ELI - 545 | Why Your AI Fails Without Data Engineering | Dr. Kamaljit Anand (KiE Square)

Dr. Kamaljit Anand, Managing Partner & Chief Data Scientist at KiE Square Analytics and founder of KiEVerse, joins ELI to unpack what really makes enterprise AI work. From IIM Ahmedabad to Gallup and Fractal, he shares two decades of lessons on data science, the rise of data engineering, and why "poor data in means poor outputs out" no matter how good your AI is.KiE Square is a data-to-decisions analytics firm that has delivered 200+ programs globally across pharma, FMCG, retail, and financial services. Its product suite KiEVerse — BrandVerse, SpendVerse, and MarketVerse — brings digital brand equity, ad spend optimization, and marketplace intelligence under one roof. Dr. Anand also makes a strong case for Sovereign AI and small language models as the future of enterprise data.Chapters:00:00 - Introduction01:00 - From IIM Ahmedabad to Gallup & Fractal03:20 - Building KiE Square: Services to Products07:00 - Real Use Cases: Pharma Pricing Engines & FMCG11:00 - Marketing Data Lakes & Real-Time ROI13:45 - Is AI a Disruptor or an Enabler?17:30 - Real-Time Streaming Pipelines (Kafka, Flink, Airflow)21:10 - AI Reality Check: Privacy & Safety Concerns22:00 - How Do You Price a Data Product? Unit Economics22:50 - Inside KiEVerse: BrandVerse, SpendVerse, MarketVerse27:40 - The Future: Sovereign AI, SLMs & Data Sovereignty33:40 - Closing