EXL exec Narasimha Kini on how AI can supercharge growth
EXL is making its big debut at Cannes Lions– even though the company has been around for 26 years. The global analytics and digital solutions firm uses artificial intelligence and data to help clients across industries from insurance, media and healthcare to banking, financial services and retail, reimagine their business models to accelerate growth.
Executive vice president Narasimha Kini, who leads EXL's banking and capital markets and diversified industries market units, spoke to The Post about the increasing importance of AI and how his company helps clients navigate the uncertain economic landscape.
Q: What is EXL's mission?
Narasimha Kini: EXL is committed to driving business forward with data and AI. We believe there is always a better way. We look deeper, we find it, and we make it happen. By integrating data, and AI with our deep industry expertise, EXL empowers businesses across various sectors, including insurance, banking and finance, healthcare, retail, media, entertainment and infrastructure to transform workflows and grow their businesses.
3 EXL executive vice president Narasimha Kini.
EXL
Q: How has the company evolved since it was founded in 1999 and what has propelled its growth?
NK: We started off as a business process operations company, so we were always focused on understanding the details of our clients' operational workflows and finding ways to improve them. EXL was uniquely positioned when the AI Supercycle began a couple of years ago. Our focus has always been on helping our clients embed data and AI into their operational workflows, and the growth of AI really played into that strength.
Q: What solutions do you provide for clients?
NK: EXL provides a wide range of data, analytics, AI and operations management solutions to help clients streamline complex workflows, automate manual, labor-intensive processes and improve customer experience.
Q: How does EXL use AI and data management to help clients?
NK: The key to our business and the reason why we've been positioned so well to take advantage of the growth of AI is that we focus on helping big organizations – insurance companies, banks, retail and media companies – improve their workflows. We look at all the steps in a complex process like insurance underwriting or investment management customer experience and we find ways to improve each step in the process by integrating disparate data sets, surfacing important insights and automating redundant processes. That's our focus with AI, embedding it into those workflows to improve every step in the process.
3 EXL Services ringing the Nasdaq Exchange's opening bell last June to fete the company's 25 years in business.
EXL
Q: Can you provide an example of a success story?
NK: We work with almost all the major sports leagues. The sports industry is embracing digital transformation with a focus on fan engagement, data monetization, and athlete well-being.
To elevate fan experiences, we launched an AI-driven solution that unifies fan data, segments audiences, and delivers personalized engagement. Leveraging journey analytics and data clean rooms.
For our clients, the solutions have delivered, 35% increase in fan engagement, 60% boost in marketing ROI and significant ticket sales growth, it additionally revealed that 20% of fans drive nearly 50% of revenue, enabling smarter campaigns and better retention of high-value fans.
On the field, our solution enhances athlete care through early risk detection leading to 15% reduction in injury rates and improved emergency readiness and performance.
Q: What kinds of cost savings can brands expect working with EXL?
NK: In our own original research, we've found that many companies are redefining their customer service with a product and pricing focus. Overall, US retailers reported 21% higher revenue and 20% cost reduction through AI, but they achieved priorities more frequently with AI. More than half say AI has redefined customer experience, supported new products and services, and accelerated real-time data.
Q: How does EXL use AI and data management to help clients?
3 EXL, which is making its Cannes Lions debut, uses data and AI to help clients streamline and grow their businesses.
WireImage
NK: EXL uses AI and data management to help clients unlock business value by improving decision-making, automating processes, enhancing customer experiences, and driving operational efficiency. We combine deep domain expertise with advanced analytics, AI, and proprietary data platforms to help organizations transform how they operate and compete.
Q: You have partnerships with some of the biggest companies, including chip maker Nvidia. How do you work with them?
NK: We recently developed a proprietary EXL Insurance Large Language Model (LLM) leveraging NVIDIA AI Enterprise. It was the first industry-specific LLM created to support critical claims and underwriting-related tasks, such as claims reconciliation, data extraction and interpretation, question-answering, anomaly detection and chronology summarization.
The EXL Insurance LLM was developed to address the highly specialized needs of the insurance industry, which has struggled to leverage off-the-shelf, general LLMs that lack fine-tuning of private insurance data and domain-specific understanding of business process operations.
Generic LLMs also fail to address the nuanced challenges faced by insurance companies during claim adjudication, leading to inefficiencies, high indemnity costs, claims leakage, longer settlement timelines, and increased compliance risks. By focusing exclusively on insurance-related tasks, EXL has incorporated its deep knowledge of the insurance industry and highly tailored proprietary data to create the industry's most accurate LLM.
EXL customized the LLM using the NVIDIA NeMo end-to-end platform, part of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise Software Platform, for training, customization, and deployment, and to handle question-and-answer tasks and summarization.
Q: Are the Trump tariffs impacting your clients? If so, how? How are you helping them navigate?
NK: Global trade dynamics have shifted significantly with the rise of sudden tariff implementations and unpredictable trade policy changes. For supply chain leaders, these changes create a ripple effect—heightened costs, operational disruptions, and increased risks. Combine these with delayed lead times and misaligned inventory levels, and the challenge becomes clear.
EXL's AI-driven solutions are empowering supply chain management leaders to overcome these complexities. From demand forecasting to sourcing optimization, here's how AI can create resilient, efficient supply chains in the face of tariff-related challenges.
Q: How does that work exactly?
NK: AI's ability to analyze complex datasets, predict scenarios, and recommend actionable strategies makes it indispensable for supply chain resilience. One of EXL's newest AI solutions is a supply chain optimization solution that CPG [consumer packaged goods] companies are using to quickly identify their line item-by-line item exposure to tariffs, predict cost impacts and optimize their supply chains as tariff news changes by the minute.
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