Earlier this year Thrive Global AI announced the launch of its AI-based enterprise expansion platform, Vector AI, aimed at assisting brands and contemporary entrepreneurs in coping with the growing intricacy of global digital commerce. The platform that employs AI, real-time data, and performance intelligence offers a solution to one of the most significant problems e-commerce businesses are experiencing presently, thus allowing them to make faster, smarter, and more effective growth decisions.
Historically, the growth of e-commerce has been the result of a complex mix of tools and agency-led execution. Advertising, analytics, content creation, and performance tracking are frequently handled by different teams, which leads to scattered data, delayed insights, and operational inefficiencies. Thrive Global AI envisions a new approach by uniting performance data, consumer behavior insights, and growth opportunities in a single, integrated AI-powered ecosystem.
Medianews4u.com caught up with Priyanka Aeron, Co-Founder, Thrive Global AI
Q. There are a lot of AI startups being launched leading to some concerns that a bubble is forming. That could lead to a correction. What are your views on this?
Considering AI enabled work streams are a relatively new and evolving technological innovation, the current phase requires a number of startups to create solutions across multiple use cases. Hence, what may look like a bubble for outsiders is just a natural progression for the industry.
This phase reflects a natural compression that large-scale technological shifts, say, cloud or mobile, have gone through in the past. While some of these startups may go away, the process accelerates ecosystem maturation. Only companies that embed AI into the very core of business value addition will determine successful adoption of AI. The corrections in the market will weed out the shallow solutions, and practical, ROI-driven AI will be emphasized.
Here at Thrive Global AI, we believe in creating a global AI powered platform where brands that can ensure high ROI of 300%+ in their outcomes and thereby we are very focussed to scale sustainably through measurable value addition.
Q. There is also a point of view that India is not innovating on AI on a large scale. Most AI being used by Indian consumers and companies are foreign companies like Gemini, OpenAI, Meta AI. What are your views on this?
With global players like OpenAI, Meta AI, and Gemini at the forefront, India’s AI market is growing significantly, valued at $9.5 billion in 2024 and projected to reach $130.63 billion by 2032. India is fast becoming a hub for applied AI as thousands of startups are focused on enterprise-centric solutions.
Taking Thrive Global as an example, we created our own version of financial analytics LLMs customized to our client requirements based on leading foundational models. So today, our clients can adopt these high end models without paying the high compute cost associated.
India’s innovation is also strongest at scaling adoption, building fitted vertical solutions, and strengthening its AI ecosystem. The country is creating one of the fastest-growing pools of AI talent globally. This would mean sustainable growth and pragmatic applications across industries.
Q. What is the market gap in the AI space that led to the formation of Thrive Global?
Thrive Global AI is founded by the founders who led large global brands and tech companies in the US. Banking on the experience, Thrive Global AI was founded upon a gap: that of global brands need AI tools and deep data intelligence to run multi-country and multi-platform businesses in an efficient and high ROI manner.
We observed that siloed AI initiatives in Global Brands came with lots of data but with limited actionable insights, and the adoption of technology was without any measurable ROI. Thrive Global AI bridges this gap by embedding AI into core workflows, unifying data, and delivering decision intelligence. Instead of offering standalone solutions, the company focusses on integrating intelligence into brand growth, analytics, and enterprise decision systems, thus really allowing businesses to convert data into measurable growth outcomes routinely.
Most of our clients have grown their global brand businesses between 100% and 300% in an year post adoption of our AI driven brand management platform.
Q. Most businesses are still making marketing decisions using fragmented data and intuition. How does the company address this gap?
The greatest challenge when you run a global brand is multitude of data available and inconsistencies across data systems. In simple terms it is hard to integrate data coming from different platforms, ERP solutions and Geographies.
Hence, many global businesses are forced to use fragmented data as well as intuition in order to make marketing decisions. This makes the entire process time-consuming, resource intensive and prone to errors.
However, Thrive Global AI unifies fragmented data sources, creating a single source of truth, which is then leveraged to create a data intelligence layer to obtain instantaneous business analytics using AI.
While most solutions provide analytics as a one-sided approach, the use of decision intelligence makes it possible for businesses to make decisions, thus moving beyond assumptions as well as hindsight. This makes it possible for businesses to enhance their ROI.
Q. Could you talk about the work that Thrive Global is doing with clients across India, the UK, UAE, and the US?
Thrive Global AI collaborates with leading global brands in both online and offline commerce across India, the UK, the EU, the UAE, and the US. Today more that 95% of our revenue is from clients based outside of India thereby validating a global appeal of our products.
Markets aside, client pain points remain fairly the same: lack of coherent data, dispersed growth efforts, increasing costs of acquisition, and decreasing visibility into performance drivers. Our global teams’ endeavor to stitch the data together into one coherent view and then layer intelligence on top to drive decisions.
This allows its clients to gain crystal clarity across operations, scale more efficiently, and make smarter, data-backed decisions across channels and geographies by integrating AI into their workflows.
Q. What goals have been set for 2026 and what is the gameplan to get there?
By 2026, Thrive Global AI hopes to scale impact as opposed to pure scaling by deepening partnerships with e-commerce and digital-first brands while scaling adoption of its AI-native platforms such as Beacon.IQ and Vector.AI. Our platform currently handles more that $250M in global transaction volume annually and we intend to double our transactions in 2026.
From R&D standpoint, there will be much greater embedding of AI into core workflows, unifying data, and improving decision-making right across marketing, growth, and operations.
The strategy will be to strengthen services in global brand management to enable clients to move faster, make confident decisions, and scale with consistency. The goal is nothing less than the conversion of intelligence into sustainable competitive advantage.
Q. Is the media and entertainment sector like OTT platforms, media agencies an important client base?
Yes, the companies in the media and entertainment sector that crave data driven decisioning tools are our focus. Thrive Global prioritises media and entertainment vertical, OTT platforms, broadcasters, publishers, and media agencies for AI-driven solutions.
These businesses rely on AI to drive content discovery, audience segmentation, performance forecasting, and media spend optimisation across an increasingly fragmented ecosystem.
Thrive Global AI unifies audience, content, and performance data into a single, intelligent decision layer, transforming AI from a backend tool into a practical, business-facing capability.
This enables faster, clearer decision-making across marketing, distribution, and growth initiatives. By improving reach, engagement, and monetisation, the platform helps clients leverage AI to drive measurable performance and sustainable growth.
Q. In scaling rapidly what is the big challenge going to be? Is lack of talent an issue?
Businesses today are evolving fast and with that the technology solution are also evolving in an unprecedented way. The days of cookie-cutter solutions for businesses are now behind us. The first challenge is truly understanding client’s businesses, pain points, and value creation metrics to design a custom solution that is high value add for them. Executing quickly while ensuring the quality of delivery is now table stakes.
India has one of the largest and fastest-growing pool of human capital in AI, data science and engineering. The first challenge is how to structure adequately train and leverage available human capital.
At Thrive Global AI through our internal development modules, we are overcoming some of the common talent problems facing the ecosystem. In 2026 we intend to hire and train more than 100 AI deep tech specialists to ensure leading edge in our domain.
Q. Why is AI-first growth intelligence emerging as a new startup category?
AI-First Growth Intelligence is born out of the need for business analytics and marketing to keep pace with the pace and enormity at which business is conducted today. No longer is it sufficient to present business managers and leaders with static data and analytics; instead, businesses and marketers need to present insights, intelligence and predictions to them.
AI-First is a way to insert business intelligence directly into business action and reaction, and accordingly, a growing data-driven business is aided and aided by growth intelligence.
Q. In terms of the shift from service-led marketing to AI-native growth infrastructure what trends are being seen?
Traditional marketing has grown from “service infrastructure” to “AI-infrastructure,” promoting the automation of marketing processes such as reporting, segmentation, and optimisation to deliver faster operations at scale. Expect marketing decisions to be informed by predictive information rather than hunches in the future.
There is a new focus on the capacity of AI-native systems to knit together disparate data points from different touchpoints to deliver evermore relevant marketing intelligence and strategy that enables businesses to make plans with confidence. There was a time when marketing was informally defined as an ever-changing science.
Q. Is marketing decision-making in an AI-driven economy becoming more creative in sectors like BFSI?
Certainly, AI is helping boost the level of creativity in sectors like BFSI through the generation of predictive results regarding customer acquisition, customer retention, fraud management, spend propensity, credit management etc. AI enabled solutions can plan very relevant campaigns, communicate personally, monitor relentlessly, and time actions them precisely.
AI is helping eliminate uncertainty, thereby enabling a focus on precise creativeness, rather than relying on optimization for storytellers in the BFSI sector. BFSI is seeing a rise in responsible creativeness, protecting whilst innovating through results like AI.
Q. How is AI redefining Search through consumers using LLMs for product discovery in categories like travel?
AI, especially through LLMs, is revolutionising product discovery by way of conversational and contextually aware interactions. The consumers enjoy personalised recommendations based on preference and intent, way beyond the keyword-based search of the past. For brands, visibility has become contingent upon AI-driven discovery, just like SEO or paid listings.
With AI, the connection of intent, behavior, and offering happens in real time, hence making recommendations more accurate and actionable. This shift fundamentally changes how consumers explore and select products, enabling brands to engage with audiences in highly personalized and timely ways.
Q. What does it take to build AI-native platforms alongside services?
For the building of AI-native platforms, such as Beacon.iq and Vector.ai, to take place, integration of technology, data, and business strategy must occur within the workflows of the clients. Deep understanding of business models, value chains, inflection points, critical infrastructure and data systems are key to success of the platforms.
This is where Thrive Global focuses on piecing together fragmented data, validating models, and making sure insights can be acted upon intuitively. Outputs from AI need to seamlessly fit into decision-making, scaling effortlessly across markets without specialised expertise.
Thrive Global AI interlinks technology through service-led guidance in achieving effective adoption of the platforms by clients and translating insights into measurable growth. In this way, it ensures intelligence is embedded in every layer of execution, enabling confident outcome-driven decisions.
