Here is the inspiring journey of an upcoming leader in the field of Artificial Intelligence who transitioned from academia to the IT industry and left an indelible mark on AI development. Her story is a testament to vision, persistence, and innovation.
Meet Dr. Nidhi Arora, an AI leader whose extraordinary journey spans over 22 years, with a career that bridges the worlds of academia, research and industry, and expertise across domains like manufacturing, e-commerce, sales and marketing, healthcare, insurance, real estate, and MEP to name a few.
Her journey began as an academician with a deep curiosity for exploring unknown frontiers of knowledge. It was during the 2010s, while in academia that she recognized the immense potential of AI to shape the future. This realization sparked a profound interest in her, leading her to delve into research in AI and eventually pursue a Ph.D. in the field of Artificial Intelligence.
During her Ph.D., she faced unique challenges. At the time, research literature and experts to consult on AI were limited, making the field difficult to navigate. Yet, these hurdles fuelled her determination. She explored untapped possibilities, contributed to novel ideas, and developed a deep understanding of the principles and applications of AI. This academic foundation became
The Bedrock of Her Career
Motivated by her deep interest in AI and a passion for innovation, she took a leap from academia to the IT industry. She was the director of a well-known state university when she made this decision. As an IT professional, she utilized her expertise to work towards advancements in AI, ranging from designing neural networks to solving challenging real-world problems in computer vision and natural language processing with core AI algorithms.
Beyond her technical contributions, she played a pivotal role in mentoring the young generation advocating for ethical AI development and inspiring the new generation of AI practitioners. She took over assignments in various institutes to imbibe the problem-solving approach in students translating theoretical AI concepts into impactful, real-world solutions. She trained on the most sophisticated AI ranging from basics of artificial intelligence to machine learning, deep learning, data analysis, and computer vision to give future AI engineers, data analysts and data scientists a mathematical understanding of algorithms–today, many of her students are doing very well in the AI universe. Her journey demonstrates how curiosity, resilience, and a forward-looking vision can transform not only one’s career but also the future of technology.
Looking back 15 years, AI has shifted from being a niche academic subject to a cornerstone of industries like healthcare, finance, and IT. Dr. Nidhi’s early realization of AI’s potential and her extensive experience in this field has positioned her as an expert at a time when such skills are in high demand. Fields like deep learning, natural language processing, and computer vision have evolved rapidly. Most of the AI tools people are using are built on deep networks and transformers. Her foundational knowledge and experience give her a unique edge, making her adept at tackling unexplored challenges.
Today, AI is being integrated into diverse fields, raising the demand for professionals who can collaborate across domains. Her versatile journey equips her to work across a variety of disciplines, making her role even more relevant and impactful. Her proactive learning, adaptability, and foresight have not only kept her relevant but made her a pivotal figure in shaping the industry’s future.
Her journey was not as smooth as it seems. Failures, setbacks and struggles have been an indispensable part of her life. She believes it’s not the success which teaches the life lessons; it’s the failures that come across the journey.
“If you don’t fail, you don’t learn. If you don’t learn, you’ll never get a chance to change.”
Being very honest as she always is, Dr. Nidhi Arora says that Advicon Solutions Pvt Ltd, the company she is spearheading as Director AI, is still aspiring for the triumph to be known as India’s leading AI company. “In my view, the start, run and growth of a company depends heavily on their purpose.” A company which follows a purpose-driven philosophy is built on a clear purpose, and this purpose can motivate both the team and customers. “We are focused on making an impact in the domain rather than just profits.”
Secondly, their happy customers are the best advocates for them. “We follow a customer-centric approach, which has helped us build authentic and long-term relationships with our customers. Our personal connections with the customers foster loyalty, which has brought us regular work through positive word-of-mouth. We take customer engagement seriously. We strive to deliver exceptional value to the customers and continuously improve our customer service.”
As a matter of fact, technology is continuously changing, and AI is not an exception to that, says Dr. Nidhi. She and her team take the advantage of being agile. Learning has become a continuous exercise for them. They keep learning the new technology and adapt to the new tools and platforms to provide cost-effective solutions.
They also build automated workflows streamlining operations with the latest technology to embrace recency and accuracy. “We embrace change with an open mind, ensures longevity.”
“Quoting a few lines by Mother Teresa which truly fits for us,” says Dr. Nidhi. “None of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things with great love, and together, we can do something wonderful.”
Another factor that contributes highly is the critical role played by the team in the growth. “We have been fortunate to have teammates who align with our vision and values. Many of our team members have been with us since the inception of the company. It won’t be fair to say that I am the only one who learns new technology; I also teach them, and the best part is that they do it happily. We provide them an empowering work environment where they get growth opportunities and recognition of their work.”
Dr. Nidhi, a Microsoft Certified Azure Enterprise Data Analyst Associate, furthers that they believe in fostering a culture of growth in the company by implementing a mix of creative and practical approaches to nurture a thriving learning environment.
An investment in learning and gaining knowledge pays the best interest.
So, they encourage continuous learning. Skilling up works best if employees’ skill development can be embedded in their daily tasks and responsibilities. “As we work in the AI industry, we come across new assignments that bring challenges every day, and the best way to deal with these challenges is to foster a collaborative learning environment through brainstorming sessions.”
They facilitate peer learning, which not only lets them learn from each other’s expertise but also creates a sense of motivation and inspiration among them. They assign stretched assignments and tasks that push employees beyond their comfort zones. They also offer them projects to help them acquire diverse skills, not just technical skills but cognitive skills.
Dr. Nidhi, a Google developer educator, says they organize knowledge hours every week where employees share their unique expertise with the team members. This creates a skill development environment which gives them the opportunity to prepare themselves more on their favourite technology and other team members to learn new technologies.
She adds, “We also encourage employees to pursue certifications relevant to their fields and reimburse the costs.” As a result, they have many team members who are Microsoft certified. “We have the culture of publicly acknowledging the employees’ contributions to celebrate their successes,” shares Dr. Nidhi Arora who motivates the team to write white papers, attend industry conferences and networking events to keep updated on technological trends and gain fresh knowledge.
In a continuously evolving industrial landscape, Advicon Solutions’ core strength lies in
Providing End-To-End Industry Specific Solutions to Clients
Apart from a variety of AI services like Gen AI, computer vision, natural language processing, data analysis, workflow automation and conversational assistants, the firm also provides CRM services through MS Dynamics, salesforce, power automate and power platform.
Dr. Nidhi Arora says they deeply understand sector-specific needs to bring immense value to clients by offering tailored solutions, precise guidance, and impactful results. She and her team are excellent in customization, which makes them suitable for catering to specific industry needs to solve unique business challenges.
They provide customer service at all stages of development, ranging from understanding their requirements to building their solution to deployment to troubleshooting. Their service delivery also includes training users on using the AI system and offering reliable technical support. This builds customer confidence.
Another USP is striking a balance between innovation and affordability. By doing this, they try to make their services accessible to small and medium-sized businesses to help them adopt AI smoothly.
Although there are plenty of paid APIs, tools and cloud services available, Advicon Solutions also offers open-source solutions to its clients to match their budgets. The firm’s scalable solutions add to the offering to businesses of all sizes, from startups to large enterprises.
The company’s data-driven decision-making ensures efficiency and progress. It sets clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to track its progress internally following
The Fundamental Principle of Measure, Learn and Evolve
“The KPIs help us to regularly analyze our performance and refine our approach,” says Dr. Nidhi, who sheds light on the driving forces behind her organization’s strengths.
“Networking plays a big role for us.” Being aware of the fact that their clientele majorly sits outside the IT industry, Dr. Nidhi, a well-known AI speaker, has been very active in building relationships across a variety of industries. She frequently accepts to speak at conferences and symposiums and takes part in panel discussions as a panellist to talk about advancements, innovations and adaptability of AI.
Being a researcher, she focuses on contributing and collaborating with the AI research community. She has published several research papers in the area of AI, authored a book on soft computing methodologies and has contributed to many book chapters with well-known publishers. This not only fosters her credibility as an individual researcher but also strengthens Advicon Solutions’ goodwill and gives her a chance to demonstrate some tangible results early on.
“Empowerment and delegation have been the hallmark for us,” she adds. “We understand that leadership isn’t about doing everything on ourselves—it’s about enabling others to contribute their part. In this view, we have built up a culture of trust in our team members’ abilities and empowers them to make decisions. This is our way of showing confidence in their potential and their commitment to achieving collective success.”
The essence of AI lies in innovation, disruptions, and enhancing the end-user experience. Dr. Nidhi Arora says that in striking a balance between operational efficiency and customer satisfaction, R&D plays a significant role in every business. “We don’t directly jump in development.” Accepting the fact that the AI landscape is evolving rapidly and there is much ongoing innovation in AI around the world, they invest their time in research and development to build state-of-the-art models for clients. By implementing cutting-edge technology like AI, they offer powerful and efficient solutions to companies.
Considering most of their clients are from the non-IT industry, Dr Nidhi and her team try to break barriers for non-technical users by designing a user-friendly interface. “We put our feet in their shoes to understand their level of technology and prioritize the human-centric design and accessibility to ensure inclusivity for users with diverse technical skills.”
Many users don’t want to switch from the traditional systems but still show eagerness to adopt AI. For such clients, they develop AI solutions that integrate seamlessly into existing workflows without changing much in their conventional interfaces to make AI interaction natural and approachable.
The Crucial Aspects of Modern AI Ecosystem
As someone working for years in the AI domain, Dr. Nidhi Arora not only wants to contribute as a strategist but also wants to act as a bridge between technological possibilities and societal needs.
One of the ways of doing this is by upskilling the future workforce. She is doing her part by actively contributing to academia through workshops, seminars and training programs to equip the future workforce with the skills needed to thrive in an AI-driven future–teachers are known as the architects of the future. What’s more meaningful than training these architects on advance technology to indirectly impact society and improve lives. She also engages in Faculty Development Programs organized by universities to train teachers.
Dr. Nidhi is also associated with universities as a Ph.D. mentor to review the scholars’ research work and give them suggestions to make their work more society-oriented.
Advicon Solutions is
On A Path to Remarkable Success
They have done several noteworthy projects on Generative AI, AI Agents, Agentic AI, data analysis, video & image analytics and predictive analytics.
The company has immense experience in workflow automation. It is equipped with great knowledge of automation tools and has developed many automation solutions for clients integrating legacy CRMs, social media, and LLM models through APIs and webhooks.
Apart from that, Dr. Nidhi Arora and her team have expertise in cutting-edge Gen AI technology, which drove them to develop a SAAS-based solution that will redefine the way business professionals engage with their documents. By seamlessly integrating natural language understanding, intelligent search, and collaborative tools, it enhances data accessibility and usability. That idea behind the solution is to ensure that valuable information is readily available, structured, and explained to make quick decisions, increasing the business people’s productivity.
They have also developed a generalized tool for lead generation and analytics useful to service-based industries, which sends mass emails using any email APIs like Sendgrid, AWS, Azure, etc. – for example, the content of emails is generated by AI, which relieves marketers of drafting email content at different stages of lead generation and follow-up. It provides email analytics to help in sales decisions and support analytics through lead scoring.
Overcoming Obstacles
Becoming a leader in the AI industry, Advicon Solutions is also encountering its share of challenges. Dr. Nidhi says that AI is already revolutionizing global industries, but there is still a gap in AI adoption. Everyone is talking and listening about AI adoption around, but many business leaders are not ready yet.
This forms the biggest challenge. She meets many company CXOs, and most of them have the same concerns. They have heard about AI applications in their industry, but either they are not clear about the possible transformations that AI can bring to their company, improving efficiency and competitiveness, or they are afraid of technology adoption. For this reason, they need to be upgraded about the impact and implications of AI in their business. Dr. Nidhi utilizes community-based events as platforms to promote awareness among business leaders about the role of AI in their industry. For doing so, she has been part of some of the notable events, few of which are to be mentioned here.
- Nidhi has been a panel member at a colloquium organized by Prem Jain Memorial Trust on the Role of AI in addressing global sustainability challenges, from reducing energy consumption to creating smarter urban and industrial ecosystems.
- She spoke at the event organized by the FSAI Ahmedabad chapter on the role of artificial intelligence in fire, life safety, and security.
- She has been a panel member at the panel discussion on Artificial Intelligence, Digital Twinning & IoT: Impact on Construction Industry at the Climate Resilient Smart Buildings Conclave organized by FOCUS Delhi Chapter.
- She gave the keynote speech at a conference on Shaping the Future of Sustainability in Buildings, organized by the ISHRAE Jaipur Chapter.
- Nidhi has been a keynote speaker at the International Confluence on Decoding Decarbonization.
- She has been a panel member at the panel discussion on “Rapid Sustainable Growth, Why India Can and Must Follow this Path” organized by IIT Bombay.
Dr. Nidhi shares, “One of the common questions that I come across is whether AI is going to take away the jobs.” They need to understand that AI can be used to amplify human creativity and productivity by automating mundane tasks and unlocking new forms of innovation. AI has the potential to automate repetitive processes, freeing employees to focus on complex, strategic, and innovative tasks.
In a scenario that AI has reshaped industries globally, Dr. Nidhi Arora is playing
A Transformative Role in Shaping AI Innovation
by leveraging pivot, experiment, and research to explore new opportunities as they emerge.
No innovation can be sustained without having a clear vision. “It’s this point where we as AI practitioners can help understand, define and articulate a long-term vision for how AI should evolve and impact society to future innovators.” This vision can motivate them to align their efforts towards the societal goals. Hence, she loves to foster a culture of innovation in youngsters. In this view, she takes active mentorship in hackathons to encourage university students at an early stage to experiment with creativity to promote AI innovation. By engaging in such activities, she supports AI in workforce development to create a continuous pipeline of skilled innovators. At the same time, it’s important to advocate for the ethical implementation of AI systems development.
While developing AI systems, it’s vital to ensure that innovations minimize biases and drive fairness, transparency, and accountability. That’s where responsible AI comes in.
Another very important aspect is research. To be called AI developers or AI engineers who solve real-world problems focusing solely on theories, it’s necessary to create tangible and meaningful impact considering the technical advancements. This is possible only by accelerating cutting-edge AI research, leading to transformative breakthroughs. Dr. Nidhi Arora is also associated as an AI consultant with some fast-growing companies to develop and review their business models and strategize to help them stay relevant in the AI-driven world.
An Adept Advice
Businesses are a way for the Indian industry to pace up its economic potential and capacity. Here are some thoughtful suggestions from Dr. Nidhi for new companies entering the AI space to help steer their journey and maximize their impact:
- Prioritize usability, accessibility, and inclusivity to ensure your approach resonates with audiences.
- Collect feedback continuously and iterate based on real-world use cases.
- Simplify your solutions to make them easy for customers to adopt and integrate into their existing systems. Complexity doesn’t always equal success.
- Encourage innovation, curiosity, and collaboration within your organization.
- Stay informed about the latest AI research and global trends and never stop learning.
By combining vision, ethics, and adaptability with a passion for solving real-world challenges, new AI companies can pave their way to success.
Looking ahead, for Advicon Solutions, Dr. Nidhi says that as a company, they aspire to make
A Lasting Impact on the future
by addressing societal, environmental, and technological challenges.
Her short-term goal is to build trust and awareness among CXOs and decision-makers of companies across industries about the potential of AI while addressing their fears and misconceptions transparently. Adoption of AI in a company is better possible through a top-down approach.
By sharing the impacts of AI, Dr. Nidhi Arora aims to reduce scepticism among company leaders and allow widespread acceptance. Once business leaders start believing in meaningful collaboration between AI and human efforts, it becomes easy to implement AI solutions that complement human skills with machine precision to solve complex problems.
Additionally, instead of being called a leader in AI, Dr. Nidhi Arora would like to be known as a promoter of Ethical AI and champion of Sustainable AI. Hence, her vision is to empower societies through AI solutions that enhance quality of life by addressing global challenges in healthcare, education, and customer service.
On the other hand, it’s important not just to advocate sustainability but to promote it through your actions. “We are focused on creating AI tools that offer energy-efficient solutions by reducing the carbon footprint of training models and ensuring innovation aligns with environmental goals. We want to lead by example in designing AI solutions which are unbiased, transparent, fair, and aligned with societal values. As of now, we are also engaged in proactively addressing the ethical implications of AI deployment. However, we want to ensure that the algorithms that we develop are explainable and unbiased,” she concludes.