INTERVIEW |
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RA : You can ’ t build what you do without the support of your life partner and I owe a lot of my success to my wife . From a career perspective , my first two bosses were both women . When I look back now , they were both incredibly supportive and patient , which made them excellent mentors . Then there ’ s my mum . She was an engineer and when I first started Cvent , I didn ’ t know how to recruit engineers so my mum and my sister did the first interviews to find our CTO .
My mum has come to every Cvent CONNECT and when I visit our office based in India , she always comes to work with me . I visit India for around a month every year and every day she comes into work with me , sits in all my
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meetings and then gives me advice and pointers on what worked and what I could do differently in the car on the way home . I also have two daughters , aged 11 and 16 . They too always come to Cvent CONNECT as it gives them valuable exposure to many inspirational women in positions of leadership . It ’ s impactful to see women in action in a business event environment . My 16-year-old daughter in particular has been positively impacted by coming to these types of events . CW : Tell us a bit about the importance of customers RA : I ’ ve spent a lot of time with our customers over the past 24 years . They ’ ve become friends , we ’ ve shared stories and life events and it ’ s very special . What I ’ ve |
learned is that meeting planners in particular are very smart - they know what they want and in many ways , they ’ re mini CEOs managing budgets , sponsorship , logistics and actual businesses within larger organisations . If you listen to them , 90 % of your roadmap is set because they ’ ll tell you their pain points and empower you to create the aspirin . CW : What does the future hold for the events industry ? RA : Technolgy solutions such as facial recognition and Augmented Reality still have a way to go but others such as AI and Machine Learning ( ML ) are transformative for our industry . Video also plays a vital role , extending the life of your event content throughout the year .
The power of the event planner as part of the marketing function of a company will also grow in importance as the different methodologies available to reach and influence new audiences continue to scale . CW : Give us your thoughts on AI . RA : Generative AI is growing twice as fast as the evolution
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of the mobile phone . Initially , it has made our 5,000 employees more efficient through automation . Now , both AI and ML have empowered our developers to develop 15 % faster because they can predict the code that our people are writing . From a customer perspective , our goal is to use AI to help them become more efficient too . It ’ s still early days but a simple example is to give them generative AI writing tools that will help them to construct formatted event emails and more concise agendas . I don ’ t believe AI will ever replace meetings and event planners but it will continue to empower them to do better and accelerate their careers . So embrace it and learn best practices as it will become a core part of the event planning process . CW : Finally , Blackstone acquired Cvent in a deal worth $ 4.6bn , What keeps you engaged and keeps you working ? Why are you not on a yacht somewhere asking a waiter to serve you mangos carved into the shape of a swan ? RA : If you have a passion for something , there ’ s nothing more interesting that you could be doing . I have a passion for Cvent , I ’ m excited about our people and I love watching our customers impact an industry for the better . I don ’ t see what could be more exciting than that . CW : You just heard me talk about mangos in the shape of a swan right ? RA : It would take more than that to get rid of me . I have many years left to give . EN |
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24 — Winter |