Vijitha Kaduwela: A Trusted Analytics Advisor

Leadership is never easy; good leadership is even more difficult. The best leaders are often those born with inherent qualities which are then molded over time to help them fulfil their true potential. Candor, knowledge, skill, and vision, combined with the ability to relate to people as individuals allow a good leader to guide their organization effectively through highs and lows.
That is how people who know him describe the CEO of Kavi Global, Vijitha Kaduwela. Leading from the forefront of business growth, Mr. Kaduwela regularly consults with business leaders and industry analysts on topics including digital transformation, data analytics strategy, systems solutions for IoT, Big Data, Machnine Learning and AI.
Rich Experience
Mr. Kaduwela is an 11-year GE veteran and he pioneered the award-winning Business Analytics program at GE Capital. Under his leadership, the division was honored with the prestigious TDWI Enterprise Intelligence award in 2008. It also won the SAS Innovation Award in 2007. Prior to GE, Mr. Kaduwela served in the R&D Group at United Airlines.
Mr. Kaduwela was born and raised in Sri Lanka and received a scholarship to attend college in the former USSR. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgian Polytechnic Institute in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a Master’s degree in Systems Engineering from the University of Arizona. He droped out of the PhD program to start his corporate career.
During his corporate career Mr. Kaduwela became painfully aware how inefficient the data analytics function as practiced in large organizations. It was very heavy with inefficient manual processes that are both expensive and risky. He voiced his frustrations to the leadership and also to vendors but they were all not motivated to disrupting the status quo. Mr. Kaduwela decided to address these inefficiencies directly, and left behind his corporate career and founded Kavi Global. Several members of his former corporate teams followed him to form the core team at the new company.
A Company with Comprehensive Solutions and Remarkable Capabilities
Founded in 2008, Kavi Global is a boutique business analytics solutions company headquartered in Barrington, Illinois. Their solutions automate the data-driven decision-making processes that enable clients to be more productive, profitable and competitive.
The value Kaduvwela’s company brings includes business and technology expertise, solutions delivery experience and a proven process framework for successful implementations. Kavi Global’s comprehensive service offering also includes consulting and support services across several industry-leading and open-source technologies.
The Pivotal Moment
The pivotal moment was when Mr. Kaduwela’s frustration over corporate inefficiency met the realization that it was possible to address that inefficiency to accelerate and scale analytics. AI and Analytics can be applied in pretty much every field. As a growing enterprise that acknowledges this paradigm, they have clients in diverse fields such as Industrial, Manufacturing, Transportation, Healthcare and Higher Education. “How analytics can help the world is quite rewarding” says Kaduwela.
Comprehensive Range of Services
Right from the beginning, Kavi Global team decided to invest in R&D and created Kavi Labs. The idea is to enable clients bring their own data and help them develop analytical solutions.
Kavi Global has access to vendor software and open source emerging technologies. It provides skilled data engineers and data scientists. The company mentions Innovation Lab as a great resource for its employees and its customers love it. The lab helps them reduce costs and risks tremendously. No other company of their size has access to such a luxury.
The company’s flagship software, Plexa is designed to improve the efficiency of the data analytics delivery process, to reduce risks and has other benefits as well. They have developed a unique capability to develop AI and Big Data Analytics solutions leveraging a graphical and logical interface that is technology-agnostic. They also have an intelligent engine that can create code and run it in multiple technologies, thereby blending the best of human and machine capabilities.
These solutions result in a huge reduction in labor requirements while mitigating solution obsolescence and skill obsolescence risks that plague the industry.
The company’s focus now is on showing the world that there is a better way. In doing so, they have unlocked a blue ocean strategy for data analytics. The blue ocean strategy refers to how a company can differentiate itself by creating a new market instead of competing in a bloody or “red” ocean. This strategic move has created a leap in value for the Kavi Global and their clients while unlocking new demand and making the competition irrelevant.
A Better Tomorrow
Vijitha asserts, “In our space, the previous generation of technologies had a long run of over 30 years. Not the case anymore. The pace of change is accelerating. The technology obsolescence and the resultant skill obsolescence are happening at a much faster rate now. The way to catalyze the change is to innovate and find ways to mitigate those risks.”
Source :-The 20 Most Inspiring CEOs to Watch 2018