Data Science driven Geo visual analytics firm
Founded in May 2013, Akara was established by professionals with two decades of experience in the data solutions industry.
Our team’s expertise has been instrumental in shaping Akara into a leading data-sciences driven, Geo visual analytics firm. Today, its singular focus is transforming complex data into clear & actionable insights through Geo-spatial delivery. We believe that the power of data lies not only in its raw form but in how it comes to life when visualised on a map.
We empower our customers – Enterprises and Governments including Urban Local Bodies, to harness the power data through innovative deployment of technology & Geo-spatial delivery for informed decision-making.
We develop data-driven subscription based products & customised solutions for informed decisions in the Enterprises & Governance sector. One one hand out the offerings assist in business growth at micro-geographies in enterprises as well as learning in academia & management schools; on the other hand, assist Urban Local Bodies (ULBs)/Municipalities in enhancing service level delivery for its citizens
The products leverage large volumes of public data from reliable & authentic sources such as Census, RBI etc, Akara’s research based estimations like Household Purchasing Power (PP), Economic Activity at districts as well Geo-spatial delivery with dynamic maps. The products assist in learning & research in academia, business planning & strategy across consumer goods firms, Banks & Consultancies.
Data curation is a series of tasks geared towards ensuring data accuracy, quality and its useability, for meaningful analysis.
A continuous cycle that may combine rules/algorithms to refine the quality of information extracted from the raw data.
Researchers & analyts design the process to examine, interpret and derive insights from the data to uncover relationships, patterns, trends etc using techniques, methodologies & tools.
Expertise in Geo-visualisation – an interactive & informative visual representation of the data using dynamic maps
Researchers build algorithms to develop economic estimations using secondary data, and separately, also develop metrics for impact evaluation in the Governance sector. build at micro-geographies based on public data releases as well as proprietary data of clients.
Geo-analysts have the expertise to harness the Geo-datasets in conjunction with primary & secondary data to deliver Geo-spatial analytics with heat-maps, choropleth maps etc. The GIS expertise covers entire value chain in Gee-spatial delivery
The IT team possess the requisite skills-sets & expertise to design, develop & deploy software application
Our approach is rooted into data-integrity resulting in solutions that you can trust.
Innovation drives the value proposition of the solution.
Customer expectations & feedback play a pivotal role in the deliverables.
An independent, unbiased & objective insights for informed decision-making.
At Akara, our leadership team is driven by a shared passion for data analytics, geo-visual insights, and solving complex challenges. With their profound industry knowledge and commitment to excellence, they lead Akara towards a future where data-driven decision-making and improved governance go together.
With a distinguished career spanning over two decades, R Sethuraman brings a wealth of expertise in Business Development, Strategy and Operations to the helm of Akara Research & Technologies Pvt Ltd. Prior to founding Akara, Sethuraman held a key leadership role as the head of Business Development and Operations at the esteemed Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE) for the Southern Region, India. Sethuraman's educational background includes an MBA (Finance) from the Institute for Technology & Management, where he distinguished himself by securing a gold medal for his outstanding achievements. Throughout his journey, he has honed his skills in navigating the dynamic landscape of technology and research, laying the foundation for Akara's visionary approach.
Rohit Sabherwal is a data solutions industry leader with 25+years of experience. Rohit's professional journey has seen him excel across diverse sectors, making an impact at the highest echelons of the corporate realm, academia, and esteemed government institutions. He co-founded Akara after spending 20 years at CMIE, where he developed India's largest digitally conducted panel household survey, offering vital statistics like unemployment, income and expenditures. A Delhi School of Economics post graduate, Rohit's expertise includes data mining, geo visualization solutions and has also played advisory roles for Government committees. Rohit brings a unique blend of academic prowess and real-world acumen to his role as Director.
Akara builds products that empower businesses with granular data & estimations to enable informed decision making in firms and facilitate learning & research in academia.
The products encompass Akara's deep understanding of economic & business data, research & GIS capabilities, along with cloud-based delivery. The content is a mix of public data and research based estimations developed by researchers at Akara. The large volume content is tailored to address a wider user community. The content keeps growing based on valuable customer feedback. Continuous updates and customer support is provided for the products.
The products are accessible through an annual subscription fee. The product subscribers include top consulting firms, leading management schools, & Government.
Empowering Governance through Data driven Innovative “Civic-Tech” solutions
At Akara, our tailored services cover a wide spectrum of areas, leveraging advanced technologies and domain expertise to address the most critical day-to-day challenges faced by Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) in servicing its citizens.
We specialize in crafting bespoke solutions in key areas of Urban Governance including water, sanitation, solid waste management, transportation and more. Our team collaborates closely with partners and ULBs to design solutions that precisely meet their unique requirements and operational contexts.
With our expertise in nationwide baseline surveys, advanced technology, and GIS capabilities to represent ward level interventions Geo-visually, we are committed to providing reliable, data driven insights that drive positive change across the ULBs.
Akara's data science driven systems help policy makers and administrators across the water value chain from sourcing, quality assessment, equitable and inclusive distribution (across distance and communities), demand assessment and supply gaps across cities and industrial hubs. Akara's dashboards backed by real-time information enables the administration to plan and deliver water infrastructure across the city/industrial hub without gaps.
Akara's visual analytics solution for sanitation helps a city build its city sanitation plan based on real-time data; evaluate demand drivers in different regions, plan for new infrastructure at a micro-geography level based on demand gaps, evaluate gender gaps in sanitation infrastructure, evaluate the impact of infrastructure and policy implementation.
SWM faces considerable challenges - implementation of source segregation policies, Collection of waste, Safe disposal of solid waste, engagement of various stakeholders in the SWM value chain etc. With emerging technologies SWM provides opportunities − Value from waste, alternative power and Livelihoods.
Transportation sector has witnessed tremendous changes in delivery models in the recent years, ever since the advent of user-pay and PPP models. Need for robust data for demand assessment, project monitoring and user-payments necessitated due to larger private sector and banking participation, multiplicity of stakeholders and the thrust imparted by Smart Cities projects on urban mobility. Akara's has conducted various studies
Assessment of property tax collections, delivery of public utilities against service level benchmarks Akara has developed Geo-referenced database on properties & utilities benefitting ULBs in increasing their revenue.
Demand Assessment for Housing particularly, Affordable Housing is critical to sustain the rapidly urbanisation happening in India. The towns/cities are facing challenges in managing the requirements of citizens in terms of housing & other civic amenities.
Akara has conducted a baseline assessment of the demand for housing for a specific area. The process involves - in building the survey instrument, the CAPI, capturing the primary data from the field followed by analytics and mapping the housing demand Geospatially including mapping the infrastructure/amenities to assess the location preferences.
The aim of the solution - Demand Assessment for Governments is to provide accurate insights into the current & future housing needs of a specific area, enabling the stakeholders to make informed decisions.
Elevating businesses through Data Powered solutions
At Akara, we develop & deploy data powered solutions that assist in decision-making for growth of businesses. The innovative solutions are centred around the integration of disparate data-sets --- Public data, client’s proprietary data & research based estimated data. The solution leverages Geo-spatial delivery with heat-maps & Choropleth maps, for evolving business strategy & interventions at micro-geographies.
Enterprises deploy the solution for actionable decisions in the areas of business planning, identifying opportunities for growth, optimal allocation of resources, amongst others.
Our solutions cater to the Dealer Network management challenges such as dealer’s conformity to the OEM’s brand identity & following all the processes as laid down by the OEM brand, expansion & optimisation of dealer network. Akara provides Technology Driven Audits & Dealer Network Analytics solutions to assist the OEMs in management of their Dealer Network.
Technology driven Audits of the OEM dealers play an effective role in managing & ensuring that the dealers are adhering to the OEM Brand standards. The outcome of the digital audits are linked to performance incentives of the dealers.
The solution comprises mAPP & web-APP to manage the network Audit The mAPP enables capturing the photographic evidence from the dealer on each parameter, followed by processing of the dealer data to generate the Dealer Hygiene scores and finally publishing the hygiene scores on a Geo-visual Dashboard. The entire process is monitored & reported in real-time and the audits are conducted quarterly.
Expansion & optimisation of dealers across towns/regions is an on-going challenge at the OEM. Such an exercise evolves over-time depending upon various factors such as different economic cycles, changing demographics, varying household incomes across geographies & household buying expectations for a four-wheeler. In addition, vehicle registrations at micro-geographies are a useful lead indicator to decipher customer buying patterns. All of these including client’s proprietary data is deployed to build a decision-support Dealer Analytics solution.
Akara’s expertise in understanding & deploying disparate data-sets & its Geo-visual delivery facilitates the OEM in making informed-decisions on Network Management using the analytics emerging from the solution developed by Akara.
Triangulation of disparate data-sets wrong with Geo-visual delivery facilitates informed business decision-making at micro-geographies.
Combining public data-sets such as demographics, location of retail outlets, with customer’s proprietary data & public data driven estimated market data at category level, facilitates in evolving decision-making matrices at micro-geographies. The Geo-visual delivery through heat-maps & choropleth maps with triangulation of data facilitates in :
Locational intelligence is one of the key inputs for the FMCG marketers Akara's solutions help the FMCG firms to build robust locational intelligence systems. The Geo-visual delivery of heat-maps & choropleth maps with granular data sets at the ward level in a town like -- demographics, affluence characteristics like different asset ownership by HHs, Geo−code of the retail outlet, proprietary data of the client helps in decision-making in in areas such as
The GIS based on property tax system has increased the income of town panchayat by 6.00 lakh per annum. We plan to expand this to other town panchayat's also.
District Metrics service is a useful resource for students and faculty in areas of Marketing, Economics, demographics & analytics. IIM B is in the second year of its subscription towards District Metrics.
We had a very satisfying experience in working with the team in the 2 cities of Jharkhand.