G'day Melbourne
Pontem Analytics has crossed the Nullarbor!
The Big Announcement
Riding the wave of rapid global growth and success with Pontem Analytics’s first Australian office in Perth, I am extremely excited to lay the foundation for the company on the East Coast with a base in Melbourne. Pontem’s mission is to bridge the gap between data and discipline.
Just Another Data Analytics Provider?
A resounding NO! Pontem Analytics comprises of a global team that bring deep domain expertise across our verticals (Energy, Industrial, Minerals, Health, and Performance) coupled with data science. You can read more about us with some case studies on our website https://www.pontemanalytics.com/.
Pontem provides vendor-agnostic, data-driven, AI-powered solutions customised to our clients’ needs, demonstrating tangible value in a phased approach to generate stakeholder buy-in.
If any of the below captures the theme of a problem your organisation and teams may be facing, I would like to catch up with you asap to see how we may be able to assist by drawing on our global expertise:
“We are constantly dealing with multiple competing factors that define success and need an optimised solution”. For example, an energy company trying to find an optimal operating point with competing objectives of increasing production revenue, reducing operating/maintenance costs, reducing emissions (and associated financial liabilities e.g. with Safeguard Mechanism), and improving safety outcomes.
“Our Operations team finds it overwhelming to deal with repetitive manual tasks as our distributed asset base grows”. For example, a small team of operators at a gas distribution company with its network expanding and integrating variable gas supplies, including future hydrogen blends, that cannot manually optimise pressure setpoints across the thousands of district regulators in real-time, hence creating a significant operational risk of pressure excursions outside the regulated safety bands and potential non-compliance penalties.
“We have large amounts of data collected across our different business units but are unable to optimally use it to solve our problems in real time”. For example, a utility provider’s billing department with access to granular smart meter data sees unusual, continuous water usage at a few properties, while the operations team sees a subtle, sustained increase in overnight flow rates from the network sensors in that same district - however the business misses the combined signal pointing to the root cause being an underground leak costing millions of barrels of water lost and leading to expensive repairs.
“Traditional approaches and models used by are unable to keep up with the complex new data and dynamic conditions” For example, a utility-scale solar and battery facility consistently failing to maximise revenue from the co-located units since its day-ahead bidding strategies and rule-based dispatch models cannot react fast enough to the combined volatility of 5-minute price signals and real-time solar intermittency, forcing it to miss the most profitable energy arbitrage and ancillary service opportunities.
If you would like to catch up and hear about Pontem, please get in touch at saurav.jha@pontemanalytics.com
Why Melbourne?
Melbourne is a hub of mature, data-intensive industries - spanning energy, utilities, health, and beyond, and is at the center of recent trends driving rapid innovation.
Let’s take an example from our Energy vertical in relation to gas infrastructure.
Pontem Analytics recently attended the AEP Conference—the largest gathering of energy industry experts in the Southern Hemisphere—where one of the key discussion points was Victoria’s growing challenge in securing a reliable energy supply. Recent shifts in federal and state energy policy have repositioned gas as the primary transition fuel for the coming decades.
With Pontem Analytics’ long-standing experience and domain expertise from supporting natural gas and renewable gas infrastructure development and optimisation projects around the world, we are excited to establish ourselves in Melbourne and use our expertise to help solve Victoria’s energy challenges.
A Bit About Me and My Journey (with Pivots) Till Date
My Constants and Drivers
Singing and playing cricket have been the two constants in my life. In music, the styles and genres I have experimented with have evolved over time, largely driven by the individual strengths of the band members I have collaborated with. In cricket, the thrill of getting wickets in a well planned bowling partnership that forces the batsman to make an error still keeps bringing me back to the field. I am a strong believer that great teams perform great things only when the individual strengths of their constituents are most effectively harnessed by true leadership. I have followed my instinct to work with teams that thrive in challenge and know how to celebrate each other’s successes and collectively learn from failures along the way.
A New Frontier
Growing up in small towns across India, getting into engineering was my ticket to explore the world (I still argue with my wife that I would rather be doing music had I grown up in the developed world!). After having the time of my life in IIT Bombay studying chemical engineering, my first job took me to Abu Dhabi to work in Tebodin’s process engineering department where I worked on a number of major capital oil and gas development projects. I met Abhinav there when he joined my team a couple of years later. Apart from running simulations together, I managed to pull him into playing some music and cricket with me (snapshots below). Even though the music didn’t turn out too bad, the cricket team was never going to be a great team since we never learned from our mistakes - nevertheless we had a lot of fun and often came out as tournament runners-up!
The Home of Quokkas
My next chapter took me to Perth to dive into the world of flow assurance working with MSi Kenny (now integrated within Wood after a string of name changes). The LNG market was booming in early 2012 and the opportunity to join an ambitious team was motivating enough for me to jump on a flight to a place I knew almost nothing about (other than the well renowned pacy and bouncy WACA pitch of course). I got married to Paridhi (pictured below, the non-furry one in shades) shortly after moving to Perth. This is where I met Ian, Conor and Asher (Conor looks a bit different now for sure, also don’t miss Ian in the top right in the picture below). Abhinav made a guest appearance in Perth too before deciding to move to rainy London. I got to work on some challenging projects with all of them, got some great secondment experience, and shared a lot of fun times including on trips for conferences in Bali and Marrakech. I got to continue with my music (roping in band members from across the globe) and cricket (dealing with the additional swing from the sea breeze). I eventually fell in love with the Australian way of life and its sense of humour (and probably also with Rottnest island’s quokkas, one pictured below) and decided to take on Australian citizenship. The banter about which cricket team I support between India and Australia continues till date (a no brainer for someone who’s grown up relishing this great rivalry only comparable to the Ashes - Asher may still not be convinced).
The City that has Everything
An awesome opportunity in data science for my better half took us to Melbourne next, a vibrant city renowned for its culture and sports (and its notoriously unpredictable weather); a city we completely fell in love with and have lived here ever since. I always wanted to do an MBA from Melbourne Business School and finally took the plunge during Covid. This was extremely rewarding and helped me pivot my career first towards management consulting (split between my time doing business transformation at EY and in energy transition at KPMG) and then working in a new-energy start-up with a fellow MBA alumnus (this included the opportunity to work on one of the largest green hydrogen development projects). These opportunities to work with people with career experiences very different to mine across different domains and industries provided a platform to reassess my true strengths as a future-oriented solutions-driven person and helped me with developing a whole new perspective on how to influence decision making with data-driven insights to generate real value. My life’s biggest gift also arrived in this city in the form of Rhea while navigating this journey, now nearing her 4th birthday! The constants have remained - I have loved playing my cricket here and been working on my music (recently formed another new band too!).
To New Challenges
I tend to gravitate towards people who are self-driven, future-focused, and excited about what they are doing next - which brings me to Pontem Analytics, all starting with a casual conversation over a couple of cold beverages on a pleasant evening in Melbourne that ended in a shower in true Melbourne fashion and had Conor running for cover. Having enjoyed reading a number of these Substacks over the last few months, it is a good feeling to write this first one (of many to come!) of my own as I join forces to help expand the reach of the awesome work this very talented group has been delivering globally. Quite honestly, this does not feel like a new company to me having worked with a number of people in the past, ones I trust and know have that shared innate drive to excel. With an ambitious leadership team fully backing this talented group, it is time to stay excited and get working to help accelerate bridging the gap between data and discipline across different industries and verticals! It is time for me to improvise on the learnings till date and perform a new genre.
I will look forward to hearing from you at saurav.jha@pontemanalytics.com