In February 2022, FirstHive announced it was receiving a fresh round of funding led by India-based VC Mela Ventures to speed up growth in the global market. This investment will allow FirstHive to continue to invest in existing geographies, while expanding its global presence and driving innovations in its product offerings. This announcement is exciting news for the award-winning, relatively new business founded in 2016.
First Hive is the world’s first Customer Data Platform (CDP). Their mission is to provide companies with a single source of intelligence to build unified customer identities, and streamline data usage across the enterprise’s marketing and analytics stack.
The leader behind this success is CEO and founder Aditya Bhamidipaty. Under Aditya’s leadership, FirstHive is the first to incorporate machine learning into customer data profiling. FirstHive has customer deployments in some leading BFSI, FMCG, and manufacturing enterprises across the US and the Indo-Pacific region.
The CEO Behind the Success
Aditya Bhamidipaty began his corporate career at P&G and iGate’s European division. This promising start allowed him to understand the functioning enterprises at scale, and gain a lifelong appreciation for building sustainable customer relationships.
Aditya struck out on his own in 2008, launching his first start-up, “Smart Solutions.” The emphasis was on something close to Aditya’s heart — building customer loyalty and improving the customer experience. Over the next seven years, the firm built a commendable customer base of over 150 clients, receiving accolades in India and overseas.
FirstHive was registered as an AI-powered CDP platform in 2016. Since that time, it has grown step-by-step under Aditya’s expert leadership, becoming the global CDP firm that it is today.
Creating Team FirstHive
A strong team is behind every outstanding leader, and FirstHive is no exception. Aditya’s belief in cultivating a distinctive work culture at FirstHive has enabled him to gather a passionate and dedicated team that seeks to fulfill the company’s vision at every turn.
“I believe that every employee of FirstHive is an entrepreneur in their respective role, and a key stakeholder. They are the ones who are owning this dream, driving it, and creating a legacy,” says Aditya. This sense of ownership that Aditya inspired has made FirstHive what it is today: a prosperous company that is quickly growing, with over 30 active deployments across four continents.
Once Aditya developed his accomplished core team, they worked to create a solution to bridge the gap between customer data and customer experience. At the end of 2016, the FirstHive team accomplished the task of going live with the beta version of their product, which promised to usher in a new era in hyper-personalized customer experience.
Aditya likes to explain the importance of hyper-personalization with this analogy; “Consider shopping at a store for a shaving kit. The general advertising tendency is to broadcast a generic message of ‘I’m a great product, but me’. Now, imagine the product having a personalized message for each customer as they walked by. ‘It’s your 25th Wedding Anniversary tomorrow. Show your better half you care with the best shave ever,’ for instance. That would revolutionize how customers feel about what they choose to buy.” With this philosophy in mind, Team FirstHive went to work to revolutionize customer personalization.
While the pandemic affected businesses worldwide, FirstHive quickly evaluated the situation, building and executing an effective business plan under Aditya’s leadership. The result was fortuitous for FirstHive, as the pandemic has only reinforced the value of data management and the role of digital engagement and the customer experience in a rapidly-adapting world.
Honoring His Roots
Indian entrepreneurs in the digital era are leading the way by combining a natural aptitude for technology with proficiency in building scalable businesses. “I strongly believe that the nation responsible for one-sixth of the world’s population should also be responsible for more than its fair share of technology innovation,” says Aditya.
Creating meaningful employment, mentoring a new generation of leaders, and establishing India and Indians as leaders in the digital world are things that give more significant meaning and purpose to Aditya’s entrepreneurial quest. Aditya is fond of the quote from Peter Drucker: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Nothing could sum up Aditya’s mission better in creating FirstHive, and defining the crusade to make a difference in the world.
Aditya Bhamidipaty is the founder and CEO of FirstHive, a purpose-built Customer Data Platform designed for today’s enterprise, delivering advanced customer segmentation and personalized messaging that outperforms other enterprise marketing clouds and data platforms. He has been a serial technology entrepreneur focused on solving problems for marketers and his stewardship of FirstHive has empowered it to be among the first to incorporate machine learning into customer data profiling, delivering 6X ROI to some of the world’s largest brands on their marketing initiatives. Founded in 2016, FirstHive has customer deployments in some of the leading BFSI, FMCG, and manufacturing enterprises across the US and the Indo-Pacific region.
