Latest news with #Parameswaran
New Straits Times
2 days ago
- New Straits Times
KLCC pixmen deny fleecing tourists, saying they are not gangsters or conmen
KUALA LUMPUR: Braving the scorching 33°C heat, four men gathered outside the Petronas Twin Towers today to tell their side of the story after a recent operation against them and their "street photographer" friends. Following public complaints and videos of alleged "KLCC photographer gangsters and scammers" going viral, Kuala Lumpur City Hall (DBKL) yesterday conducted a joint operation dubbed OP Lens with the police and other government departments. Just last night, nearly 30 of them were slapped with RM2,000 fines each for offering their "services" without a permit. But four of them today claimed that they neither accosted visitors and passers-by, nor did they overcharge for their services. "We are not criminals. We're just trying to make a living, why fine us? "We are not causing any trouble to anyone. It's very simple, we approach tourists who want to take pictures with KLCC in the background. "We tell them the price beforehand and if they agree, then only we proceed. Otherwise we go on to the next customer, " said Hussein Siri, 43, in defence of his friends and himself. The father of six from Sabah said he had been taking pictures at KLCC since 2019 and last night was not the first time that he got into trouble with the authorities. "Times are hard and yet this happens. People think we make a lot of money, but that's not true. We earn just to break even. Even this Iphone 16, which I bought under installment, the camera stand, power banks and extras, all cost money," he said. He claimed that the gadgets he held were worth about RM8,000. Contrary to claims that tourists were overcharged – some allegedly quoting as high as RM30 per photo – N. Parameswaran, 48, insisted that such allegations were not true. "Our rates are all standardised and reasonable. RM5 for locals and RM10 for tourists – not RM30 or anything more. RM10 is for one photo. If they want all the pictures, then of course the price changes, but we always explain and negotiate," he said while wiping sweat from his brow as the midday sun beat down. Speaking about last night's operation, Parameswaran said he did not understand why the photographers were fined when a video of one altercation that went viral, which according to him, occurred between two tourists who wanted to take photos at the same time. "It had nothing to do with any of us, yet just because the video went viral, the authorities came after us. We do a good job taking good photos of the visitors and that is why some choose to hire us, but that's what many people don't understand," he said, adding that they had a few trade secrets for camera settings to make their shots nicer. Another photographer, Mustafa Ali, 30, also from Sabah, said he was plying his trade for survival. "On good days, I make RM100 to RM150. On bad days, just RM50 or even less. That's barely enough for food and bills," he said, condemning the operation against his colleagues and friends. Mustafa said he migrated here after losing his job in Sabah during the pandemic. Muhd Fauzi Omar, 26, a father of three, said most customers initially wanted one or two photos only, but sometimes, after seeing all the shots, they wanted more. "We normally take 10 to 12 pictures so they can choose. If they want it all, then of course it's not RM10 anymore. But even then, we negotiate, make it fair. No forcing. We're not scammers. "A real scammer would have disappeared. But we stay because we know we are not doing wrong," he said. Fauzi said the recent viral video showing an altercation had nothing to do with them. "It was two tourists arguing among themselves. But some content creators twisted it for likes and shares. Because of that, we got blamed. Suddenly, we're all criminals," he said.
The Hindu
5 days ago
- Business
- The Hindu
Review of Marketing Mixology by Ambi Parameswaran
'A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him,' said Mahatma Gandhi. Advertising and marketing veteran Ambi Parameswaran's book, Marketing Mixology, captures the essence of understanding consumers and three other skills—brand building, selling and negotiation, and communication—as being crucial to successful marketing. Parameswaran, founder of and who has worked with popular brands/companies like Tata Motors, Wipro, ITC, Amul and Pepsico, draws on his professional and teaching experience to share a masterclass in marketing, which acts as a guide for both seasoned professionals and aspiring marketers, amid changing marketing dynamics. Reading the weather Pointing out that consumer analysis is probably the most important step in the brand building exercise, he says with the country around us changing, an analysis of macro socio-economic factors may throw up interesting trends. A company, for instance, spotted an opportunity when it noticed girls keen on having a good education and pursuing a career. The company began setting up creches in housing societies and IT parks. He urges companies to think what other opportunities will open up because of increasing incomes and working couples. 'There will be an explosion in the demand for gadgets that save time and effort,' he points out. Successful marketing hinges on understanding consumers and from the smallest of organisations to the biggest, good marketing mixology cannot happen without a deep knowledge of consumers, says Parameswaran. He dismisses myths that brand building is very expensive and only big companies can do it. Parameswaran also debunks the theory that brand building is very complicated in India because of factors like large population, multiple States etc., and discusses various elements of brand building. 'One of the myths is that you need a person with an MBA degree from an IIM to do your branding for you. Not true at all. Some of the most successful Indian brands have been built by our own entrepreneurs,' he writes, citing examples like Ramraj Cotton, Moov Balm, MTR Masalas, Nirma, among others. The chapter on negotiation begins with a quote of John F. Kennedy's: 'Let us never negotiate out of fear; but let us never fear to negotiate.' Parameswaran elucidates various tools and techniques for negotiation and drives home the point that core principles, like don't react out of anger, always put yourself in the other person's shoes, attack the problem not the person, and make it easy for the other side to say yes, are still relevant. Communication is key The last chapter deals with communication and its various aspects, including one-on-one oral communication, one-to-many oral communication, written communication. More importantly, it touches on the concept of integrated marketing communications, which is using various marketing communication platforms aligning with the overall brand message. Parameswaran notes that one of the big pitfalls affecting brands is to see India as a single market. 'In reality, India is a federation of many markets. Several brands have been able to achieve success by not going all-India, but into regional market after market,' he adds. Marketing Mixology Ambi Parameswaran Westland Books ₹350 sanjay.v@
The Hindu
10-07-2025
- Business
- The Hindu
Marketing Mixology: A No-Jargon Guide to Success in Brand-Building
Published : Jul 10, 2025 14:42 IST - 4 MINS READ I finished reading Ambi Parameswaran's Marketing Mixology the same day I came across a rather mournful article on the future of business consulting in the age of artificial intelligence (AI)—an article that had the air of an obituary. It offered dire predictions about what might happen to human-led strategy once machine-led optimisation took over. It was, in a way, the perfect mood-setter for Parameswaran's book because it allowed me to approach Marketing Mixology from two perspectives: one that looks at the craft of marketing as we have traditionally known it, and the other reluctantly adjusted to the LED glow of a world where bots have started writing press releases, proposals, and brand kits and automating sales funnels. The book is structured around what Parameswaran calls 'four essential ingredients for marketing success': understanding the consumer, building the brand, selling and negotiation, and communication. It is a neat quartet, but Parameswaran is not trying to be flashy here. In fact, Marketing Mixology is notable for its refusal to pander to the usual genre tropes of self-congratulatory business books. It has no tortured or clichéd acronyms. It also stays away from those overcooked metaphors that make many, like me, put away business books instantly. And there are no proclamations about paradigm shifts. Marketing Mixology: Four Essential Ingredients for Marketing Success By Ambi Parameswaran Westland Business Pages: 172 Price: Rs.350 Instead, what we get is a slow-brewed collection of stories, frameworks, reflections, folk tales (Birbal makes an appearance, as he should), case studies and occasional theoretical nudges, all delivered in a matter-of-fact tone that suggests Parameswaran has been teaching the same lesson in various rooms for decades and still is not bored of it. Also Read | We are all living a lie This is a small compact book. The prose is simple. The jokes are gentle and often self-effacing. One gets the sense that the author has spent enough time in conference rooms where the air-conditioning is more aggressive than the marketing plan, and he is here to talk plainly. 'Intelligent marketing professionals do both: understand data and also understand consumers,' he writes, and this feels like common sense—until you realise how many campaigns are built on the exact opposite assumption. Anecdotal account Parameswaran blends anecdotes from his years of experience in advertising and brand consulting with empirical insights, old-fashioned wisdom, capsuled insights from marketers that made it big, and the occasional chart. But at no point does he try to position himself as a guru. He is closer to the seasoned colleague who knows how the procurement head thinks, where the bottleneck is buried, and when not to press 'send' on the big client mailer. In one moment where he discusses the art of negotiation, he recounts missing a connecting flight in London en route to Chicago. What happens next is a simple, almost throwaway incident—but it lands as an allegory for one of the fundamentals of negotiation: Just ask. While this book does not offer grand insights, it respects the intelligence of the reader. There is no evangelical promise here that branding will save your company. What Parameswaran does instead is remind us that branding is the act of listening—really listening—to what the consumer wants, fears, buys, and does not talk about in surveys. Parameswaran, who has straddled advertising, strategy, and brand stewardship with equal competence,has become something of a chronicler of the marketing industry—writing books not just about brand-building, but also about religion, rejection, personal growth, and the business of advertising itself. Marketing Mixology may not be his most ambitious book, but it might be one of his most useful. For younger readers, it serves as a practical toolkit without the jargon. For older readers, it is a gentle reminder of the deep human intelligence that underpins good marketing—an intelligence that no AI can yet convincingly simulate. Ultimately, what I found most refreshing about this book was how it avoided noise. In an age when marketing advice is available in 90-second reels, Parameswaran offers a long-form antidote: calm and deeply grounded. It is the reassuring voice of someone who still believes that a brand is built on trust and time. Also Read | Reading is good when it disturbs you: Amitava Kumar In a world where AI might soon be writing banner copy and predicting click-through rates with uncanny accuracy, this book emphasises human judgment and reminds us that clarity, empathy, and experience are not (yet, and that is a big yet) programmable. That is reason enough to read this book. And perhaps reason enough to keep your consulting gig, for now. If one were to nitpick—and what is a review without a little nitpicking—Parameswaran could have offered a longer list of curated resources, especially for readers looking to dig deeper into each theme. An index of topics would not have hurt either.
Business Upturn
04-06-2025
- Business
- Business Upturn
PromptQL Partners with UC Berkeley to Develop New Data Agent Benchmark for Reliability of Enterprise AI Agents
BERKELEY, Calif., June 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — PromptQL , a platform for reliable AI, today announced a strategic research collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley to develop the first comprehensive data agent benchmark for enterprise reliability specifically designed to evaluate general-purpose AI data agents in enterprise environments. A recent McKinsey study revealed that 78% of organizations use AI in at least one business function, however, more than 80% say their organization hasn't seen a tangible impact on enterprise-level Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT). The partnership – led by Aditya Parameswaran, Professor and Co-Director of UC Berkeley's EPIC Data Lab , along with his students – addresses this fundamental challenge organizations face when deploying AI systems in business-critical environments. While existing agentic data benchmarks like GAIA, Spider, and FRAMES test specific AI tasks, they overlook the complexity, reliability demands, and messy, siloed data that define real business environments. The forthcoming data agent benchmark aims to offer a solution by creating a framework that reflects real-world complexities. 'Our customer conversations reveal a clear pattern—they're ready to move from proof-of-concepts to production AI, yet they lack the evaluation tools to make confident deployment decisions,' said Tanmai Gopal, CEO of PromptQL. 'The data agent benchmark changes that by using representative datasets from our work in telecom, healthcare, finance, retail, and anti-money laundering to reflect the real complexity of enterprise AI.' UC Berkeley's EPIC Data Lab brings expertise to this collaboration. Professor Parameswaran is a leading authority on the use of AI for next-gen usable data analysis tools and has received numerous prestigious awards. His research group has created widely-adopted data tools with tens of millions of downloads. 'Current benchmarks suffer from what I call the '1% problem'—they're built for tech giants and ignore the 99% of organizations grappling with real-world data complexity,' Parameswaran said. 'The data agent benchmark marks a shift toward evaluating AI based on the reliability, transparency, and practical value enterprises actually need. This collaboration bridges academic rigor with the production insights PromptQL brings from real deployments.' The data agent benchmark beta will be revealed later this year. Organizations interested in early access or contributing use-cases or datasets can reach out to the research team at [email protected] . PromptQL will be at AI Engineer World's Fair , June 3-6 in San Francisco. Tanmai Gopal, PromptQL's co-founder and CEO, will present a session, 'Al Automation that Actually Works: $100M Impact on Messy Data with Zero Surprises,' on June 4 at 11:15 a.m. PT. To learn more or schedule a demo at the PromptQL booth, visit . About PromptQL PromptQL is a next-generation AI platform from the makers of Hasura, the company behind the pioneering GraphQL Engine. Built for enterprise-grade reliability, PromptQL enables natural language analysis and automation on internal business data — with an industry-first accuracy SLA. By learning the unique language of your business and planning tasks before executing them deterministically, PromptQL brings human-level precision to AI agents. About UC Berkeley EPIC Data Lab The EPIC Data Lab at UC Berkeley develops low-code and no-code interfaces for data work, powered by Gen AI. Co-Led by Professor Aditya Parameswaran, the lab follows Berkeley's tradition of multidisciplinary systems research with emphasis on real-world impact and practical deployment. The lab's tools, including DocETL and other widely-adopted systems, demonstrate Berkeley's leadership in democratizing data science capabilities. Media Contact:Erica Anderson Offleash for PromptQL [email protected]
Yahoo
04-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
PromptQL Partners with UC Berkeley to Develop New Data Agent Benchmark for Reliability of Enterprise AI Agents
New benchmark to address critical gap in evaluating AI systems for mission-critical business operations BERKELEY, Calif., June 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PromptQL, a platform for reliable AI, today announced a strategic research collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley to develop the first comprehensive data agent benchmark for enterprise reliability specifically designed to evaluate general-purpose AI data agents in enterprise environments. A recent McKinsey study revealed that 78% of organizations use AI in at least one business function, however, more than 80% say their organization hasn't seen a tangible impact on enterprise-level Earnings Before Interest and Taxes (EBIT). The partnership – led by Aditya Parameswaran, Professor and Co-Director of UC Berkeley's EPIC Data Lab, along with his students – addresses this fundamental challenge organizations face when deploying AI systems in business-critical environments. While existing agentic data benchmarks like GAIA, Spider, and FRAMES test specific AI tasks, they overlook the complexity, reliability demands, and messy, siloed data that define real business environments. The forthcoming data agent benchmark aims to offer a solution by creating a framework that reflects real-world complexities. "Our customer conversations reveal a clear pattern—they're ready to move from proof-of-concepts to production AI, yet they lack the evaluation tools to make confident deployment decisions,' said Tanmai Gopal, CEO of PromptQL. 'The data agent benchmark changes that by using representative datasets from our work in telecom, healthcare, finance, retail, and anti-money laundering to reflect the real complexity of enterprise AI.' UC Berkeley's EPIC Data Lab brings expertise to this collaboration. Professor Parameswaran is a leading authority on the use of AI for next-gen usable data analysis tools and has received numerous prestigious awards. His research group has created widely-adopted data tools with tens of millions of downloads. "Current benchmarks suffer from what I call the '1% problem'—they're built for tech giants and ignore the 99% of organizations grappling with real-world data complexity,' Parameswaran said. 'The data agent benchmark marks a shift toward evaluating AI based on the reliability, transparency, and practical value enterprises actually need. This collaboration bridges academic rigor with the production insights PromptQL brings from real deployments.' The data agent benchmark beta will be revealed later this year. Organizations interested in early access or contributing use-cases or datasets can reach out to the research team at epic-support@ PromptQL will be at AI Engineer World's Fair, June 3-6 in San Francisco. Tanmai Gopal, PromptQL's co-founder and CEO, will present a session, 'Al Automation that Actually Works: $100M Impact on Messy Data with Zero Surprises,' on June 4 at 11:15 a.m. PT. To learn more or schedule a demo at the PromptQL booth, visit About PromptQLPromptQL is a next-generation AI platform from the makers of Hasura, the company behind the pioneering GraphQL Engine. Built for enterprise-grade reliability, PromptQL enables natural language analysis and automation on internal business data — with an industry-first accuracy SLA. By learning the unique language of your business and planning tasks before executing them deterministically, PromptQL brings human-level precision to AI agents. About UC Berkeley EPIC Data LabThe EPIC Data Lab at UC Berkeley develops low-code and no-code interfaces for data work, powered by Gen AI. Co-Led by Professor Aditya Parameswaran, the lab follows Berkeley's tradition of multidisciplinary systems research with emphasis on real-world impact and practical deployment. The lab's tools, including DocETL and other widely-adopted systems, demonstrate Berkeley's leadership in democratizing data science capabilities. Media Contact:Erica Anderson Offleash for PromptQLpromptql@ Research Contact:Professor Aditya ParameswaranUC Berkeley EPIC Data Labepic-support@ in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
