The Business Leadership Podcast

You are listening to the Business
Leadership Podcast with Edwin.

Paul: Today's guest is on a
mission to make AI sound less

like a machine and more like us.

Mohan Gulati is the CEO and co-founder
of Thinker ai, a company building natural

sounding voice, AI that helps businesses
connect with customers like real people

anytime, anywhere from booking meetings
to qualifying leads while you sleep.

Mohan is redefining what it
means for AI to actually serve

both businesses and users.

Before founding Thinker, AI Mohan led
digital product at to Torstar, getting

stories in front of millions and spent
over a decade driving product innovation

with brands like Starbucks, H-P-C-I-B-C,
and First American at companies like Dev

Bridge Group Theorem One Formula Monks.

What drives him making tech so
intuitive and accessible that it

becomes a bridge, not a barrier.

edwin ai: Mohan, welcome to the
Business Leadership Podcast.

How you doing today?

I'm doing great.

It's awesome to be here.

Yeah, that's amazing.

Web Summit Vancouver is
exactly, it's, it's such a, it's

Mohan: such an amazing place.

All right.

Are you enjoying, are you
enjoying it right now?

So, I'm now living in Vancouver
for the last three years.

Before that, I was in Toronto.

Okay.

Um.

And lived eight years also in Europe.

So I've been all around the world and I
can tell you Vancouver's awesome and it's

really awesome to see the tech scene here.

Mm-hmm.

How it's been evolving and starting up.

This company here has been fantastic.

edwin ai: That's amazing.

And the community here, are you,
are you deep within the community?

Mohan: I am.

I mean, it's such a tight knit group.

You really get to know everybody
and the type of thought

leadership that exists here.

Mm.

That's a fantastic community.

Everybody supports everybody.

Um.

There's a lot of events going on, and
of course leading up to Web Summit

has been just escalating, right?

There's been so many great events
and great thought leadership

conversations that have been
happening, so it's been awesome.

And this week, of course,
with Web Summit even more so.

edwin ai: That's amazing.

So.

So moan, let's just jump into it.

If you could share or tell us
about Thinker AI and the problem

you're solving with voice AI and
human-like customer communication.

Mohan: Yeah.

I mean, I'm gonna start it with a story.

Sure.

Because that's the best
way to talk about anything.

You start off.

Right.

So thinker ai, uh, happened as
a result of me having to go and

do something I don't like doing.

Mm-hmm.

Which is having to go do
handy work around the house.

So the, uh, carburetor
underneath our sink.

Stopped working.

And of course that's not a good
thing to have 'cause you can't use

your sink anymore in the kitchen.

Yeah.

So, uh, I went underneath
and I am not a Indian man.

I you, it's stereotypical
like I'm not a handy mm-hmm.

At all.

Indian guy trying to do house around work.

It's not gonna work.

Yeah.

So I went underneath and uh, I pulled up
my handy dandy mobile phone and I started

looking at, you know, the Garry to try to
figure out how do I even get started And

being in tech and being in technology.

I really thought this would be so much
easier if I had a pair of glasses.

Mm.

I could just like look at the carburetor
right now and then start telling

me, okay, yeah, here's the answer.

Here's what you gotta do.

Here's how you can even assess this
problem, and then gimme a couple of tips.

And then it would tell
me, oh, wait a second.

Uh, based on what we know about
you, Mohan, IE personalized, this

is not something you should do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

So they thought, okay, if that
would be the response, what

would I expect to happen next?

Yeah.

Well, the next thing I would
expect to happen is tell me,

well, within the vicinity of
where you live, there are about.

Three or four different handyman
or people who are experts in this

field that could come and help you.

And I go, great.

That's what I would love to see.

Yeah.

And then I was like, who could come there?

And they would tell me, you know,
there's this person, this person, this

person, this person would cost this much.

This person could come
in the next, you know.

Two hours, this person
come tomorrow and so on.

Gimme my options, right?

Mm-hmm.

And then I would say,
great, you know what?

I need this fixed right now.

I'm okay with the price.

Can we go forward?

It would confirm with me that I was
okay with that option and it would

transact that as well at the same time.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

All this happening with.

The power of voice.

Right?

Of course there's the element
of visualization, but it

just clicked in my head.

This is all happening
through the power of voice.

Mm-hmm.

And these type of micro moments are
gonna happen in everybody's household.

And even furthermore, it's gonna
happen more in people's businesses.

Right.

And this was like the, the premise
of where I started saying, I

want to validate this idea.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I wanted to take this idea and
I immediately started to look

at how could I create a quick.

Proof of concept POC, right?

And go and try to do this.

So I started to do that.

I went online, started finding
different solutions that could do

that, and I built something very,
very quickly that could just check.

Act a receptionist, basically.

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Call into it and could it answer
a few simple questions about the

business and tell me the, you know,
the hours of operations, things that

are pretty factual about any kind of
business you're gonna have up there.

And I started sharing that with people and
they were like, this sounds really good.

A little bit robotic still,
but you know, I thought, okay,

but this is like October, 2023.

Yeah.

You know, tech is just getting started.

Mm-hmm.

This is a brand new scene.

And thought to myself, this is it.

This is what I want to do.

And I, you know, my background being
in 25 years in technology, I was in

those, you know, C-suite rooms of the
Starbucks, the hps, the first Americans,

and they all had heard about chat, GPT.

In fact, they were frantic about it.

They're like, what do we do?

We don't know what to
do with this technology.

Like outta nowhere, it came.

Everybody knew about AI machine learning,
but they kind of, that was the thing.

But now that all of a sudden LLMs came
out and they could see what the magnitude

of that was, they just were lost.

They didn't know where to start.

So a lot of the conversations
in the boardroom were like,

how do we get started?

So I knew two things.

One is that voice was the
solution and that businesses

needed a way to get started.

And if we were gonna do that, it had to be
extremely simple for them to get started.

edwin ai: Mm-hmm.

Mohan: So those became the two
problems that I wanted to solve.

I wanted to solve the problem of
how can businesses get started

with this type of technology?

And then how can I use
voice AI as that medium?

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

Now that's where I started, but there's
a whole roadmap of what we want to do.

edwin ai: Yeah.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

I mean, I love how you came from
the story with your personal

problem and you know, given your.

Background and, and how
you're interfacing it.

I'm curious, you know, we
are at Web Summit Vancouver.

Yeah.

AI is a hot topic here.

Huge.

Mohan: Yeah.

edwin ai: Um, I'm curious,
given the framing of the

problem you're solving, um, I.

And the technologies you're leveraging.

Yeah.

You know, what's your unique point of
view when it comes to, you know, solving

and, you know, what, what's that point
of view you bring to this problem?

Mohan: I, I think it starts actually
with what I said in the story.

Mm-hmm.

It is like simplifying the
experiences for any business to use.

Right.

When you talk to the users, one of the
most common challenges they have is.

They're just intimidated
by this technology.

You know?

Yeah.

I can go and use chat GPT and
write a few things in, but how

do I connect that to my calendar?

How do I get this to be on my business?

How do I connect that to my phone number?

Mm-hmm.

How do I do all these
things that I do today?

And that's the unique value
proposition that we're bringing.

We've built a platform that is truly,
first of all, beautiful to use.

Right.

It's simple.

We've made it like a matter of a
few clicks that you can do that.

We noticed that a lot of the same
problems that we're solving for businesses

are common across multiple niches.

So we call these like frameworks or
scenarios or use cases, whatever you want.

And we've made that for
both outbound and inbound.

Right.

So everybody wants a receptionist,
somebody that can answer your phone calls

24 hours, seven days, 365 days a year.

It doesn't matter how
large your business is.

Like you could be having a
business that's a hundred million

dollars and you still have.

Capacity issues on the weekend, right?

Mm-hmm.

Or you have to hire staff extra,
or you're working nine to five

because you've streamlined
your, with ai, you can do that.

So our unique value proposition is that
we can make that deployed really within

a matter of minutes into a business.

Mm-hmm.

Paul: Mm-hmm.

So I mean, the, the whole
voice thing in that, yeah.

I guess is connection or
what, but why do you care?

Like what?

Why do I care about it?

Yeah, exactly.

Mohan: I mean, again, it goes
back to like storytelling, right?

And I believe that voice
is the most natural medium.

It doesn't take effort
for anybody to care.

And again, going back to what
I said in the beginning, 8.2

billion, uh, people in this world, 8.4

billion voice agents, by the end
of this year, it means that this

medium is something that's going
to permeate within everything.

And I wanna be part of that.

Um, I wanna make, um, people's
lives easier to use this, right?

And I've used Siri for
the longest time possible.

I've seen everything that comes out
and I wanna be part of that story

that makes it better for people.

Paul: And that storytelling
thing, like is a really human

component and voice too, right?

Yeah.

And, and so making it.

Feel like us again, like, I mean,
there's a reason you care, but how

do you think that's going to really
change the world as we experience it?

Mohan: I think it's going to take
a lot of the, there's two things

that's gonna happen on this.

One is it's going to change the
type of conversations that we

have as human beings, right?

A lot of the conversations that
we have at work are answering the

same questions over and over again.

Right.

Imagine I can dive into this
conversation right now, and you

already know 90% of my conversation.

Now we're talking about something
that caught your interest, something

that you want to know about my
business that you didn't know before,

because you've got all that answer.

Just from talking to AI
that knows all the details.

That you don't have to
train over and over again.

That's available anytime.

So if you want to talk and you want to
prep for this interview and you wanna

talk about Mohan, and you could do that at
like 12 o'clock at night, because that's

just when you finally got some free time.

Awesome.

Go do that.

That is changing when we,
it's like Netflix, right?

When Netflix came onto the thing.

You no longer had to watch the TV show
from like nine to 10 o'clock at night.

You could stream it
whenever you wanted to.

AI is doing the same thing.

You can talk to a business anytime
you want to, when it's convenient

to you, and then you can have
those meaningful conversations.

'cause you can book in time with
that person at the same time.

Paul: Yeah.

I really find like AI helps
me get to the good stuff.

Like by getting past all
that superfluous things.

Exactly.

Mohan: And businesses want to
spend more time with customers.

Right.

Um, whether you talk to a financial
advisor, you talk to a real estate broker,

what they value and what they remember.

It's not the first kind of
qualifying questions that I ask you.

It's like.

Oh, it's the meaningful conversations
where we're talking about your family,

we're learning about what you do,
why you're interested in things.

That is where relationships are built,
and that's what you carry forward as

you start nurturing those relationships.

Paul: So you think this
is gonna change humanity?

Mohan: Oh, I mean, it, it
is, it's a shift, right?

It's not, the word is not change.

The word is shift because
it's how we see things today.

Um, for example, uh, I.

Remember back in the eighties, I'm dating
myself now, but you know, they, you'd be

driving in a car and you'd just be able to
talk to the person next to you and you'd

like, oh, shoot, I don't wanna forget.

I need to call Liz and I need
to tell her to do X, Y, Z.

The mobile phone came up, it was a shift.

All of a sudden, I can
be in the mobile phone.

I remember to talk to Liz.

I just pick up my phone and I can
do that in the same way with ai.

I'm gonna be able to say, shoot,
I want to find out what time

that business was open and.

You know, again, right now
we're using the medium of phone

and we have the medium of web.

But imagine, and this is
where the future's going.

It's gonna be pervasive.

You're just gonna speak and AI is going
to respond, and it's gonna be going,

oh, you wanna talk to Liz right now?

No problem.

By the way, Liz is not
available right now.

Her calendar says she's booked.

But what's your question?

Maybe I can answer it on her behalf.

That is awesome.

That's a shift in the way people
are thinking about things that

we haven't been doing before.

Right.

Paul: And does this just like blow your
mind, make you really excited, make you

a little bit like, oh, I super excited.

Mohan: I mean, first of all, thinker.ai,

the reason why I gave
it the name thinker.ai

is because we think differently
about these things, right?

Uh, we believe that AI is not here just
to solve one problem is about that shift.

It's about really changing the
way we work, where we interact,

and it should not replace.

In any way or form the deep core of what
it means to be human right, it should

amplify what it means to be human.

And that's what we're working towards.

Paul: So, so how is thinker.ai

keeping it human?

I.

Mohan: Well, first of all,
it starts with like our, our

investment into the voice ai, right?

Um, some of the best feedback
that I can get from a client's,

like your voice sounds so, yeah.

Natural and so human-like,
like to me that's like a proud

moment when we've accomplished.

It's like, yeah, damn it, we did it right?

So for me, um, creating those
moments is first and foremost.

And then I think it's about being
a student of conversation, right?

Um, I study how people talk.

How they communicate.

Um, how does the structure of a
conversation start in the beginning,

how they end, um, the tonality and
feeding that kind of data into our

voice, AI and it, learning from that.

Mm-hmm.

Is giving it the way to respond, the way
that businesses expect it to, because

again, even though it's ai, you still want
that touch point, that customer experience

to be a really good customer experience.

Right.

Because if I'm talking to
an AI and it sounds robotic.

Um, by the way, one of the things that
I absolutely believe in is never hiding

the fact that you're speaking to an ai.

If you talk to any one of our phone
calls or your agents and you ask, are

you an ai, it will answer truthfully.

That's a choice, right?

There are other companies
that try to obfuscate that.

Um, one of the decisions that
people keep on asking me about

is, can we use our own voice?

On, um, you know, your
platform and upload it.

And I've actually said, no, not because
it's technology wise, difficult to do.

Um, the technical aspect of it's
actually super simple to do.

You just need like 20 seconds
of somebody speaking to be able

to, you know, mimic their voice.

But it's because I think we as a
society are still learning how to be

responsible with that kind of power.

So I've made a choice, not yet,
not saying never, but not yet.

Mm-hmm.

Paul: Oh, I love that.

And, and I love, I, I just, I just
love the whole keeping it human and

the storytelling aspect of things.

Yeah.

And, and I think you're just
the right person to bring this.

Mohan: I mean, I had a great conversation
yesterday with a company that, um, they're

called Fast Forest and their entire
spiel is after, you know, you've got a

forest fire, they use drone technology
to plant, um, trees into the ground.

Super cool.

Right?

And they get a lot of, they go
and approach big, big enterprises.

Who use that to kind of get great pr.

Awesome.

Guess what you can do with voice ai?

You can story tell, you can
make it more human-like.

So like looking at something like that and
adding our technology to it, and you know,

our newest invention is called AVA Mini.

We're launching it for all
businesses to try and understand

what voice AI can do for them.

So it goes onto your website,
it's one line of code.

You just go to our
website, copy it for free.

And you can put it onto your website
and it will give you a chance to

experience what voice AI can do for you.

It'll read your content on your
website and answer the basic

fundamentals of what you do.

That's something that, uh, whether it's
using it for PR or whether that excites

me to be able to do something like that.

Paul: Well, I mean, you're so
passionate about this and I love

the way you share it through story.

Yeah.

And, uh, I mean, turning websites
into storytelling engines thing

or through, basically, yeah.

Yeah.

Mohan: I mean, and look, every
business has a story to tell.

Mm-hmm.

Like, it's one thing to put a little,
like banner, Hey, we, you know,

we're part of this company called
Fast Forest that's creating, um,

you know, a hundred thousand trees.

That sounds really, really awesome.

Right.

But then imagine you can tell the
story that's associated with that.

The actual place where we planted
trees and what we sponsored

was in Southern California.

Great.

And it did this and that.

And then you could say, oh, does
that mean you are part of that?

Cool.

How did this work?

All those things that you can't get from
just reading that one little symbol or

in that little couple lines that you have
on your website can now be amplified.

And that storytelling will
create more engagement.

It'll create, uh, more brand loyalty.

There's so many things and aspects that
we can solve for businesses doing that.

Paul: So, cool.

edwin ai: Mohan, it's been, it's
been amazing, um, conversation

and just really like hearing, you
know, what the future looks like.

Yeah.

You know, really anchored into voice.

I, I'm.

I'm very much, you know,
aligned to with you.

I come from the telecom background.

Yep.

I'm a podcaster.

I study Yeah.

Interviewing and how people respond.

Um, so what everything you're
saying, I'm, I'm totally aligned,

but, but you know, before we let
you go back to Web Summit Yeah.

And do things, I'd love it if you
could share any final thoughts.

Any advice for those other
entrepreneurs or even ideal customers?

You can take this wherever
you wanna take it.

Okay.

Um, just, just whatever first comes to

Mohan: mind.

I mean, I think first of all, uh, one
of the things is like, we've done this

in, we're not even a 1-year-old company.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so starting a business in today's
day and age is, first of all, it's

moving faster than you could ever expect.

Mm-hmm.

Right?

Uh, we're.

Cash flow positive, completely
bootstrapped, did this in like 10 months.

Um, 20 people plus on my team.

Mm.

And one of the things that's really
interesting about this entire

experience is the grit and the mindset.

You need to do it right.

It's like honestly, five x
harder than every four because

things are just moving too fast.

Some of the core principles
of business don't change.

edwin ai: Mm.

Mohan: You know, you need to
know who's your target audience,

what problems you're solving.

And then be micro-focused on them
and quality is super important.

Right.

It's really cool to
talk about AI companies.

I see a lot of startups.

They're kind of doing
their own AI company.

This is a business.

A business means that you're doing all of
the 360 degrees things that come with it.

Yeah.

You know, you've gotta think about.

How to go to market, your marketing,
your customer support, your follow

through, um, if you got leads,
how do you follow up on them?

Right?

And of course, we're using
our own technology, but

we're also learning, right?

And I think don't be
afraid to make mistakes.

Mm, you're gonna make mistakes.

But, uh, this area, especially
in voice ai is so nascent.

Uh, there are so many, um,
opportunities and it's a huge

market opportunity right now.

Um, it's just getting started.

Uh, we have about 350 clients that
we're working with and customers, paying

customers that are working with us.

By non-paying customers, it's
even more, uh, and that's data.

And I think you need to
think about that as well.

When you're doing a business,
it's like you're creating

value in two different aspects.

One is the product that you're providing,
but then it's the data that you're

collecting and how you decide to use
that is a responsibility as well.

So creating a business today, in this
day and age is just super exciting.

Uh, yeah.

Yeah.

edwin ai: I got, I got one
last question to Yes, sir.

Before we let you go, what are you
and think are hoping to take away?

Yeah.

From coming to Web Summit Vancouver?

Mohan: I think there's a couple things.

Right now we're at a very
interesting place, right?

One is like, we don't need investment,
but we also would like to start connecting

with the right kind of investors, right?

So that's one thing that
I'm looking to take away.

Um, we're also looking to understand
different kinds of business.

Like yesterday I met Fast Forest.

Um, that relationship and that
partnership that we could potentially

build with them is exciting.

Mm-hmm.

So having more of those types
of conversations in the next

few days is what I'm after.

And of course, there's always
potential clients that are here

that are, um, frustrated actually,
because a lot of those experiences

haven't been human-like conversations.

It's like we tried this out.

Like I, I hear this all the time.

We tried this out like a
year ago and it didn't.

You know, worked for us.

It was not, why didn't it work?

It just attitude robotic, or it
didn't really, you know, get us

the success metrics that we needed.

Okay, great.

Then we sit down and say, well,
what was your approach to it?

How did you actually do that?

And we've learned so much over the
last 10 to 12 months about how to

not just build voice AI agents,
but how to build strategies.

And that's something that we share with
our clients as well and work with them.

edwin ai: That's amazing.

Mohan, I, I am Uber excited for you
and Thinker, but thank you for joining

us on the Business Leadership Podcast.

Mohan: It's an honor.

Thank you so much.

You are listening to the Business
Leadership Podcast with Edwin.