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Techfolio: The AI Whisperer

by Marc Almagro
Photography by Chino Sardea
06 Apr 2017

Who’s afraid of AI? Not Anna Gong, whose growing enterprise relies on the leading-edge technology to deliver its unique business service

Perx CEO Anna Gong read economics at the University of California, Los Angeles, and started her career as a management consultant at PwC in San Francisco. After more than 19 years in the technology and startup space, she took on Perx, her fifth startup experience and first venture in Asia – and an experience that she describes as “nothing short of fulfilling”.

Prior to Perx, Gong has spent time with four startups in San Francisco’s Bay Area, beginning at Octasoft, a core banking enterprise software startup where she was hired as the fourth employee when it was just starting out of a warehouse. The Octasoft team was passionate and determined, Gong recalls, and with perseverance, grew to 130 employees in just two short years. This was during the dot-com boom days when many startups were growing aggressively.

“My first taste of startup lingered strong and left me charged up. I moved on to four other startups in the technology space including Netvein, Cambira and Wily Technology, before landing myself at Perx.

“At Perx, I led the company in a 180-degree-change in business direction, moving the service from a mobile lifestyle loyalty app to its current offering as a cloud-based solution platform that disrupts the traditional methods of customer engagement—because customer loyalty is ****.”

Since joining the company, Gong has completely turned Perx around by restructuring the resources and instilling the company with an entirely new vision, mission, culture, and DNA.

  • DRIVEN BY AI
  • CLEARING A GROWTH PATH
  • THE AGE OF AI
  • FILL AN IMMEDIATE NEED

Driven by AI

Artificial Intelligence is defined as a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximizes its chances of success. It has been applied to different classes of objects and ideas: The roomba, a self-driving car, and Perx's Analytics Engine are both based on algorithms that make decisions based on real-time inputs from their particular environments, Gong points out.

“The wealth of data that the Perx Platform ingests on a daily basis, coupled with the relevant machine-learning algorithms, allows us to better understand customers, and make them relevant, contextual offers.” 

The idea that inspired the creation of Perx was the need to make a real difference, Gong claims. “We had no interest in creating a me-too product; the result is the groundbreaking, leading-edge, Perx Platform. We are not aware of any solutions in the customer engagement & loyalty market with the breadth and sophistication of Perx. The incumbent players are cumbersome, old-tech, expensive leftovers from another age.”

Perx works in a simple and elegant manner. Simply put, it helps companies to engage with their mobile and digitally savvy customers in a simpler and efficient way through creative engagement strategies such as interacting with the customers via mobile platforms, anytime and anywhere, and offering customer rewards and benefits as per their individual needs – using features such as digital scratch cards to make conversations interesting and fun

The conventional company, Advertising Technology (AdTech), provides services focusing on clickthroughs, pageviews, likes, and downloads, Gong enlightens. “Perx takes a different route by offering a comprehensive and integrated marketing technology platform that leverages on insights and marketing automation. A brand can improve its customer engagement through user experience, customer data, and analytics.”

 The data and transactional records within Perx systems empower it to analyse, learn, and predict consumer behaviour effectively. Brands are then assured that the customer’s next interaction is engaged and personalised.

  • DRIVEN BY AI
  • CLEARING A GROWTH PATH
  • THE AGE OF AI
  • FILL AN IMMEDIATE NEED

Clearing A Growth Path

Perx has a legacy dating from 2011. The company was founded by two Americans who initially positioned Perx as a lifestyle loyalty app, but when Gong took on the leadership, she felt that the business model was not sustainable and required significant work.

“As the CEO, I led the company on a different direction. I focused on our ground-up efforts, raised a Series A funding round, and invested the money into R&D by building a world-class and enterprise-grade platform to create new offerings directly impacting our customers.”

Today, Perx Technologies is better known as a cloud-based platform with solutions for creative customer engagement. The company’s clientele includes large enterprises in financial services, insurance, telcos, travel, transportation, and hospitality industries, typically with customer range in the millions. Its AI-driven MarTech platform is driven by mobile first, data-led approach that enables businesses to create a new, yet-unrealized, revenue stream by transforming their customers’ data into a powerful marketing platform.

“The two co-founders did a fantastic job raising funding for the first two to three years, which contributed to the initial years of establishing Perx as the pioneer and leader in the mobile loyalty space in Singapore. However, when money was required to rebuild and grow the company, I went out for strategic institution money,” highlights Gong.

Today, Perx is backed by Golden Gate Ventures and Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin. In November 2015, the company also completed a single-digit million-dollar Series A funding round.

In November 2016, Perx completed Pre-Series B funding round, which saw participation from new investor, Malaysia’s RHL Ventures, along with existing investors, Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin and Golden Gate Ventures, Gong relates.

  • DRIVEN BY AI
  • CLEARING A GROWTH PATH
  • THE AGE OF AI
  • FILL AN IMMEDIATE NEED

The Age of AI

AI applications are all around us: Siri, Google Now, and Cortana are examples of AI applied to speech recognition. NetFlix and Perx’s Recommendation Engines use collaborative filtering to make recommendations based on the history of your and other customers purchases and redemptions, Gong elaborates. Applications as diverse as Spam Filters and Robotics are all based on AI technology. 

Andrew Ng at Stanford has described the Age of AI as being comparable to the Industrial Revolution. Just as the Industrial Age strove to free humanity from physical drudgery, so would AI free us from mental drudgery.

Gong is evangelical about the liberating power of AI: “The future of AI is constrained only by human imagination, and in world centered on technology and software, we will see AI as pervasive in every facet of our lives.

“Perx’s current business model was shaped to fill an immediate need – the broken customer communication model. Many brands have millions of consumers yet these businesses hardly appreciate the current pool of customers, and do not delve into monetizing what they already have. Instead, price wars have become the norm, resulting in heavy marketing investments for new customers’ acquisition,” Gong explains.

Perx’s unique data-driven platform allows businesses to consolidate numerous customer interactions, feedbacks, transactions, and more to gain a holistic view of the entire customer journey, she adds. This would enable businesses to offer personalized services to each of their customers, which in turn will enhance user experiences and help businesses move beyond loyalty and create trust-based relationships with their customers.

  • DRIVEN BY AI
  • CLEARING A GROWTH PATH
  • THE AGE OF AI
  • FILL AN IMMEDIATE NEED

Fill An Immediate Need

“With Perx, we hope to create a meaningful relationship between the brand and the customer. By creating innovative customer engagement strategy – the customer is pleased, delighted and surprised with rewards. In return, the brand retains a customer in its current pool.

“So, yes, I would indeed say that Perx is doing an invaluable service to society by helping businesses to allocate capital in an efficient way when reaching out to their customers. The frustrating customer experience of today will soon be a thing of the past, replaced by contextual offers and predictive services.

“I never look at (my position at Perx) as a job. Being a tech entrepreneur, it’s our passion that fuels our desire to create, impact and solve problems innovatively. I enjoy working in technology that makes an impact on people, business and community. I love being at the forefront with a start-up culture. We execute fast, solve problems faster, and disrupt traditional methods of doing things.”

Gong describes her passion coming alive when she stands in front of a board of executives to present what Perx has to offer. “I get immense satisfaction from what I do, and how my ideas help companies to redefine their future."