What One Entrepreneur Taught Me About Becoming AI-Native

“Successful AI implementation, for me, is not about how you reduce manpower, overheads or costs. It is about how you can delight more customers and accelerate growth.”

These were words of wisdom from Sonal Shah, the young entrepreneur and Founder #CEO of Valuecart Private Limited.

At my request, she patiently took me through a one-hour session on how she and her team have been deploying AI across their organisation.

Sonal’s story is fascinating.

She speaks with the passion of a leader who sees business performance as being deeply linked with individual creativity, learning and the willingness to improve.

What I found especially interesting was that she did not see business strategy, customer happiness, employee sensitivity and technology as opposing forces.

It was not “either-or”.
It was, as far as possible, “and”.

The journey started almost from scratch about 18 months ago, compelled and then inspired, by a business crisis that she resolved to overcome through AI. Now, just 1 1/2 years later, Valuecart is using AI natively across many parts of the business — dramatically improving speed of response and precision, improving customer visibility and access and enabling control and people development.

And the impact on growth and profitability is already beginning to show.

Some of my key takeaways from Sonal's session were:
Communicate the purpose and vision repeatedly
- Anticipate and address fears sensitively, especially “Will my job go?”
- Invest seriously in training and capability-building
- Create pace and momentum through weekly challenges and rewards
- Recognise that domain experts are often the best AI builders for their own domain
- Build AI-native business processes, not just AI tools around old processes
- Lead from the front

That last point struck me strongly. Sonal herself spent hours over weekends and during the week learning AI, using Claude Code, building her own virtual EA agent and experimenting hands-on.

But the most memorable story was about a junior member of her social media team, who is challenged in speech and hearing.

Sonal personally encouraged him to use AI. She explained why it mattered, both for the organisation and for his own future work. She ensured he was trained and supported.

Six months later, he had built AI-led social media systems that helped increase their following 20 times.

Not 20%.

20x!

AI made the organisation stronger. But it also made an individual more capable, more confident and more valuable.

I have no doubt that becoming AI-native in operations, while staying intensely human in relationships, will be key for organisations and individuals to grow.
The challenge, of course, is the HOW For many of us, including me, learning from aware, young leaders like Sonal is a great way to navigate that journey.

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #AINative #BusinessGrowth #CustomerExperience #EmployeeExperience #Leadership #DigitalTransformation #CustomerValue #Entrepreneurship #RedVent Akshay Shah