Srikanth Muralidhara knew a lot about data analytics and machine learning, but nothing about the oil industry—which is why he was a bit apprehensive to take a meeting with a Shell executive who’d expressed interest in a blog post he had written. But it was, in fact, Srikanth’s position as an outsider that most attracted the executive. “We need to learn from other industries,” he said. 

“And there's always concepts which can be borrowed.” This was how Srikanth and his partners quite unexpectedly found themselves solving problems in the energy and industrial sectors. The result was Flutura, a startup that uses data analysis, AI, and machine learning to help these sectors optimize operations and prevent failures.