When Rajat Mishra was growing up in India, he had a stutter. Fast forward to this week, that young child’s company is the recipient of the Sammy Award, an industry recognization that acknowledges marketing and sales companies redefining how businesses connect with customers.
Rajat’s success didn’t happen overnight. However the seeds of his future goals were planted in his early years.
What the future founder realized back then–and what many have realized since in the corporate world– is that life can be hard if one doesn’t communicate well.
Rajat went on get his MBA at Wharton, considered by many the world’s number one business school. He later quit his six-figure job as senior vice president at Cisco to found Prezent, in pursuit of his vision to democratize business communications.
The Business Intelligence Group was founded with the mission of recognizing superior performance in the business world. Unlike other industry award programs, it is business executives—those with experience and knowledge—who judge the programs. The organization’s proprietary scoring system selectively measures performance across business domains and rewards companies whose achievements stand apart.
This week the organization announced Prezent, an intelligent platform for business communication and presentation productivity needs, as the recipient of its Product of the Year Award for Experiential/Event Marketing.
Prezent is an intelligent platform that automates four specific business communication needs. The company’s solutions help businesses to make business communication great, including by understanding one’s audience, structuring business storylines, providing insight into the industry, and leveraging its AI agent, ASTRID, to guide individuals through this process.
The 2024 Sales and Marketing Technology Awards, aka the Sammys
Business Intelligence Group was started with the aim of recognizing true talent and superior performance in the enterprise.
Its Sales and Marketing Technology Awards, popularly referred to as the Sammys, have become one of the industry’s leading markers for startups and enterprises.
This year’s awards named Prezent among others as its Product of the Year. Melanie Hamilton, Senior Vice President, Head of Enterprise Sales, Effectv, was honored as its Individual of the Year.
6sense was named one of its Organizations of the Year.
The 2024 judging panel also recognized the following organizations for their outstanding achievements and was proud to award them the designation of “Finalist”: Madison Logic’s ABM Connected TV, HG Insights’ Functional Area Intelligence (FAI), Mintegral, Netcore Cloud, Scorpion’s Connect with AI Chat, and Super Benji.
MarComm in the Years ahead
When Rajat and his wife Deepti started Prezent in 2021, they began with the idea of using AI from the get-go — this was revolutionary at the time, as the technology was still in its early infancy.
They decided to leverage the emerging technology to first focus on hyper personalization based on communication styles. Then, following the launch of ChatGPT, they began to build their own AI, ASTRID AI, to better serve their customers.
Ultimately, the entrepreneurs are looking to democratize business communication. Historically, Mishra believes, middle management has struggled with assistance in this area.
In the future we should expect to see AI embraced, in the industry and also at the Sammy Awards.
This article includes a client of an Espacio portfolio company
