It was 2019; I had just left EY after a fantastic 16-year consulting career, assisting global companies in building proactive compliance monitoring and data analytics platforms, including ABInBev’s BrewRIGHT. Additionally, I played a crucial role in helping companies respond to regulatory matters such as FCPA, sanctions, and other white-collar crime and financial matters. The future looked bright as I headed back to New York to join Alvarez & Marsal’s (A&M) Investigative & Disputes practice and help them build out their data analytics capabilities.

At the end of 2019, when I joined A&M, we had a great team in place, excellent infrastructure, a renowned brand name, and fantastic leadership support. However, one thing was missing – I needed a technology platform to automate many of the manual processes that made traditional data analytics procedures too time-consuming and cost-prohibitive.

Enter the beginning of KonaAI. I called my dear friend and former EY partner who led our India practice and had recently started his own e-Discovery company. I informed him that I could not pay him upfront but needed his help building the “dream data analytics platform” capable of doing all the things I wished I could have done at the Big 4, but was too restrictive given the hourly-rate, billable hour model of consulting. We worked out a deal where I paid him “per-project” at A&M. It took six months for him to build the prototype and another six months to fine-tune, but we knew something significant was in the making. Sales began to take off at A&M during the remote Covid-19 period when audits and investigations all had to be remote. I called it A&M’s Digital Twin solution. We knew we had something, but we needed to scale.

Enter April 2022. With great advice from mentors, friends, and former clients, my founder and I both agreed it was time to dedicate my full-time effort to KonaAI as their CEO and build a “dream-team” of forensic accounting, data science, customer support, and software engineers – most with Big 4 and corporate experience from both the U.S. and India. With the support and blessing from my wife and A&M, I resigned and became the full-time CEO of KonaAI.

In collaboration and input from MIT, Harvard Business School, the ABInBev Foundation, the ACFE, legal and compliance colleagues, and industry thought leaders, the KonaAI team has built the ideal compliance & investigative software for monitoring vendor, customer, and employee transactions. It is everything we wish we could have built as consultants or private companies but were limited by investment resources, personnel, and infrastructure. What used to take 8 to 10 weeks to process data now takes 8 - 10 days, allowing us to price our software product at 1/5th the cost of traditional approaches, with better, more accurate results and AI capabilities.

Thank you for taking the time to read our story, and we invite you on this exciting journey together. Let’s make your business better, find hidden money, and demonstrate an effective compliance and fraud risk management program together.