Soma Sundar Gollakota: linkedin.com/in/soma-sundar-gollakota-b3b182215

R: Capt. Soma, we aim to delve into your remarkable expertise in the maritime industry and discuss the latest trends, technologies, and insights that can benefit both industry professionals and aspiring individuals. Your wealth of experience and your role as a thought leader in the maritime industry makes this interview a significant opportunity to share valuable insights.

Thank you for the invitation to the interview. I hope my responses are relevant or otherwise brings in a new dimension.

Career and Journey

R: Can you share the significant milestones and experiences that have defined your maritime career, from your early days as a Navigation Officer to your current role as Co-Founder/CEO of Bigyellowfish?

I started my maritime journey at the age of 17, when most of my friends were still deciding their careers. This choice of career and the clarity in the decision in itself, is a first milestone.

Guess in a world of choices no matter how abundant or limited they are in nature, decision making is a big challenge. Making a decision to choose a career and then staying put in the career till you see the epitome of success is a 2nd milestone, again the decision to stay put and be persistent. That was my 2nd milestone to stay put from being a cadet to a Captain to being a part of a shore based management completed the cycle for me.

The 3rd milestone is to be able to decide to get out of the comfort zone and chase your dreams. I always aspired freedom of thought, the creative angle and to disrupt through innovation. Guess my starting Bigyellowfish with my Co-founder Kunal was the 3rd most significant milestone. All 3 milestones to me are very unique as they happened at different phases of my life and each of it was a significant decision of my life.

Bigyellowfish co-founders Soma Sundat Gollakota (left) and Kunal Pancholi (right). Photo: Bigyellowfish

R: What led you to co-found Bigyellowfish, and what is the mission or vision behind your company's work in the maritime sector?

In my maritime career, I came across a wide range of people with diverse cultures, diverse skills, diverse behaviours, diverse aspirations to name a few. It is so interesting to be a part of an eco-system which is highly distributed, promotes such diversity and continues to drive excellence. This is one of the many industries which is driven by a huge dependency on Human Element. The Human element always fascinated me.

During my post sailing career I was actively involved in championing a project on Human element and Human factors. This was an interesting project given that I had the opportunity to meet and interview close to 500 - 600 crew members across the spectrums and under various situations. Human element, the way I understood it, was way deeper than theory.

Understanding behaviours and how they impacted Human performance needed a deeper understanding and in a continuous manner. This was definitely a problem statement which needed a solution. This quest to find a tangible solution and quantify the Human element to drive performance standards led to the germination of Bigyellowfish.

Bigyellowfish is a safety engagement and behavioural risk platform that connects the shore to the last mile crew. Photo: Bigyellowfish

Latest Developments and Trends

R: The maritime industry is continually evolving. What do you consider to be the most significant recent developments or trends in the maritime field, and how are they shaping the industry's future?

The maritime industry is highly regulated and compliance driven. This means there is a strong culture and behaviour of compliance across the industry. Change and innovation was never easy to come by. However, in the last decade or so there has been a tectonic shift in the approach of the industry. Adoption of technology to drive efficiency in process, fuel optimization, cost efficiency, port rotation and turnaround timings, to name a few.

The future of the maritime industry will be defined by how proactive the industry thinks and marches forward. Today is tomorrow's mindset should be more visible, especially when it comes to the future of the maritime work force. This is going to be the biggest challenge.

End of the day, no matter what automation we bring in, the need for qualified, competent people to operate and sustain the industry is a must. Adoption of new age technologies helps drive better employee experience, better skilling experience and behavioural competence.

Credit: Shutterstock / Wan Fahmy Redzuan

Technology and Innovation

R: How can emerging technologies like artificial intelligence and predictive analytics be applied to enhance maritime safety and operations?

Technology is always a catalyst to Human experience. In the context of the maritime industry, we need to understand that the industry is very fragmented, be it in the way it conducts business, safety, technical and people operations. While most of our regulations, be it statutory or commercial, provide frameworks and standards, the adoption of the same is varied.

The reason for such variation is the lack of industry wide standards to technology adoption. Meaning we are still fine accepting safety and operational standards without using a common database or using collaborative data to understand patterns and thereby able to predict future best practices. We are still averse to understanding data and take informed decisions, rather we prefer to always be in firefighting mode.

Yes in the last 5 years or so there has been a big push, at least at a talk point level, towards a digital economy. Digitalization is finding its way in, but this will take its time from an adoption perspective given the complexity of the industry. People, process, and technology are the key ingredients to achieve a sustainable digital economy.

As always it starts with People first, the mindset to go digital, to be able to make those decisions to adopt new age technologies. If this first step is achieved, the rest is relatively simple. I am very optimistic that the next 10 years will be the golden period for the maritime industry to reach its epitome of digital success.

R: In your role as Co-Founder/CEO of Bigyellowfish, what advice can you offer to maritime professionals looking to embrace technology-driven solutions to improve safety and quality?

As a first step, identify the most pressing problems as a priority. See how they are being addressed today and what are the inefficiencies in the current system. How are these inefficiencies effecting your top line or the bottom line? In a commodity and service driven industry such as maritime, the bottom line is the biggest worry, rather than the top line.

The ability to bring cost efficiency is the key. Embrace technologies which can help you reduce the costs on the bottom line in alignment with the problem statements that you have identified. Look for technologies which are futuristic and sustainable. Evaluate technologies from the ability to scale and from the perspective of adoption.

Adoption is one of the most critical aspects when it comes to embracing technologies. The reason being your people and processes should be able to encompass such technologies.

Photo: iInterchange Systems Private Limited