I still remember the first time AI surprised me—not with a sci-fi moment or a robot doing backflips.
No, it was way more subtle… and much cheaper.
We were in one of those classic inventory meetings. Everyone had coffee, spreadsheets were open, and our Home Décor category was underperforming. Sales had dropped two weeks in a row.
Cue the panic:
“Maybe the new vendor isn’t working.”
“Maybe our pricing is off.”
“Maybe people just hate vases now.”
Then someone ran the numbers through a small, scrappy AI model we had. Nothing fancy. No dashboards with 3D graphs. Just a pattern detector that quietly did its job.
And what it found?
The exact same dip had happened… the same week… last year.
And the year before that.
And the year before that.
Turns out, people don’t buy wall art right after Diwali. Apparently, after five days of fireworks, family, and food, they’d rather nap than redecorate.
We were this close to overhauling pricing, rearranging vendor contracts, and triggering the great Q4 panic of the year—until the AI quietly flagged what our memory didn’t.
No drama. No dashboards. Just a silent line of code that knew our patterns better than we did.
It didn’t try to impress.
It just did its job.
Perfectly.
We Don’t Need a Genius. We Need a Second Brain (That Doesn’t Complain).
Since then, I’ve spotted these “AI wins” more often.
A chatbot flagged a spike in returns.
We assumed a product defect.
Turned out? One barcode printer was misaligned. One. Warehouse-wide chaos, solved by a bot that never even asked for a promotion.
Another time, an AI tool helped a junior team member write an escalation email so good… even I checked twice to see who wrote it.
If AI ever learns sarcasm, I might be out of a job.
Well, it did—and somehow, my sarcasm with friends and family has only gotten sharper. My kids now roll their eyes faster.
Or the time our demand forecast adjusted itself after a competitor’s price drop—before anyone on our team even noticed.
(Side note: the AI now has unofficial “employee of the month” status. No plaque though. Yet.)
It Doesn’t Replace Us. It Just Makes Us Look More Genius Than We Are.
Here’s the truth: AI isn’t here to take over.
It’s here to make you pause, squint at the screen, and say, “Huh. That’s actually helpful.”
It doesn’t overrule your gut—it just tells you when your gut forgot to check last year’s calendar.
And as a CEO, I’ve come to appreciate that.
Because the cost of bad instinct?
Wasted time. Unnecessary fixes. Unhappy teams.
The cost of good AI?
A lot less… and no tantrums.
Final Thought
The first time AI surprised me, it didn’t feel like a revolution.
It felt like someone whispering, “Hey, maybe don’t panic this time.”
And that whisper? It saved us hours of overthinking, several emotional decisions, and probably one awkward vendor call.
So now, I pay attention to those quiet nudges.
Because sometimes, the smartest insight in the room… isn’t a person.
Regards,
Rupesh
