AI giant Algonomy set to acquire SL’s Linear Squared

Algonomy Founder and CEO Atul Jalan addresses journalists in Colombo while (left) Linear Squared CEO and Co-Founder Sankha Muthu and (extreme right) Linear Squared Co-Founder Senior Vice President Mohit Pande look on 
Pic by Pradeep Dilrukshana

Global leader in algorithmic customer engagement, Algonomy revealed its plans yesterday to acquire Sri Lanka tech firm Linear Squared.

The company, headquartered in Bangalore and has operations in 18 other locations across the world, said it would fully acquire Sri Lanka cloud-based tech company, which is specialising in building demand planning and forecasting products for CPG, grocery retail industry and other industries.

Addressing a press conference in Colombo yesterday, Algonomy Founder and CEO Atul Jalan shared that the intended acquisition would allow Algonomy to expand its product offering for consumer products and retail industry segments and also meet its objective of quickly and efficiently scaling up its AL technology operations.

According to Jalan, the reason to foray into Sri Lanka is to capitalise on the talent pool, which is of high quality. 
“It is just the sheer quality of talent that we are coming to Sri Lanka. We are so very impressed by the kind of talent; I was caught by surprise,” he said.

With Algonomy having its global research and development (R&D) engineering centres in Seattle, San Francisco and Bangalore, by acquiring Linear Squared the tech giant plans to create its fourth ‘world-class’ global technology R&D engineering product development pod. 

“The way we are looking at this is to have Sri Lanka as a centre for specialised talent, especially in the areas of data science, analytics and machine learning. 

So, these will be the area of focus,” said Jalan.
He elaborated that Algonomy plans to start with adding 100 new local talent to the acquired company in the next 12 months and then further expand in the second year.

As the company is privately owned, Algonomy refrained from sharing the deal value but said it will be a 100 percent acquisition. Commenting on the acquisition, Linear Squared CEO and Co-Founder Sankha Muthu Poruthotage said the new step would help the locally founded company to take its innovation to a broader customer base at a faster pace.

“In the short term, it will improve time-to-market and business growth of our supply chain AI solutions for the CPG and grocery retail segments.

In the long term, as we expand the centre, we expect it to become an integral part of Algonomy’s global product and R&D operations to serve multiple product lines,” said Poruthotage. Algonomy (previously Manthan-Rich Relevance) is a global leader in algorithmic customer engagement, powering digital-first strategies for retailers and brands. With industry-leading retail expertise connecting demand to supply with a real-time customer data platform as the foundation, Algonomy enables 1:1 omnichannel personalisation, customer journey orchestration and customer analytics.

Linear Squared is a technology company specialised in building products that deliver ready-to-action insights using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies for businesses across multiple industries.