWorks employees. Mehra argues that good, practical values trickle down to your customer or the end-user and gives advice to others who lead companies or teams. Instead of viewing the relationship as “supplier and client,” he prefers a model that shows joint ownership and responsibility. That type of relationship only works when both parties are bought into shared values.
Digital Transformation for Healthcare
An important first step in automating any process is understanding how the data is currently captured. Mehra gives helpful examples to understand the difference between structured and unstructured data. In healthcare, claims data is one of the biggest areas of opportunity for automation because of how often they’re processed incorrectly. The opportunity is not replacing healthcare professionals but rethinking entire processes to automate the parts that are repetitive or result in frequent errors.
Mehra also discusses the importance of operational resilience given a global pandemic that forced companies to rethink technology. Companies that were already initiating digital transformation pre-pandemic are in a much better place to scale solutions than companies that were resistant. He insists on the understanding that AI is a journey, not a switch, and requires years of intentional strategy.
Building Humane AI
As an extension of AntWorks’ mission and values, Mehra also discusses his passion for ethical and humane AI. AI technology has an endless potential for positive impact, but it also can create malicious outcomes if not handled ethically. Mehra discusses ways that AntWorks seeks to reduce any negative impact on the climate and ideas for regulating AI to ensure humane use.
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Closing
Humans in Healthcare is produced by Shearwater Health in Nashville, TN, and hosted by Chief Marketing Officer, Nathan King.