CUSTOMER’S DELIGHT: Customer-Centric Entrepreneurship with Chin Ma

Episode 4 - Chin Ma

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: Hello everyone. Welcome to our podcast Transformation with FBSPL Insurance Edition. Welcome to our podcast and, uh, this episode, we are thrilled to have Chin as our guest today as the founder and president of. CHRP Chin has over 18 years of experience in the insurance industry. During the past decade, he has played a pivotal role in his spearheading large scale digital and AI transformations for some of the industry's major players at Deloitte Digital. His expertise fans across strategy, operations, and product. When he's not working hard on building CHRP success, he loves to explore his creative. He enjoys spending time outdoors, playing on hikes and taking in the national beauty around him. Chin is also a big poodie and loves trying new restaurants and cuisines. We are excited to learn more about Chin's insights and experiences in the insurance industry and explore his diverse set of interests. Let's get started. Hi Chin. How are you?

Chin Ma: I'm good, KB. How are you doing, man?

Kuldeep Bhatnagar: Doing fantastic. Doing fantastic. It's a sunny day. We are meeting an episode. I'm all excited and here.

Chin Ma: I can't agree more. I think you and I both are on the northeast or semi northeast, near New York City in the tri-state area. So, uh, finally I think, uh, a little bit of spring iss rearing its head.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: Oh. Yeah.

Chin Ma: Always enjoy that.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: Fantastic. So let's start. Uh, so what inspired you to create CHRP technologies and what does the company do.

Chin Ma: Maybe I'll start with the second part first. Um, CHRP is an AI-enabled loss prevention platform. Um, it focuses on insurance companies, specifically home insurance companies. Um, and what we do is we conduct home inspections on behalf of home insurance companies, uh, utilize AI to analyze those inspection with the intent to achieve two things. Uh, one is to help home insurance companies reduce losses, which in effect, in insurance terms are claims, um, but also to help people, uh, maintain healthy homes. Um, if you think about all the important things in your life, your health, uh, your major assets like your car, we as Americans, you know, go to the dentist twice a year.

get an annual physical, uh, get a car checkup every year because we're required to do so. But, um, for the asset that is our home, um, which is likely the most expensive asset that anyone owns, uh, we don't do regular checkups of that home, right? And so we believe that with better insight about things that can disrupt your life, like uh, plumbing in your bathroom, that may go bust and cause you not to be able to use it and helping people with that problem and fix it. Those are the kinds of things that we believe we do, uh, which helps to provide people a health checkup for their home. Um, and more importantly, fix the things that co go bump in the night. Um, when it comes to why, you know, we decided to start the company about two years ago. Um, that was the hallmark of, of what excited us so much about the business idea. Um, we saw an immense. In the home insurance industry, meaning not a lot of home insurance companies deliberately utilized inspections to be able to identify things that could go wrong. Uh, they then don't necessarily prevent those claims from happening. Um, and when we launched the business, you know, we thought that, boy, if it was just for home insurance companies to save money, it would be a pretty poor way to go about. We all know as home insurance buyers, or for those of you that do have homes that have bought insurance, your relationship with your insurance company isn't that great. Um, there's a lot of wonderful commercials and marketing about the relationship with the insurance companies, but not a lot of them other than engaging you. When you buy the insurance, when you renew in the insurance, or when you're filing a claim, deliver a wonderful experience. . And so our question was really how could we intersect with insurance companies to help people better understand what's going on in their home and help that them maintain healthy homes? Um, and once we kind of realized that, wow, we could save insurance companies a ton of money, but more [00:05:00] importantly we can help people better know and understand what's going on in their home, um, we realized that we. And all it took was for us to decide to go and build the business, to quit our jobs and all those wonderful things that I'm sure other entrepreneurs like myself had to go through. Um, but that's what excited us most about the business and that's what caused us to start it.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: Wow. Amazing. Amazing. And, uh, I'm, I'm sure you, you might have, uh, with none of this, but what step apart from the other tech companies in the market?

Chin Ma: Good question. Um, words like low-code, no-code ai, whether if it's generative AI or chat e p t, um, or cloud or digital native or what have you, are all really important buzzwords that I'm sure many of the listeners of this podcast have heard over the course of the last 10 20. . Um, I think when you look at it, a lot of companies take those problems, um, or, or take those words and they say, wow, this is a really wonderful hammer that we can use to hammer any kind of nail that we can't. Um, I think not a lot of it, I think not a lot of technology companies. Actually solve for the nails first. I'll give you an example, right? W we never, when we started, we never sought technology first. Technology was more of a solution to a problem. Um, we actually worked to identify the problems and proved that if we solved those problems, it would. A meaningful impact to achieve the objectives that I just mentioned, right? How do we help insurance companies, uh, prevent claims and thus saving a ton of money? And how do we help homeowners better understand their homes so they can maintain healthy homes? Um, and so we worked really hard putting together an m MVP that was non-technology oriented to be able to drive all of our use cases. That were meaningful to home insurance companies today in 2017. And through that experience, our aha moment around the technology side came in 2020. Uh, we realized that utilization of computer vision was the perfect chassis or computer vision. AI was the perfect chassis, uh, to be able to solve these problems at scale. And so if I boil it down, What makes us different. Um, we solved for the nails first and then we found the right hammer, right, to solve it.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: That's, that's a fantastic analogy. Nail and hammer. And I, I see a lot of tech companies these days, they come up with a product first and then they try to identify a, a problem to solve with that. And that's why most of those startups, they failed. So I, I, I'm, I'm glad you are already on the right path and to success.

Chin Ma: Yeah. I, I, you know, I agree. Right. And I think, you know, you see indications of that a lot in the industry. You know, wow. We have a low-code, no-code platform that can do anything. Right, right. Imagine what AI could do for your business. Um, imagine if you just applied automation to, you know, processes, period. Right. , a lot of tech companies approach that problem with, okay, so, you know, tell us what you want us to do with that. Those are the nails, right? And so the disconnect between technology as the hammer and problems as the nails oftentimes is completely unhinged. Meaning, you know, you look at that problem. Why are you the technology company not helping me solve for the nails? You should come to me with, Hey, I got a great solution to solve all of these prospective problems, and I know exactly the way it's supposed to be solved. Our out-of-the-box solution solves these problems and I think, you know, if technologists can be more. About engaging with their clients. And we're in B2B software as a service, right? Um, you know, we typically don't just say, Hey, what do you want? We say, this is what you should have. Um, [00:10:00] I think that makes for a much, much better value added conversation because it leans directly into, well, what businesses care about, right? So we sell B2B and so, You need to go to your clients and say, Hey, this solution will drive these kinds of benefits. And let me explain to you why as opposed to this solution could drive all sorts of benefits. Tell me what you wanna solve with it. It's a very fundamentally different way of approaching business, in our opinion.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: Can you walk us through some of the biggest challenges you faced while building and growing CHRP technologies?

Chin Ma: I think. I feel like, I feel like I could literally just go and say, lemme just, uh, record my last 24 hours. I think as an entrepreneur, um, you encounter challenges every single day. Yeah. Um, what is today? It's the 17th of 2023. And so the last week as an example, um, It's been a big problem. , for those of you that are listening months from now, or years from now, um, there was major news in the last week where SVP, uh, Silicon Valley Bank, you know, first Republic and a bunch of other regional banks, um, um, add some liquidity issues and those liquidity issues are so systemic that, um, there was contagion in fear that banks were going to. and as an entrepreneur. Right. Okay, great. Like, how does that impact my business? Well, if you can't access cash, then you can't pay vendors. You can't make payroll. Um, and so we'd had, we had to make some pretty, uh, sizable decisions over the course of the last week to be able to make sure that we are well hedged against those types of problems. So that's just last week. You know, I would say another example is, um, when I personally had to make the decision to, to, to, to go into entrepreneurship, my background, um, was in management consulting. Looked for a top three management consultancy, uh, doing, um, digital transformation operation strategy, and pure go-to-market strategy for. Insurance companies and other financial services firms, I was paid a lot of money to do a thing that I really loved and I invested well over a decade, um, in that job. Um, making the decision to say, Hey, I'm going to choose entrepreneurship where very practical things, right? Like, oof, I'm not going to see a paycheck come into my bank account every two. My gosh, I'm not gonna have the resources that I used to have, right? To be able to call any expert in the world to say, Hey, I have a problem. Can you help me think through this? Or even calling prospective clients and having them pick up the phone because they know that I'm from that company. Um, all of these things were swirling through my mind and, uh, it took me a while. It took me a while to make the decision. To jump into entrepreneurship, to jump into launching CHRP and focus on it deliberately as my day-to-day job, as an example. Um, and so I would say, you know, those two examples, right? One that happened really recently, and one, um, even at the commencement of my journey, um, were, were, were definitely two thin things that I, I would, you know, I would say are two challenges. We could literally have a conversation for five hours to talk to you about all the challenges over the course of time. But yeah, I know we don't have, those would be top Right.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar:So we talked about the challenges, uh, but what kind of advice you can, you know, offer to aspiring entrepreneurs who are looking to start their own tech companies or any business?

Chin Ma: Yeah, listen, I think, um, I think hindsight is 2020 and. As a senior leader yourself, you've experienced a lot of challenges and boy, the storytelling now in hindsight, um, everything sounds so great, right? Um, if I go back to my first challenge of jumping ship and how long it took me, um, the biggest thing that I would tell every single entrepreneur is, you know, what you have. Um, if, if you deal with, um, a high variation in your day-to-day activities, well, um, and you have a distinct vision and value proposition in what you want to accomplish, take risks, take risks often and jump. I think those are the things that I would probably say I, I, I look at, you know, my own career and the joy that I get every single day as an entrepreneur. Um, I would say I've gotten more joy in two years than I ever did working for someone else. Um, but I've also never worked harder and it's fun. It's fun building something that you're really passionate about. It's fun building it with a team that you are invested in and that you brought in. It's fun making the mistakes and seeing, you know, your baby being conceived to when it's moving into, at least for us, a adolescence. And so, um, if you have those three things, an idea, grit and the ability to deal with a high variation of stuff throughout your day-to-day, month to month, week to week. Then I say, man, just go for it. Um, you're oftentimes gonna find a lot of positivity, whether if it's just personal and professional competency development, or you know, hopefully you have something amazing and it grows into something very, very meaningful in our market. Right.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: So ultimately, most of days you will have been very tired after the day end, but that, that supply of tiredness, that will give you the most satisfied sleep because you know this is your own pain. You are, you're shaping up something and it's going to be big. And, and, and when you, when you go to bed, having a feeling of satisfaction, new contentment, that's the best thing.

Chin Ma: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, and I think it, you know, I mean, listen as, as pretty and beautiful as you can make it sound, um, you know, you're also pushing a gigantic rock up a mountain that looks and feels like Mount Everest. Right? Right. Um, but I'll tell you man, when you push that rock to base camp one, the amount of joy that you get there, it's. Unbelievable exhilaration. Yeah. You get it up to base camp two and then you're just like, what? You know, like we did this, I did this. I did it with my team. Right? When you're able to make the call, meaning it's your business, so you can say, you know what, we are going to do this. The best feeling in the world. Right.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: You talk about team, and I'm sure, uh, while, you know, running a business, you, you got to work with a lot of partners, vendors for your business. So how do you evaluate their capabilities and trustworthiness? Because I, I, I'm sure that the aspects, while partnering up with someone.

Chin Ma: The most important thing is the relat. Um, capabilities are important, right? I mean, we, we do, uh, we have a lot of software technology and we work with software technology vendors that are experts in certain things like, you know, partner softwares that we might want to integrate with and so on and so forth. And, you know, our guiding principle has always been, do we. And can we trust these people? Mistakes and challenges and maturity of capability and competency can generally all be mitigated by that alone, but what makes a relationship is what happens when the proverbial S H I t hits the fan. And what you realize is the people that you have great relationships with and trust with, um, that are possibly introduced to you by someone who you really deeply trust. Those are typically the people and the organizations that will navigate through trial and tribulation much better with you than everybody is successful during good times. But the partners that we've chosen, we know that in the next five years that isn't the 2010s where growth and cheap capital is prevalent. We know that these partners are gonna be our partners through these, this next decade, which will be inherently, ne more challenging than the previous decade. And so, um, you know, those are the things that we look at. Um, and you know, we believe that relationship and trust. That's at the top of our selection criteria and who we choose to work and with also belief in trust.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: Fantastic. You know, as a company at FBSPL, we, we have developed everything around our customers. So do you also believe in customer centricity is, uh, the ultimate competitive advantage?

Chin Ma: Yeah, I mean, I think it goes without saying, um, if you don't treat your customers well and, you know, I think there's various levels, right? Um, even when we say what the value proposition of CHRP is and against, you know, compared to other technology companies, you know, we lead with advice first, not just, Hey, here's our software and it's really. um, we seek to delight. Um, meaning, you know what I tell you that I will deliver for you, but every once in a while, and I mean every once in a while, meaning frequently once a month, every other month, you're delighting your customer and they're saying, wait a minute, you guys do that. That's so. I think that elevating your game in terms of customer centricity, at least for us, is always at the top of the food chain, right? Um, it's oftentimes easy to say, oh man, we're gonna be your best vendor, best partner. I mean, you know, you've, you pick up every single, if you picked up every single. Marketing call or answered every single marketing email. I don't think any human being that sells you their services, whether if it's lead gen business process outsourcing or software technology is gonna sit there and say, yeah, our customer service sucks. Right. Okay. But I think it's demonstrated through custom customer centricity. It's demonstrated through. A rigorous focus around how we can help you grow, save money, and it's demonstrated through deliberate delight. Um, and so, I mean, short answer to your question is hell yes, . Um, long-winded answer is I think the variation in Customer centricity is quite vast because no one will say, I do it badly. . And so for us, we, we typically focus on those kinds of things as our manifestation of customer centricity.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: Fantastic. In, you know, with this case that how hard it can be, you know, being an entrepreneur and most of your days would be hectic.

Chin Ma: KB, would you mind and just repeat that, just cut out on a couple of words when you asked the question?

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: Sure. I, I, I was asking, you know, uh, it can be, uh, hiring, sometimes it can be long days. Said, how do you unwind after a long day at work? Play tennis?

Chin Ma: Thank you.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: Um, I love, I mean, goodness gracious man, why I think we're the greatest age of entertainment content. Known to man. So my Spotify app, Netflix, hbo, O Max, Hulu, Disney Plus. Um, my favorite show and I re-watched it, um, recently. One, one of my favorite shows, and I re-watched it recently, um, is Silicon Valley on HBO. Extraordinary there, I watched it probably in 2017 prior to being a tech entre. and I recently re-watched it, uh, with my fiance and, um, it was extraordinary. It's like, oh my God, it's so funny, but it's also relatable indicative of the stuff that I went through over the course of my two year journey. So it kind of felt differently for me. Uh, but yeah, um, you know, workout, tennis, all that kind of stuff. Watch some tv as you mention. You know, hikes and restaurants and all that good stuff. But, um, you know, you have to maintain a balance, man. Work and life are heavily intertwined when you're an entrepreneur and you gotta make time for yourself.

Kuldeep “KB” Bhatnagar: Fantastic. And, uh, one last item on my list. So as you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?

Chin Ma: Take the risk. Welcome. Yeah. Um, I have over the course of the decade plus that I spent at, you know, yeah. One large company. There have been numerous. Really great ideas. Um, this was the first one that I said, you know what, I'm jumping ship. Um, but I think I could have done it sooner. Um, I think that might inherit personal risk. Averseness, or the way I evaluate risk is probably the right way to describe it. Um, has caused me to say, you know, Maybe not this time one too many times. And, um, when I compare my joy now, um, when I evaluate my day-to-day and the challenges I face, but the good things, the bad things, and how it, um, causes me to feel, I, I can never look. You know, I, I mean, it would be very difficult for me to say, yeah, I'd be happy to work for someone else in a big corporation where I have to deal with politics and all that kind of stuff. But if I'd had a time machine and told myself, you know, at 30 or 27 or 28 or what have you, yeah, like, do it, man. Take the risk. It'll be worth it and you're gonna be much happier. Um, I think is what I would say.

Kuldeep 'KB' Bhatnagar: Fantastic. So all you out listening to this, do it sooner than later. All right. Well, thank you so much and we enjoyed our conversations and I, I, I'm, I'm sure our audience would like it too. And, uh, as soon as it's out, I'll, I'll share the first copy with you. Thank you so much for your time. And, uh, everyone stay tuned to our podcast Business Transformation with FBSPL Insurance. Thanks so much.