5 Minutes with… Sanjay Krishnamurthy
Sanjay Krishnamurthy, president of GALE India, has over 25 years of international experience in consulting, solution delivery, and product management.
Under his leadership, GALE India has developed Alchemy.Ai, a groundbreaking private enterprise AI cloud platform. Speaking with LBB, Sanjay shares insights into the inspiration behind Alchemy.Ai, its transformative impact on agency processes, and the future of AI in the advertising and marketing industry.
He delves into the platform's unique features, its role in fostering deeper collaboration between strategists and data scientists, and its transformative effect on new business acquisitions. Sanjay also shares his vision for the future of AI in the industry and GALE India's pivotal role in shaping it.
LBB> As the President of GALE India, how has your diverse international experience shaped your approach to consulting, solution delivery, and product management within the agency?
Sanjay> At GALE, we foster a culture of curiosity and passion for pioneering industry-leading solutions, evident across all levels and departments. Our people are our greatest asset, and they come from diverse and global backgrounds. In moments like this one, when we recognised the great potential that artificial intelligence could offer our agency, the desire to experiment and create something that would help our people work better and faster was palpable, especially here in India. Our team brought forth incredible ideas, resulting in the most significant product update that GALE has made since its founding in 2014. A culture of innovation and unwavering commitment to being masters of our craft are integral aspects of GALE that we wholeheartedly support and drive forward. We know our clients want business results, and as a leading business agency, we know what it takes to get them there.
LBB> Could you share more about Alchemy.Ai, GALE's private enterprise AI cloud platform, and how it has revolutionised the agency's offering for clients? What inspired the development of this innovative platform?
Sanjay> Human-aided machine learning has been at the core of GALE from day one, and with the recent surge in AI advancements, it was only natural for us to explore how these breakthroughs could help us work better, smarter, and faster. By democratising data across departments, Alchemy.Ai creates a radical shift in how we work, driving incredible efficiencies as we focus on effectiveness. This technology delivers an average time savings of five hours per person per week. This enables us to reallocate that time towards deeply collaborative, meaningful, and exciting work – directly with clients. It’s a win-win situation for our clients and employees.
LBB> How has Alchemy.Ai enhanced collaboration and efficiency within GALE?
Sanjay> One of GALE’s key differentiators is our robust data backbone and tailored CDP-type environment. Each client receives a bespoke data environment explicitly crafted to them through a combination of our data backbone and, often, their first-party data. It’s an invaluable tool that our teams use daily to help our clients win. However, using it to its full potential required expertise in areas such as SQL, skills typically not held by creatives or business strategists. This meant some of the work needed to be done in necessary yet unhelpful silos. Now, through Alchemy.Ai, any client team member can securely access the client environment directly using a standard language, eliminating barriers to data accessibility. This streamlined access helps teams get basic answers to complex questions, so the time previously spent transferring tasks between experts is now reallocated to more collaborative, thoughtful, and well-informed discussions among people with diverse skill sets – both internally and with clients.
LBB> What key capabilities and features of Alchemy.Ai differentiate it from standard generative AI functionality, and how does it empower GALE's employees to work smarter, better, and faster?
Sanjay> Standard generative AI solutions typically function like a chatbot, lacking inherent capabilities to create graphs or charts. These things, of course, are extraordinarily useful for our work at GALE. Alchemy.Ai boasts a custom-built application layer with a bespoke UI, additional data visualisation capabilities, enriched and customised algorithms, and search and discovery techniques. It can transform structured but unformatted information into a chart of the user's preference within seconds, giving us much flexibility around visual components. Automating mundane tasks of data ingestion, cleanup, and formatting frees up time for our data scientists. This, in turn, can allow them to spend more time with business strategists, for example, working together to analyse what they’ve pulled and identify what other information or data might be valuable to explore for recommendations.
LBB> How do you ensure that the implementation of advanced technologies like Alchemy.Ai aligns with GALE's commitment to delivering high-quality, client-focused solutions? What challenges have you encountered, and how have you addressed them?
Sanjay> Alchemy.Ai was built to comply with the agency’s ISO-27001 certification, developed by a dedicated product team of 50 specialists. Our standards are high across the board – in our operations, products, and work. It’s why some might say we are late to the AI conversation. Instead, we were cautious to ensure the safeguards existed to allow us to operationalize this in a way our clients would expect; it’s only a further reflection of our high standards. We are not naive to think that challenges won’t arise along the way. Still, we’ve taken the time to implement robust security measures and extensive testing and continue to diligently monitor issues associated with all of the current AI offerings - not only at GALE. Our people are deeply committed to keeping this tool best-in-class, which helps them work efficiently and effectively.
LBB> Given the rapid growth and evolution of AI technologies, how do you envision the future of AI in the advertising and marketing industry, and what role do you see GALE India playing in shaping this future?
Sanjay> AI is no longer something to sit and ponder about – it’s here, and it’s here in a big way. Agencies must embrace it to stay relevant. Alchemy.Ai is an incredible tool for our people at GALE and our clients, who we know are looking to incorporate AI into their workflows to drive efficiency and achieve business objectives. With so much of our product team in India, we are at the core of bringing this technology to life, continually optimising and innovating to maintain our position as a leader in the space.
LBB> Lastly, how has GALE India contributed to GALE's meteoric global growth, and what are your plans for further expanding the agency's presence and impact in the Indian market and beyond?
Sanjay> We’re extraordinarily proud of the team here in India. They played a pivotal role in developing Alchemy.Ai, leading the 50-person task force we had at GALE. As an agency, we achieved massive growth over the past decade, particularly in the last few years. At our current size, while still focused on growth, we are being strategic and deliberate about the clients we work with and how they work with GALE as an integrated Business Agency. Our presence here in India remains absolutely critical as we pivot towards the future with AI now at our core.
