Meet The CTO Who Built A Global Software Deployed in 65 Countries w/ Sonal Rattan | eXate

00:00
Sonal Rattan
Resulted in a potential loss of a $4 billion business.

00:03
Amardeep Parmar
That's Sonal Rattan, co founder and CTO of eXate. The company idea came fromcrisis.

00:09
Sonal Rattan
It came in my corporate career, slapped me across the face about six times andwe pulled all of that together to create intelligent infrastructure. But itdidn't exist up until now. It has to be stable, it has to be resilient, it hasto have all these other things.

00:22
Amardeep Parmar
There was a tough start.

00:23
Sonal Rattan
I've got a chance to do it. We just sat like, how hard can it be? We had like areally great term sheet and then a little thing called Covid happened. Theorganisation pulled that term sheet.

00:33
Amardeep Parmar
But there's been big major wins since.

00:35
Sonal Rattan
And that was our shoestring budget to start with. It was a half a million atthe time. How am I going to like deploy this globally and take the world's dataand do this for 65 countries? But we did it.

00:45
Amardeep Parmar
Find out how she did it.

00:46
Sonal Rattan
If it was easy, everyone would have done it. So when I was growing up, I hadnothing to do with what I'm doing today. I wanted to be a travel agent, Iwanted to see the world. Then for a few years I wanted to be an air stewardess.You know, I had like big dreams to travel the world. Not sure how I'd betravelling the world. If I was a travel agent, I would. Sending other peoplearound the world but, you know, obviously didn't think that through very well.But absolutely nothing to do with computers. I thought I was pretty savvy atcomputers. I used to like computer games and all of the those types of things,but it wasn't really something that I was going to go into. I thought, yeah, Icould work, use Microsoft Word, etc. Thought that was good.

01:28
Sonal Rattan
Eventually decided to apply to university. Phoned at the university, said, whatcan I get on? Listen, how about computer science? I was like, excellent, let'sdo that. I can use Word, I can do Excel, I'm very good at that. I had nothingto do with that at all. Obviously, like a big shock to the system while I wasthere. So I kind of went in, quite dumb to start with to say just let's dothat. But to be fair is the best decision I ever made. It was just by chancethat I ended up doing what I was doing.

01:58
Amardeep Parmar
Did it feel like that at the time when you started studying? How did you feellike this? First few months was like, okay, this is great or?

02:03
Sonal Rattan
Well, when I first got there, it was. I was like dumbstruck that what are thesepeople saying? What do these words mean? That is furiously like spending timeat the. In libraries etc to try and understand what you know, what, where whatI got myself into. Everyone has their own thing some of it's really boring andso if one of my the things is that I wanted my children to do computer scienceand my eldest is 17 now, did computer science at GCSE level. Absolutely hatesit now because it's kind of boring as subject goes. But what I really liked, Iliked the programming aspect of it and that's where I really thought thrived atit. I really understood it.

02:43
Sonal Rattan
It's like getting the nuts and bolts of it kind of like led me back to some ofthe things that I did when I was younger with my dad. It was two girls that mydad treated us like boys, you know, getting in there fixing the. The old VHSvideos and all of those types of things. So it's kind of a bit of like whenputting memory into a computer or actually doing the programming side how thewhole thing works comes together and it works. I actually really liked thatbit. So I ended up really enjoying that part to learn it did find it reallydifficult because I think a lot of the people that were there had done GCSE,computer science and A levels in computer science or whatever that journeylooked like for them.

03:24
Sonal Rattan
I did none of that and I just went in hardcore. I can do this, I can doanything. And I ended up building an entire career around that.

03:32
Amardeep Parmar
And when you're looking for jobs afterwards, were you like sure that you wantto be in the developer space because a corporate. Because obviously youmentioned that you like playing games when younger and I feel like manycomputer science students sometimes you get into it to start talking like makegames. I want to do this. What made you choose the next first job afteruniversity?

03:49
Sonal Rattan
So I knew I wanted to get into programming so when I left university I did mybachelor's but I still felt I had a big gaping void because I didn't do it as Iwas know growing up I guess. So I went on to do a master's in and I did it in Ecommerce. So I really started to get drawn into it. It was a brand new subjectwhen I was at university at that time. But I was really keen to see how the webwas going to transform the way we buy things. So that, that whole thing wasjust exciting for me. I really wanted to understand it. So I knew that was thearea I wanted to go into. I wanted to go into E commerce and that's what reallyled my career.

04:32
Sonal Rattan
So I started off, I got into a graduate training scheme to. And programming wasa part of that, understanding what the business was, it was in financialservices. So I was like, the whole thing was just amazing how they're usingtechnology to solve business and financial problems. And it, you know, it wasthe beginning of like, let's sort of compare the market type stuff. But it wasfor independent financial advisors, so. So you could get quotes from differentplaces and have it in one place. That was revolutionary back then, you know, itwas. Otherwise you'd have to phone up and someone will go phone. A broker woulddo that for you. You could do this by yourself.

05:08
Sonal Rattan
So I just found the whole thing amazing and fascinating and how like technologycan do all of these things and how the Internet was allowing these things totalk to each other. So that's sort of where my career sort of went down thatpath and I just was like mesmerised by the whole thing.

05:25
Amardeep Parmar
So you obviously worked at quite a few different companies before starting yourown thing. Was there a point earlier on where you thought, one day I want tobuild my own thing or something that just happened over time naturally, wherethat first seed come into play.

05:39
Sonal Rattan
So I've always wanted to do something on my own. It's purely my dad again, Iwas being the Indians that we are and my dad had shops, but his whole thing wasbuild up. My mum and dad, I give my dad credit when my mom was the one that didall the work. I don't know why I do that but. But it was, you know, he was theone that took the risk to say, we're going to buy a really rundown shop, getthe value of it up, make it good, profitable business and then sell it. And hedid that as a repeated thing. So yeah, I kind of got that business gene fromhim. Say I really want to do that side of it. But I was doing really well in mycorporate career as well.

06:20
Sonal Rattan
So at that time I was, do I want to. I'm doing well already. I'm getting toplaces that I never thought I'd even get to. So for me to take that leap, Ireally had to believe in something that I would want to do and really want tosolve it. But I wasn't actively looking to solve the problem. It came in mycorporate career, slapped me across the face about six times and then I said,need to buy something to do this, went out to market, tried to find a solutionto do it, couldn't find it. Spoke to so many different lawyers around how doactually. How do we solve this as a problem? And it was there in front of me. Iwas like this will revolutionise and change things if somebody fixed this.

07:03
Sonal Rattan
So the scientist in me wanted to actually get up and say let fix this. Theengineer I guess more than a scientist. But in that scenario was let's get thisfixed and done and spent about seven years building which is. It was a prettyhard problem to solve. But we got there and luckily we had other banks andother organisations that are keen to actually help us solve that problem.

07:27
Amardeep Parmar
So can you tell us about when you were in. It was a HSBC at the time, right?What was that problem that slapped you around the face? As you've been.

07:36
Sonal Rattan
The kind of problems that we had were around. What were trying or coining atthe time was a global operating model. So that was I need to deploy softwarebut be able to use it globally. And that was the kind of thing that I wastrying to solve for. So I had a problem which resulted in a potential loss of a$4 billion. Business gets people's attention. A lot of pressure on us toactually solve it. So it landed on my. So he's my business partner now. So whohe was the CEO for the markets division at the time had an issue. Regulatorsare threatening to shut a business line down and our job was to fix it withsoftware. So we had software that we. We'd built, we'd done it for London.

08:20
Sonal Rattan
It was the geographic boundary that we're looking for was to solve it for theuk. But as soon as the head of market seen it is it get this out immediatelyglobally. But you can't have any more money, you can't have any additionalresources. Just make it happen. Just like magic. That was one of the problemsthat we had is that now going to different countries that have different datalocalization requirements, data sovereignty requirements. So sovereignty isslightly different to data localization. So sovereignty will be that they haveto have complete autonomy and have ownership or something. So if you know the.The London. Wherever the data is got subpoenaed, they can't give that to otherregulators, et cetera. So that's kind of where the sovereignty part came intoit.

09:04
Sonal Rattan
And then you had a data localization where they think it has to be physicallyon like Indian servers or whatever it might be. And that was the problem that.That slapped me across the face about six times and I thought this is nuts, Ineed to do something to solve a global problem. I Need to have software. OnceI've got one small team to deal with it, how am I going to like deploy thisglobally and take the world's data and do this for 65 countries? But we did it.I think we had to leave a couple of countries out that heard that just couldn'tget on board with the different techniques that were trying to use. But that'sessentially what was one of the problems that we had. But as GDPR kicked in, itgot even worse. Everyone's hurt.

09:44
Sonal Rattan
Everyone just thinks of cocky consent and stuff like that when you think ofgdpr. But it does come with other things that you need to do as anorganisation. Things started to get harder and harder. More and more frictionwas coming into play for every single application we're trying to deploy. So wedid two years in corporate and institutional digital, which is like everythingapart from the retail side of the business. And this was a global role. Soevery single project, it was a big programme of work, multi billion dollars.But every single project within there was taking about 233 man days trying tojust deal with this. So were having to hire more risk and compliance typepeople than were technologists when we're trying to do digital transformation.And that's the thing that were.

10:30
Sonal Rattan
Everything's taking longer than it should, everything's harder than it shouldbe. Had a lot of friction in there. How do we actually solve? Take thatfriction back out and automate it. So that's what were looking to solve.

10:42
Amardeep Parmar
So as you said there, you're solving this big problem for such a hugeorganisation, a multibillion dollar problem. And once you're in that situationwhere obviously having solved that problem must have like, it's even great,better for your corporate career. You've had all the success in your leadingthese massive projects. How did it then feel to then leave that to then try andstart your own thing?

11:02
Sonal Rattan
I couldn't solve it. That was the thing. There wasn't software to help me dothat. There were individual pockets of things that I could do. But asorganisations, again, everything comes with friction. To try and pull thesethings together is really quite difficult. I ended up leaving to actually solvethe problem. So I started off with, I start with it small. But asentrepreneurs, everyone say like build an MVP and then off you go. We were notlike, no one was going to buy our MVP. You know, okay, we solved this for likeencryption in different countries. It was. Didn't quite work. Like it had towork in a corporate state. It needed to have a Lot of different things inthere. So RMBP was a lot harder to actually create to before we could go outto.

11:49
Sonal Rattan
We had to pretty much have a full working product before were able to actuallydo this. So it did take as a quite some time to actually get there because itwas a big hairy problem. If it was easy, everyone would have done it, althoughthe banks would have done it. I would have done it in the bank at the time, butit wasn't. It required a lot of different moving parts to come together to doit. And also this isn't something that we're able to solve on our own either.So to really do what we're doing, we're working with the likes of red hats andIBMs coming together as a community to try and actually solve this as aproblem, to take a lot of that friction out.

12:25
Amardeep Parmar
And obviously as you said that you are taking huge risk in some ways becausehaving to build this MVP, which is in a small MVP, it's not. You can just, youcan't like buy Code Horizon, you can just make in a weekend. It's going to takeso much work to do that. And having to leave behind this very successfulcorporate career. What was the decision? Was there anything there where youkind of weighed up in your head or how did you come to that decision? Becauseyou could have just been like, oh, forget about this problem, I'm just going tokeep taking my salary and I can keep my stable, safe spot. Was it. What are thefactors there as well, beyond just really wanting to solve the problem? Did youhave to weigh other factors too?

12:59
Sonal Rattan
Yeah, I had a young family at the time, so they're older now. But at the timewhen I actually was making that decision to do it, my kids are really young, sothat was a factor. I was doing really well in my career, so that was anotherfactor. Of course, the trajectory that I was on, I was, you know, it was. Thatwas a dream in itself for me. I was really fortunate, but I really wanted tosolve the problem. It really annoyed me. It just, it was such annoying thing.But I think if we get it right and we are where we're there now, it willrevolutionise the way that we do software and software licences. The amount oftechnical debt that we accumulate, all of those things will reduce by fixing itand fixing it properly.

13:45
Sonal Rattan
So, you know, that's got its own personal thing that we're achieving somethingthat's going to change the way things are done going forward. That in itselfwas something I've got a chance to do it. Yeah, I could do it. My husband's gotthe steady job and does all of that side of gave me the opportunity to actuallydo this. My parents supported me so much. They looked after my children andhelped me do this. There's a lot of work when it comes to do it. I rememberstupidly so me and my co founder were just sat like how hard can it be? Turnsout it's pretty bloody hard. It's very hard to do this. Not just building theactual product but like selling it and all the things that I didn't actuallyknow how to do. I, I'm a Technologist, that's what I did.

14:31
Sonal Rattan
But having to makeshift be a salesperson, do like the PowerPoint of BE Healthand Safety, do all of these things that I just had no idea about.

14:41
Amardeep Parmar
Hello. Hello. Quick interruption to let you know a bit more about BAE HQ. We'rethe community for high growth Asian heritage entrepreneurs, operators andinvestors in the UK. You can join us totally free@thebaehq.co/join. There,you'll get our CEO structure in your inbox every week which is content, eventsand opportunities. You can also get access to our free startup fundamentalscourse by joining. Let's get back to the show. I think one thing is people inyour position right now, where you were now thinking about there's a problemthat really annoys them and thinking about quitting their job. I think what youjust said there can really just help them to try and work out when's the rightmoment and when isn't.

15:27
Amardeep Parmar
And you mentioned as well that your co founder is somebody that was at the samecompany as you, right, who was working the same problem. When you're makingthat decision to go and obviously do this separately and used to do ittogether, how did that decision go? Did you have any conversations about yourroles and how it would work and because I know there's a different some peoplethink about founders doing this sort of stuff at the beginning and then otherpeople do in a completely more informal way. How is that relationship?

15:52
Sonal Rattan
So my founder, he's, he was the business side, he was the COO for markets andfor the digital transformation initiative and he came at it from solvingproblems in a business way to actually make sure that we're solving it not justtechy and in my own techie it's actually solving a big business problem. So hecame at it from that side of it. It was like so I wanted him to do all theBusiness stuff. Even though I got involved and I actually learned so much doingthis. But that was like for him to sort that side out and I was doing thetechnology so that was a clear delineation. We both had this problem. We would,you know, it.

16:34
Sonal Rattan
It literally felt like were like keeping our bosses, were in a corporate careerout of jail by the stuff that yeah was always firefighting to do things to makesure that things are being done correctly because of like senior managers,regime, et cetera that was being introduced in to regulate banks. We werealways on that same like path, working together like one from the businessside, one from the technology side to say when we're solving for something,this is what we're doing. And this was one of the key things that added so muchfriction to deploying global software, which was really very tough thing whenyou're in that position, when you're trying to make change within anorganisation.

17:14
Amardeep Parmar
But you mentioned as well a few of the different challenges of founder life,right? And at a global organisation you're at, you would have a budget, you'dhave different things that you'd have. Whereas obviously when you're startingout in your own, you now have like a much more shoestring budget and you'reable to do things in a much more cost effective way. But it must have been anadjustment there as well. And what did you learn from that process of goingfrom having the backing of a huge organisation to now starting from ground zeroand building up?

17:42
Sonal Rattan
So yeah, my background was software engineering. So I wrote nights, weekends,everything. I start the first product that we had that were like going out toactually understand if there's a market demand for it. I wrote it, so that was,you know, that was my time that I had to put into it and I went part time andthen I eventually left to just try and work out how do I actually fix some ofthis stuff and what is the best approach for it. So that was fine because Ididn't need to spend money on it apart from like buying laptops and stuff. Iwasn't in a position that I had money and savings and stuff that I put togethersupport to allow me to do this. But then I needed teams to come on board.

18:30
Sonal Rattan
So we raised a really small funding round, which was friends and family to justlike when we're initially getting bits of traction to actually help. So weraised a really small amount and then we basically. That was our shoestringbudget to start with. It was a half a million at the time. But yeah, we havereally had to think meticulously about everything, about how we're going to dothings. So as we started to get the products up and running, we got our firstcustomer, which was one of the banks. They liked it so much, they invested aswell when we did our rounds that they actually helped us a significant amountwhen were doing our seed round for funding. So when we raised our seed fund, wegot a term sheet.

19:12
Sonal Rattan
We got all like, were pretty much happy with the terms that we got. Always wantmore. But yeah, we had like a really great term sheet and then a little thingcalled Covid happened. Just as we got the term sheet, we signed it. We werelike going through some of the things around it. The organisation pulled thatterm sheet and as a founder in the middle of like a national crisis, we're justsat there like, you can say it was oh, moment. We're like, now what we're goingto do. Our first customer, they were like, okay, look, we'll help you. We'llstill like, we'll find something else. It'll be. But they couldn't lead and wedidn't want them to lead because you don't want to be tied into your customeras well when you're doing your funding rounds etc.

20:00
Sonal Rattan
We want to sell this to lots of different companies. So went out to market tobasically raise funding and everyone at that time, every single VC was like,love the product, love the team, but we've got to focus on our portfoliocompanies and it was really like a really tough time. So when we did getanother term sheet, it was for two thirds of the value, maybe even less. Thevaluation was lower, so were diluting more. It was pretty harsh but it stillmeant that we could still realise our dream.

20:35
Sonal Rattan
Yeah, we could still go ahead and we, if we're going to solve this and we, butwe are going to need to do this properly because we're solving a global, multiglobal company for global organisations that it has to be stable, it has to beresilient, it has to have all these other things, it's not just buildingproduct, it has to have all of these other things to make it compliant, to workwithin a. So we basically use that money to do that with it and build out therest of the team, building partnerships, et cetera. But that was, yeah, it, thewhole thing was trying to run everything on a shoestring. But to me at thattime, WhatsApp had just been acquired and Instagram as well. But we took alittle inspiration from those.

21:19
Sonal Rattan
Like WhatsApp had what was on over a billion devices and it's not like awebsite that they're looking after, this is actually physically on people'sdevices. And they had 50 people when they got acquired and I think Instagramhad 17 or something. I don't know the exact numbers, but it was really low. Butwas that, well, if they can do it and they can generate that sort of value andbe that great of a product, you don't need masses of people and that's yourbiggest cost. So we, you know, we've basically worked around it to say, well,how do we maximise what we can do? Automate as much as we can, you know, as,like, more and more things started to happen with an AI, etc. We started justlike incorporate those things into the platform to actually help us.

22:02
Sonal Rattan
You learn how to do it, you learn pretty fast, if you like. So my co founderand myself, we're resilient, we're scrappy as hell and were just like, whateverit takes. So with a small team, whatever it is, we'll work like, we'll make ita fun environment, but we'll work like no one's business. I think everyentrepreneur probably has that same sort of story that you just work insaneamount of hours and you're doing a lot with it. So, yeah, we just made it work.

22:30
Amardeep Parmar
You mentioned the resilience part there as well. And obviously going throughthat situation, I think many people relate to it, whether it's an investor or abig customer, where you think it's over the line and then it gets pulled at thelast moment. How did you deal with that as a team? Like, even just amongstyourself is about obviously keeping morale high and motivation high. How areyou able to get through that moment and still keep pushing forwards and keepgoing for it?

22:53
Sonal Rattan
Lots of alcohol. No, it was hard. It was really horrible. I think those are thetimes that it's really great to have a co founder that's on that doing. You'vegot somebody else doing it with. So it's a lonely journey doing this as afounder by having, like, both of us going through it. We had a lot of supportfor each other to go through this because again, it was a shit moment for thepair of us. He's actually really good when there's a crisis and he's that calmand I'm like, everything's just like the world's falling apart, you know, not.Not deal with it as well. And he's super calm, so he is fine, but there'snothing going on. When. Yeah, when I'm. He's the one, he has to make noise.Something has to happen. So, like. Yeah, you've got. So that.

23:45
Sonal Rattan
That's how we've kind of like got through things. And lots of alcohol, ofcourse. Right. It's this. It was a. But to make things fun. But the rest of theteam, they were shielded from it. They. They were a part of it. They understoodwhat was happening and what we had to do. Off the back of that, supersupportive. There's a bit of camaraderie between us because we're solvingsomething and we're solving it for some of the biggest organisations in theworld. So we're really proud of what we've done. Even though it's, you know,it's been on a shoestring and it's. Yeah, it's been tough to do it, but we'vedone it and we've done it with like, full heart in it. We've done it like, sowe're. So we can stand behind our product. We're really proud of what we'vedone.

24:26
Sonal Rattan
So, yeah, those are the things that we like. What's actually got us through, isit. Well, yeah, we don't have everything. We were kind of like the underdog aswell. Like, we're like, we can still do this, it's fine. We're not going to letthis, like, keep us down.

24:40
Amardeep Parmar
You said as well earlier how you built the first version of the productyourself. Right. And at your previous roles, you'd always manage teams. You'dhad different people working underneath you and now you've got other peopletoo, working in tech team. How has that been for you from the differentposition of when you're now a founder and it's your baby that they're workingon versus when you're managing a team at a corporate has been quite similar interms of how you're hiring for those people or has been any notabledifferences?

25:04
Sonal Rattan
Now. Yeah, I think that part is this comes with experience and time and whattype of people you want. But every single hire, even when I was in my corporatejob, is. Was quite meticulous. Well, then that's always been a part of it was Idon't hire. Don't just hire for the sake of hiring. That doesn't make sense.Think about the exact skill set you need and if you don't have that, then don'thire at all. So that's kind of been it. We've had like the odd role that'scoming. So we've had. I had an intern, someone said, do you want an intern?We're like, don't really know what we're going to do with it, but yeah, we'llgive them an opportunity anyway. So we've done that, but it's not been clear.

25:41
Sonal Rattan
But generally every single hire is meticulously done where we know what weneed, know what skill sets we need to complement the team. So that's not reallychanged. I've had built. Had to build that as a part of my corporate careerbecause again, I was really ambitious in my corporate career as well. So fromthat standpoint, I never wanted to selfishness. I didn't want to look bad, so Ihired accordingly. Right, yeah. Hire people that are smarter than you. That'salways been my strategy. I'm surrounded by super clever people. I love it.

26:13
Amardeep Parmar
So you've been here for quite a few years now. Right. What's been the proudestmoments? What's been the biggest wins?

26:18
Sonal Rattan
It's actually really personal to us, landing a client. We were chasing afterthem for a great good couple of years to win this as a deal. But my cofounder's dad was the mailman at that company, so he spent 35, 40 years as themail guy of this company and for us it was. Yeah. So just before he died, hewas like, he was always asked every week that, did you land it yet? Did youland it yet? And were like, not yet. It wasn't with my founder was saying it,but the day we did that signing, unfortunately his dad wasn't alive to see it.That day we did that signing was so special to us. It was like, you know, wehad like, you know, that was our big flagship client as well.

27:06
Sonal Rattan
It was, if not one of the biggest banks, it's the biggest bank in the world. Asa customer that sees value in our product, it was. That was really special.

27:15
Amardeep Parmar
And what we're doing now, right, so over 200 episodes in and the idea is we'llget you back again in two years time, right?

27:21
Sonal Rattan
Yeah.

27:22
Amardeep Parmar
And what would you love to say in two years time, sitting here again to sayyour biggest win has been since you last came on?

27:27
Sonal Rattan
I say let's do it on my yacht. That's what I want to say.

27:30
Amardeep Parmar
Then you can sponsor the podcast. We're good.

27:33
Sonal Rattan
Oh, yeah. I would love to have actually realised. So as I say, one of thethings that we're about to do is we've come together and we've actually aboutto announce. So by the time the podcast goes live, it will be live, but we arecreating game changing software that's going to be again be something differentin the way that applications are deployed globally going forward. So we'veteamed up with Red Hat, using all of their networking infrastructure skillsthat they have and what they've got around open source software and we pulledall of that together to create intelligent infrastructure.

28:09
Sonal Rattan
So intelligent infrastructure means that we can understand from data wheresomething needs to run in a global setting, if it needs to run India, if itneeds to run in China, if it needs to run in Europe or the us but we can dothat seamlessly. But we can. And that's going to be something I want to see intwo years time that people are innovating on top of that technology because itdoesn't exist today. Well, it does now, but it didn't exist up until now. And Iwant to see people really taking that and creating true global systems, solvingsome of the challenges that you've got with AI and having bias in models thatyou, because you can't run them globally. I want to see that underlyingtechnology will now enable so much more.

28:51
Sonal Rattan
So that to me would be a huge win that we from an idea, from an engineeringstandpoint is now there in reality and now people can really do what they needto do in two years time. I want to be able to say some of the new unicorns arenow building on top of that sort of technology. That's what I want to hear.

29:11
Amardeep Parmar
Awesome. So we talked about some of the hard times, obviously the strugglesthat you've had there. But what do you enjoy the most? What's the bit thatkeeps you going every day that you really love?

29:20
Sonal Rattan
Oh, what do I enjoy? I'm going to go back to alcohol. No, I, I love spendingtime with my family and my friends. I haven't done it as much as I'd like toand I really feel that gap of being an entrepreneur, as I said, it's a. Yeah,you give it your all to do something. But that's for sure that I reallytreasure those times that I can actually just unwind and spend with them and dothose things. And as we're growing and doing things differently, I'd like tosee myself having more time to be able to do that because that's. That it'sbeen many years that I've not been able to really properly do that. Probablyneglected some friends, apologies to them if they're listening. But I thinkfrom that standpoint it's. Well, yeah, I really love doing that.

30:13
Amardeep Parmar
So thanks so much for sharing all your story today. quick fire question time.So first one is, here are three Asians in Britain that you think are doingincredible work and you'd have to shout them out.

30:25
Sonal Rattan
Yep. So first and foremost, Aarti Samani. I met her a good few years ago andshe is so knowledgeable around some of the threats that are coming out from AIperspective, really knowledgeable. She's building frameworks to helporganisations to actually deal with some of those risks that they don't evenknow that are coming. So definitely she deserves a shout out. She's trying tohelp organisations but she's one person at the moment that's hopefully going tobe growing and being able to get this word out. But the work that she's doingis super important. Karan Jain, of course, amazing technology in terms ofbuilding a sandbox. He's working with some of the most amazing companies but.Or again helping organisations to test safely and do different things in. With.With other technologies. And not in the UK though, so.

31:22
Sonal Rattan
But, but I did have Sheila Gemin. She is a ex entrepreneur. She's actuallybased out in the Netherlands but unbelievable. She's a. She's. She was anentrepreneur, spent many years being an entrepreneur, now has gone into acorporate career. But again, just. It's been pretty amazing some of the thingsthat she's. She's been doing and what she has done in her career. So definitelysomeone worth speaking to if you have the chance.

31:50
Amardeep Parmar
And if they want to find out more about you and what you're building?

31:53
Sonal Rattan
So. Yep. So we're eXate, so it's www.exate.com so it's eXate and find me onLinkedIn. I'm Sonnet Rattan.

32:00
Amardeep Parmar
And if the audience listening today could potentially help you. Is thereanything that you need help with?

32:05
Sonal Rattan
Yeah. So again people that for us. So we're again taking that WhatsAppmentality. We don't want to grow but we're always looking for partners in thisspace to actually use the technology, embed it into their products and then beable to forward distribute it. So any partners that want to leverage off ourtechnology, work with us and again continually improve it. Absolutely happy tobe in touch.

32:30
Amardeep Parmar
So thanks so much for coming on today.

32:31
Sonal Rattan
Thank you.

32:32
Amardeep Parmar
Any final words?

32:34
Sonal Rattan
Thanks for having me and looking forward to hearing some of your podcastscoming up.

32:40
Amardeep Parmar
Thank you for watching. Don't forget to subscribe. See you next time.

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