C5i is a global analytics and applied AI firm that assists enterprises in using data to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and drive strategic decision-making. Co-founded by Ashwin Mittal, the organization has grown to approximately 1,600 professionals worldwide—most of them in India—providing advanced solutions that include predictive modeling and generative AI-driven campaigns. Under Mittal’s leadership, C5i has established a track record of delivering measurable outcomes, focusing on fortifying data ecosystems and deploying AI in a responsible manner.
In this interview with CIO&Leader, Ashwin Mittal, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, C5i discusses the factors behind the leadership changes, the motivation for C5i’s recent acquisitions, its expansion initiatives in the Asia-Pacific region, and the growing significance of “agentic AI” systems in corporate planning as 2025 approaches.
Executive Chairman, C5i
CIO&Leader: Could you start by giving an overview of C5i and your role within the company?
Ashwin Mittal: C5i is a leading global pure-play analytics and applied AI solutions provider. We partner with large global corporations, helping them across the entire data insights, analytics, and AI value chain. We harvest both internal and external data so that our clients can better understand their customers, markets, competition, supply chains, and overall commercial aspects of their businesses. We use advanced AI technologies, including traditional and generative AI, to predict outcomes, orchestrate business strategies, optimize customer experiences, and maximize revenue and profitability.
We work with some of the largest global corporations. Our team comprises about 1,600 people worldwide, with the majority based in India and the remainder spread across various international locations.
I co-founded the company and served as the CEO for seven or eight years. Recently, we promoted our COO to CEO, and I transitioned into the role of Executive Chairman. While I am still fully involved in the business, my focus has shifted to strategic areas such as guiding the executive team, formulating AI roadmaps, driving mergers and acquisitions, and evangelizing our offerings in the marketplace.
CIO&Leader: What led to the recent leadership changes at C5i, and how do you see this transition influencing C5i’s strategic direction and operations?
Ashwin Mittal: The company has reached a point where it needs two distinct but equally important areas of focus. On one hand, we need to run the business with rigorous operations, sales, governance, people management, and overall growth. On the other hand, we are at the epicenter of the ongoing AI revolution, which requires dedicated attention to long-term strategic thinking around technology, ethics, and safe AI practices. We also need to consider how best to support clients in adopting AI responsibly and effectively. These are very different responsibilities and skill sets, so it made sense to separate them. The CEO can now concentrate on daily operations, while I, as Executive Chairman, can focus on the larger vision, strategy, and innovation.
CIO&Leader: You recently acquired Analytic Edge and Incivus. Can you walk me through the rationale behind these acquisitions and explain how they fit into your overall growth strategy?
Ashwin Mittal: Both acquisitions are excellent strategic fits. Across any enterprise, there are numerous functions—marketing, sales, finance, HR, supply chain, and manufacturing—where AI and analytics can be applied. Our core strengths lie in marketing, sales, customer, supply chain, and commercial analytics.
Incivus brought valuable intellectual property related to generative AI that helps predict and enhance the effectiveness of ad campaigns, whether those are videos, images, or other formats. They were already working with generative AI long before ChatGPT became widespread. Their solution can analyze the objectives of a campaign, its product category, and the target audience, then predict performance. It can even generate or modify campaign content as needed.
Analytic Edge focuses on market mix modeling and marketing optimization. They help clients determine where to spend their marketing budgets across different channels and platforms to achieve the best results. While Incivus addresses what content to use, Analytic Edge focuses on where to invest, which complements our larger marketing and customer analytics portfolio. Both acquisitions have integrated smoothly, adding to our capabilities while benefiting from our broader reach.
CIO&Leader: As you expand across APAC, which is a highly diverse region, what market opportunities do you see there, and how do you plan to meet the varied needs of these markets?
Ashwin Mittal: APAC is not a monolithic region. China, India, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Australia, and Japan all have distinct cultures, market dynamics, and regulatory frameworks. We adjust our strategy accordingly for each geography. Although we have a presence across much of APAC, our immediate focus is on the Middle East—specifically the UAE and Saudi Arabia—and on Singapore and nearby countries. We also have a presence in Japan, China, India, and Australia, but these two sub-regions are our current priorities. APAC contributes around 15% of our business, which is significant and growing steadily.
CIO&Leader: Which technology trends do you believe will shape 2025?
Ashwin Mittal: The pace of AI development is extraordinarily rapid. What wasn’t possible a few weeks ago can suddenly become feasible now. Two major trends stand out. First, corporate adoption of AI has lagged behind technological advancements, partly because enterprises want to ensure they have the right frameworks for accuracy, relevance, and compliance with ethical and safety standards. By 2025, I expect significantly broader adoption once these concerns are addressed. Second, the emergence of an agentic approach to AI, where intelligent agents operate within a company’s workflows to automate tasks and provide real-time insights, is poised to reshape how organizations leverage AI. These agent-based solutions will likely further accelerate adoption, creating a cycle of innovation across enterprises.
CIO&Leader: How do you see data analytics and machine learning influencing corporate strategies in the coming years?
Ashwin Mittal: Predictions can be tricky given how quickly technology evolves, but there are a few safe observations. First, AI depends on clean, reliable, and consistent data. Many companies have fragmented systems with data in multiple formats, making it hard to feed directly into AI systems. Data engineering—ensuring data is consumable and aligned—will remain a critical component of any AI strategy. Second, after a period of heavy experimentation in 2023 and the introduction of specific use cases in 2024, 2025 should mark a turning point where industrial-scale AI deployments become the norm. We also foresee that in the latter half of 2025, many of these deployments will be driven by agentic AI systems, taking corporate strategies to new levels of efficiency and innovation.
CIO&Leader: As you approach 2025, what does your roadmap look like, and where are you focusing your strategic efforts?
Ashwin Mittal: We are heavily investing in agentic AI systems. We’re developing our own “agent hub,” which includes frameworks and modules that can be easily deployed and customized for our corporate clients. We believe this will be transformational. We are also planning a third acquisition after the success of our first two. We’ve been evaluating potential companies for over a year, reviewing about forty in total, and have narrowed the list down. We have sufficient funding from earlier rounds and investor interest if we decide to pursue a larger deal. We expect to finalize another acquisition within this calendar year.
CIO&Leader: Regarding the agentic AI projects, are they currently in proof-of-concept phases, or are they closer to commercial release?
Ashwin Mittal: Some are already in proof-of-concept stages with clients, and others are still in development and testing internally. The agentic approach hasn’t been fully industrialized for client environments yet, but I expect that to change rapidly once companies see the potential to integrate AI agents into their core workflows.