Nithya Subramanian is a seasoned executive with 20 years of diverse industry experience. She is skilled in leading cross-functional teams to drive growth, customer satisfaction, and performance optimization by enabling digital transformation and empowering businesses to make effective decisions. She is adept in data science, AI, business intelligence, ERP (SAP), and product management, focusing on strategic alignment and collaboration. 

She is known for establishing efficient analytics COEs for maximizing solutions' quality, efficiency & scalability. 

Can you tell us about your AI journey? 

My AI journey has been nothing short of sheer excitement. Given the prolificity of AI as a technology, there has been a significant growth curve and several critical achievements in my career. My focus has always been on generating business impact by delivering AI solutions that are scalable and sustainable. I have always pivoted on customer-centricity and frugal yet continuous innovations that could provide incremental business results and drive substantial stakeholder engagement. 

I identify myself as a change champion and a lifelong student. I have always been amazed at the rapid advancements in AI and the immense potential they hold to positively impact businesses, the environment, society, and humanity. This enthusiasm and curiosity continue to drive me forward, albeit at a much-accelerated pace now with Generative AI.  

Generative AI's prospects make my AI journey even more thrilling as I continue to structure and deliver data & analytics strategies around the art of possible with AI. 

What is your area of expertise in AI, and what made you choose it?    

Beyond AI as a technology, my area of expertise has been the application of AI to solve business problems, identify new opportunities and optimize operations to bring efficiencies, growth, and customer delight. I have always felt this to be important in all AI initiatives that I lead because of my belief that innovations in technology are incomplete without innovations in the application of these technologies to solve real-world use cases. This is where I combine my expertise in AI, business understanding and customer empathy. I am a strong proponent of the rationale that meaningful innovations cannot happen in siloed R&D labs. Instead, they can only occur when R&D, business, customer success, product development, operations, and sales and marketing teams work together and agilely by engaging with the customers periodically and from early stages. I act as an orchestrator across the various cross-functional teams to have an effective partnership, collaboration and design thinking to deploy AI for co-creating innovative end-to-end solutions and drive successful adoption, thereby ensuring business value generation. 

How did generative AI impact your field of work? 

I am Heading Data and Analytics for Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa for Kellanova (erst. Kellogg Company), a global breakfast cereals & snacks leader. I see a lot of excitement about Generative AI among the executive leadership and a willingness to invest in the proper use cases. 

Analytics in the CPG industry is poised to undergo considerable transformation due to Generative AI. From Commercial Business to Supply Chain to R&D, Generative AI has the potential to bring efficiency, speed & quality in many vital areas. Generative AI technology is rapidly evolving with more and more open-source foundational models getting released, the efficiency & accuracy of the existing models getting improved and smaller, hyperlocal, cost-effective & highly adaptable models being developed. Also, given the need for scalable storage and computing, the cloud service providers offer various flexible platform solutions to address this systematically.  

Given this highly conducive environment, we have already embarked on the journey to infuse Generative AI into our technology roadmap to future-proof our success and channel our investments appropriately on the most suitable technology stack, talent strategy and use cases. 

Ethical and security concerns are far more pervasive than ever while developing AI systems; we are squarely focusing on solving these concerns via data policies, firewalls, governance, and guardrails.  

Another area that comes under stress with more sophisticated AI solutions, especially those that deploy Generative AI and require massive investments, is adopting these expensive solutions and generating commensurate business value. This requires us to pick the most urgent, critical, and impactful use cases and entails a significant organization-wide effort to improve Data Literacy and Culture. All this is apart from an increased focus on the fairness, explainability, and trustworthiness of the AI systems we develop. 

Describe some challenges you have faced in reaching where you are now.   

Let me begin by sharing that I am pleased about where I have reached in my career and the journey. I am very thankful to the people who have helped me along the way, have mentored & coached me and have enabled & empowered me. I have also been fortunate to be able to help, guide and uplift others, especially women. I trust the saying, "If you want to walk fast, walk alone. But if you want to walk far, walk together". 

Having said this, I did face a few challenges as well. For instance, as women leaders, we must fight the biases and prejudices deeply ingrained in society through generations. Despite working hard to achieve success and recognition, there has always been a tag and excuse of diversity that others have associated with these accomplishments. I would like to be brutally honest: Though corporate leadership is putting deliberate efforts towards addressing unconscious bias, we are far from achieving accurate equity in the corporate world and society.

Nevertheless, I am happy that we are progressing, and I hope we will soon have a balanced world. 

Do you see enough female leadership roles in corporates? In your opinion, what should change?   

As I mentioned, things are changing for the better, and people have stopped wearing the diversity lens and are recognizing women purely based on their contributions and abilities. 

Thanks to the conscious and concerted efforts towards ensuring this mindset shift. I see a lot of leadership roles being played very effectively by women. These brilliant leaders have made their mark by sheer excellence and thought leadership. I am also glad these women leaders have embedded sustainability and social equality into their strategies and goals.  

Though the world looks much more balanced, to accelerate the positive impact of this critical paradigm shift, we need to ensure that more and more young girls are encouraged to take STEM education and are empowered to follow their dreams at an early stage. We need more women "makers/creators" and motivate them to achieve big. This needs to be taken as a movement with participation from all agencies, including government, corporations, society, individuals, etc. 

Additionally, women must be empowered by equal opportunities on company boards and policy making. Women should not only get a chair across the table, but they should also have their voices heard more than before.  

Lastly, women should have big, hairy, and audacious goals and the greed to achieve them, come what may, while consciously trying to uplift and leverage other women.

What do you want to say to women who wish to build careers in AI and other tech-related fields?   

Follow your passion, dream big, enjoy what you do, express yourself (even if it means freaking out at times) and love every bit of who you are. Have no guilt; you are not the only gender responsible if the home is not tidied, food isn't made in the kitchen, kids' school commitments are missed, and bills aren't paid on time. AI isn't exclusive to men; many phenomenal women have contributed to this field, and you could be one as well. Envision your future self, who you want to be, and what you want to achieve in Tech/AI. Then plan and work towards it diligently with confidence, clarity and conviction; grab what is rightfully yours and uplift other women. Build a network of mentors and well-wishers genuinely interested in your success. Nurture this network and always pay forward what you are fortunate to receive. Ignore the people who hinder your success and drain your energy. Be a life-long student and continuously learn & upskill. Aim high, be courageous, challenge the status quo and go beyond yourself to achieve your goals.