Carvana Co. CVNA is slated to release third-quarter 2023 results on Nov 2, after the closing bell. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the to-be-reported quarter’s loss per share and revenues is pegged at 85 cents and $2.

Carvana (CVNA) to Report Q3 Earnings: What's in the Offing?

Real-time index price for U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), along with buy or sell indicators, analysis, charts, historical performance, news and more

$CVNA: Car Retailer Carvana Entering Short Term Support Area

Real-time index price for DOW Composite [Test] (COMP), along with buy or sell indicators, analysis, charts, historical performance, news and more

Carvana Co. (NYSE: CVNA), the leading e-commerce platform for buying and selling used cars, will host institutional investors and analysts for a tour of its Haines City Florida Inspection and Reconditioning Center on Thursday,

Carvana Announces Investor Tour at its Haines City Florida Inspection and Reconditioning Center

Carvana has gotten beyond a near-term balance sheet issue, but is it worth buying or are there still too many risks?

Is Carvana a Buy Now?

Hertz Global Holdings Inc., fresh off a blockbuster order for 100,000 Teslas, reached an exclusive agreement to supply Uber drivers with electric vehicles and signed up Carvana Co. to dispose of rental cars it no longer wants. , Bloomberg (Bloomberg ...

Hertz Misses Quarterly Profit Estimates as Its Fleet Costs Rise

Exane BNP Paribas downgraded its Carvana Co. [CVNA] rating to a Neutral from a an Outperform in a research note published on Tuesday. PT values the company’s stock at a premium of 14.38 to its Tuesday closing price.

Exane BNP Paribas Downgrades Carvana Co. (CVNA) to a Neutral from an Outperform

The stock of Carvana Co. (CVNA) has seen a -8.26% decrease in the past week, with a -24.39% drop in the past month, and a -28.02% decrease in the past quarter. The volatility ratio for the week is 6.54%,

Real-Time Update: Carvana Co. (CVNA) Stock Navigates the Market with Up-to-Date Data

Carvana (CVNA) is one of the stocks most watched by Zacks.com visitors lately. So, it might be a good idea to review some of the factors that might affect the near-term performance of the stock. Over the past month,

Is Trending Stock Carvana Co. (CVNA) a Buy Now?

Carvana (CVNA) has received quite a bit of attention from Zacks.com users lately. Therefore, it is wise to be aware of the facts that can impact the stock's prospects.

Carvana Co.

carvana

hosted on Kaggle have attracted a lot of attention from the Deep Learning community. Currently, the contest has more than 600 teams registered. The task is to build a model that segments the car out of the scene background. Carvana Image Masking Challenge Original and target images Conceptually, the task seems to be well defined and simple, especially in comparison, say, with full recognition of the road scene for safe self driving. Indeed, 396 teams have achieved the score above 0.99. All further fight will be for 3–4 decimal place in the final score. In general, the Kaggle community is extremely creative and very non-trivial solutions are born as a result of tough competition. For instance, take a look at the of . winner solution Taxi Prediction Challenge However, when it comes to semantic segmentation problems, non-trivial approaches are difficult to utilize. Ensembles of Unet like architectures trained at different resolutions will prevail in most top-scored solutions. In situations where very similar approaches compete with each other, the Chance plays a huge role. And the following question arises: “Is there any other way to get a competitive advantage?” We think that the answer is yes, especially if we look at the task from different perspective: . attack the data rather than model In this post we will describe the way managed to generate Synthetic Carvana Images (plus Ground Truth) that are very similar to the real ones — the training data provided by challenge organizers. What’s even more important is that our synthetic training set are freely available and everyone may make use of it to obtain higher score in the challenge. we Check out those two cars above. One of them is real, and one is synthetically generated using GTA V. Which is which? Let’s play GTA V for science! Modern computer games have interesting connection with Deep Learning. They are engaging and, more importantly, look realistic. Take GTA V, for instance. , over the years, put huge amount of efforts to make the gameplay as close to reality as possible. So, potentially, one may consider the game as infinity training set with all possible and impossible road scene configurations. Rockstar North Here we narrow the general approach mentioned above. We use GTA V to obtain the car images and segmentation masks under different camera views. The idea is not new, for instance, dataset from 2016. Playing for Data Unfortunately, there is no straight forward way to do it (no such kind of API for GTA V available). But conceptually it’s possible. So a bit of reverse engineering could help us. We will not focus much on the reverse engineering procedure itself (if someone is interested, let us know in the comments), rather will describe the process in general (and show a lot of cool pictures). Some intermediate magic in action After we’ve successfully injected our DLL in GTA process, we programmable place every vehicle available in GTA into garage. Well, not every — after some filtering we kept only 154 models that make sense for Carvana challenge, because airship does not. Then, we rotate our model per 10° with several different camera angles. Finally, we change car color: we chose black and white. Okay, now we can take nice screenshots like the one above, but there are no ground truth available. That’s bad. Luckily, we can hook into DirectX API calls and make some manipulations with objects on scene. After a few broken keyboards we found a way to highlight the car: As you can see, there is no windows. It’s because windows are totally separate objects in GTA V. So, we also highlight only windows: Now that’s something! We actually got both ground truth mask and a car image. But we also need to extract and place our model on Carvana scene and make the final result as close to reality, as possible. Because of that, we also want to extract a car shadow from GTA: As you can see, we’ve failed to make the floor exactly white and plain. But don’t worry: Photoshop is here to help us! Photoshop for Deep Learning What kind of people use Photoshop for machine learning? Well, we do. Actually, Photoshop has a lot to offer. But most people don’t know it’s possible to use good ol’ JavaScript to automate every action. That’s what we did. We start with screenshot from the game: First, the easy one: we combine car and windows ground truth to obtain the final mask: Now, we can cut out the car from screenshot and place it on empty stage we made before: As you can see, the car is too dark. That’s because it was shot in darker place. Luckily, Photoshop has Auto Tone and Auto Color: Much better! But the car is floating in the air. That’s because there is no shadow. It is possible to generate shadows in Photoshop, but it’s hard because we need to keep model rotation angle in mind. So, we will take shadow directly from GTA. We load screenshot with white (kinda) floor and make some manipulations: But there are still no windows! Let’s fix that by generating windows using some gradients: And finally, enlarge car to fit the scene: All those manipulations are done programmable using Photoshop JS scripting and pre-recorded actions. If you think this is an interesting topic for a tutorial, please leave your opinion in comments. How to get Synthetic Carvana Dataset We have made this dataset publicly available in our training data platform . Check out this if you want to know more about it. Follow those simple steps to get data: Supervise.ly post on medium 1. Create an account on Supervise.ly. It’s free and takes just a minute. Signup 2. Choose dataset from library Open → library and click on “CarvanaGTA5" dataset. Enter a project name (for example, “Carvana”), click and . After import task completion you will see your new dataset on page. Import Datasets Next Upload Projects Datasets library You can check out images in by clicking on dataset or look at statistics. Annotation tool Annotation tool 3. Export data Now you can download dataset on your computer by using . Export is a powerful feature of Supervise.ly that uses JSON-configurations to make filtering, resizing, augmentation, train-validation splitting, combining multiple datasets in one — and then save your results in popular ready to train frameworks formats. Export tool Go to the page and paste the following config in editor: Export [{"action": "data","src": ["<Your project name>/*"],"dst": "$sample","settings": {"classes_mapping": "default"}},{"action": "tag","src": ["$sample"],"dst": "$sample2","settings": {"tag": "train"}},{"action": "background","src": ["$sample2"],"dst": "$sample3","settings": {"class": "bg"}},{"action": "segmentation","src": ["$sample3"],"dst": "Carvana","settings": {"gt_machine_color": {"car": [255, 255, 255],"bg": [0, 0, 0]},"tag2part": {"train": "train"},"txt_generation": {"prefix": "."}}}] Here we define an array of sequential transformations of data: we tag every image as “train”, pass it to layer to generate class and finally use layer to make ground truth images. You can read more about Export in . background bg segmentation documentation Now click button and enter some name (optional). Start Exporting Supervise.ly will prepare your archive and after some time button would appear in Tasks: Download Done! If you have some time, check out our tutorials on Supervise.ly like — it has a lot to offer. Number plate detection Instead of conclusion, couple of general words We live in an era of unprecedented democratization of Deep Learning technologies — the academic community and business openly publish research and frameworks for building neural networks. However, when it comes to training data the situation is very different. In terms of data availability, industry giants (google, facebook, amazon) have huge advantage over other companies. The following chart from Andrew Ng is a very illustrative: Or in words: the quality of intellectual products based on Deep Learning is determined by the amount of available training data. Increasing the training data availability is the main priority of our company. We approach the problem from two sides: Development of tools for manual annotation. Recently we opened free access to the test version of Supervise.ly Research in generation of synthetic / semi-synthetic scenes, experiments with the tools that automate the annotation process. Synthetic Carvana dataset we released today is the part of our research. Please, let us know whether or not our synthetic dataset help you to achieve higher scores.

Hacking GTA V for Carvana Kaggle Challenge

Internet culture can be a wild and creative place, but there’s been no online trend that’s resonated in the world of finance as strongly as the rise of memes and their transformative effect on stock market investing. In January 2021, meme investing became global news as a mobilized motley crew of social media-based retail investors generated a GameStop short squeeze, which saw the stock rally 1,500% in just two weeks. Despite GME retracing from its sharp 2021 peak, the stock is still sitting in a relatively comfortable position today, with a market capitalization just shy of $5 billion. Inspired by GameStop’s astronomical rally, retail investors have been targeting meme-based opportunities in stocks, cryptocurrencies, and NFTs in an attempt to make significant short-term gains. The 2021 surge in meme investing saw some success derived from GameStop and AMC stocks, as well as cryptocurrencies such as Dogecoin and Shiba Inu. This frenetic high-volume investing landscape occurred against the backdrop of a cryptocurrency rally in the wake of , which took place in 2020 and inspired a bull run that grew the portfolios of thousands of retail investors around this time. Bitcoin’s cyclical halving event Today, with Bitcoin’s next halving event scheduled for April this year, could we be staring at another rally that will supercharge the meme investing landscape? Signs of Life in Meme Markets There’s mounting evidence that meme investing is beginning to regain momentum in the wake of a series of economic headwinds that have impacted retail investor spending over the past two years. Using Roundhill’s MEME ETF (NYSEARCA:MEME) as an example, the exchange-traded fund has over the past year, posting almost 20% growth over the past three months alone. grown more than 38% The appeal of meme investing can be found in its sentiment-driven high-risk structure. As investors unite on social media to target a stock, they can purchase their stock in significantly high volumes to leverage growth without having to look at the company’s underlying fundamentals. This paves the way for stocks to be targeted based on factors like sentimental value (GameStop, AMC) or tributes to online jokes (Dogecoin). “Recent growth in GameStop and Dogecoin indicates a short-term surge in investing among retail investors. However, it's essential to recognize that this trend is speculative,” explained Maxim Manturov, head of investment research at . meme stock Freedom Finance Europe “It's crucial to note that while meme investments may yield significant profits, they also come with substantial risks due to their high volatility and speculative nature. Investors should carefully assess their risk tolerance and investment goals before engaging in this type of investing.” In 2023, meme markets , with the year’s biggest winners arriving in the form of fintech firm SoFi, software company Palantir, and used car retailer Carvana–with the latter recording 1,000% growth over the calendar year. comfortably outperformed the S&P 500 This investing phenomenon isn’t limited to Wall Street and crypto, either. In South Korea, young investors have been rejecting blue-chip stocks like Samsung and Hyundai to buy into high-risk in science and technology sectors in the hopes of faster returns. meme stocks Internet rumors about growth plans for stocks like Duksung, a Suwon-based textiles company, saw the stock triple in value over two weeks in mid-2023 before a 50% fall in a matter of days. JLK, an AI-based medical data company, rallied to a brief 1,000% peak during the rally between January and September before a similar 50% decline to close the year. , a senior researcher at the Korea Capital Market Institute, the appeal of higher returns ‘drives impatient young investors’, who would have started their trading journeys around the time of the post-pandemic boom period that began in 2020. According to Hwang Sei-woon The Rise of Short-Termism This short-term mindset among retail investors has given rise to the era of . While successful traditional investing relies on the in-depth research of stock fundamentals and the development of a sustainable investment strategy, meme investing revolves around staying switched on and alert to social media guidance. fast food investing One of the biggest issues that this causes is the volatility, and varying degrees of success that socially mobilized investing can bring. Using GameStop’s stock as an example, the firm is currently trading at 81% below its peak on January 29th, 2021. This means that many retail investors who bought the stock during its rapid rise would have lost out despite the stock settling higher than its values before the short squeeze. In addition to this, AMC stock has shed 87% of its value in the past 12 months alone, signifying that short-term attitudes can lead to stocks being abandoned for new memes at a moment’s notice. The fickle nature of meme investors has become increasingly apparent in recent weeks throughout the cryptocurrency landscape. The winter months drew launched on Solana’s network, but following December all-time highs for small-cap coins like Dogwifhat (WIF), Bonk (BONK), and AnaloS (ANALOS), the coins have tumbled 76%, 70%, and 92% respectively in a matter of weeks. added retail attention to meme coins Learning Lessons From the Past The recent approval of a Bitcoin Spot ETF on Wall Street has helped to add fuel to investor optimism for an upcoming cryptocurrency market rally in 2024 and 2025. These market movements throughout the crypto landscape could see more investors seeking to supplement their portfolio growth and renewed levels of market interest to commit more resources to meme investing. According to Reuters reporters Saqib Iqbal Ahmed and Laura Matthews, for meme investing in the wake of the 2021 GameStop short squeeze, but more so, their approaches became increasingly cautious as the market sell-offs of 2022 hit portfolios. retail investors never lost their appetite In understanding the difference between a company’s stock price and its fundamentals, investors may be capable of finding a better balance between the risk and opportunities offered by meme investing. With cryptocurrency markets set to take center stage once again in 2024, we can be sure that meme investing won’t be far from the limelight.

The Return of Meme Investing: Will a Crypto Rally in 2024 Pave the Way for a Meme Resurgence?

দ্য রিটার্ন অফ মেম ইনভেস্টিং: 2024 সালে একটি ক্রিপ্টো সমাবেশ কি একটি মেম পুনরুত্থানের পথ তৈরি করবে?

Die Rückkehr des Meme-Investierens: Wird eine Krypto-Rallye im Jahr 2024 den Weg für ein Meme-Wiederaufleben ebnen?

El regreso de la inversión en memes: ¿un repunte de las criptomonedas en 2024 allanará el camino para un resurgimiento de los memes?

Le retour de l’investissement mème : un rallye crypto en 2024 ouvrira-t-il la voie à une résurgence des mèmes ?

मेम निवेश की वापसी: क्या 2024 में क्रिप्टो रैली मेम पुनरुत्थान का मार्ग प्रशस्त करेगी?

ミーム投資の復活: 2024 年の仮想通貨ラリーはミーム復活への道を開くのか?

밈 투자의 귀환: 2024년 암호화폐 랠리가 밈 부활의 길을 열어줄 것인가?

O retorno do investimento em memes: uma alta criptográfica em 2024 abrirá caminho para o ressurgimento de memes?

Возвращение мем-инвестирования: откроет ли крипторалли в 2024 году путь к возрождению мемов?

Meme Yatırımcılığının Dönüşü: 2024'teki Kripto Rallisi Meme Yeniden Dirilişinin Yolunu Açacak mı?

Sự trở lại của đầu tư Meme: Liệu cuộc biểu tình tiền điện tử vào năm 2024 có mở đường cho sự hồi sinh của Meme không?

Meme 投资的回归：2024 年的加密货币反弹是否会为 Meme 的复兴铺平道路？

Stay one step ahead of the impending economic downturn with these smart tips to help keep your startup afloat in hard times. An economic downturn is upon us, is your startup prepared? The pandemic shook the bedrock of our global economy. In the U.S. the government relaxed monetary policies to subvert economic tensions caused by the pandemic. Negative interest rates made fundraising easier for promising startups, and new companies saw record-high valuations. As a result, ambitious businesses experienced a promising boom. Today is a different story as the markets show an economic downturn is underway. The unfortunate consequences of the pandemic liquidity created economic distortions, supply change issues, inflation, and the war in Ukraine all have contributed to the current pending crisis. If you are involved in a startup, you may think this is all doom and gloom. But there are options to get through hard economic times. The following 6-12 months will be crucial to your business. Michael Morowit, Chairperson of Sequoia Capital, offers some advice in the ; he aims to remind startups to “recognize the moment, expand (their) runway, (and) become a business”. Sequoia perspective Below are three key strategies to help you shift plans to proactively weather this downturn, giving your startup the best chance for long-term success. Surviving Is Winning Crisis works in a super simple way. First, there will be a squeeze that will tighten all aspects of your business: less engagement, fewer customers, makes way for less money, less funding, and in addition, less talent to pull from as workers shift into more recession-proof jobs. In essence, there will be a condensing of the market. A smaller market creates a severely competitive environment where numbers matter. As a result, companies will be cutting costs and shaving down finances to create a barebones plan for getting through the crisis. This batten-down-the-hatches approach is more challenging for new startups with limited resources, who still need to conduct essential experiments to solidify their company into a secure business platform. The goal for these startups is to pause, reflect, and shift their strategy to reach “default alive”. The difference between a startup being “default alive” or “default dead” is based on financing and revenue. Your company has reached “default alive” when you can assume profitability while maintaining your current expenses and expected growth trajectory as a stand-alone entity. Conversely, you are in a state of default dead if you still rely on the investor’s interest as the primary driver of continuous growth. A few ways to position your startup in any phase to reach “default alive” is to evaluate your ability to raise more money, expand your runway to give you more time to secure your business, and cut costs for longevity. You are already invested in the economic system as a startup that satisfies a particular market need with a target audience, even within a downturn or recession. If you can secure yourself as “default alive”, you can find more assurance that you can maintain (or expand) during the downturn and open yourself up to a larger piece of the pie after the crisis is over and the market swings back. Keep yourself alive, and your business can find more opportunities to thrive in the long run. Hire Talent That Will Take You Further You don’t have the stability or luxury of time to hire and train team members as a startup. Your runway limits your timeline, and even if you can extend it (which I highly recommend you do), time is still a precious commodity in regard to your startup goals. Hiring the right qualified talent can help you maximize your time productively and efficiently. The with many companies can be slow and arduous and requires a lengthy onboarding process that provides new employees with the training and industry insight they need to be an asset. hiring process This process could quickly flip your startup into “default dead” in the current economy. So instead of hiring to teach, bring onboard talent who will be super helpful from day one. As soon as they sign the contract, they will start adding value to the startup and save you time. Generally, you can divide skills into two categories, hard, and soft skills. Hard skills are expertise, job-related knowledge, and abilities, and soft skills are considered personal qualities that help a person thrive. For this argument, you not only want talent with exceptional hard skills but also with industry-specific soft skills. Awareness and comprehension of the specific industry of your startup, coupled with a solid set of knowledgable technical skills that can keep your project moving successfully along the runway, is a must in an economy where time is money. Many prominent companies have imposed widespread layoffs (including Netflix, Carvana, and Klarna), which means highly skilled talent is searching for a place to land. Now is the time to grab this opportunity to bring people on board who will be an asset to your startup. Design to Be Profitable An economic downturn is not a time to be exploring ideas on a whim. Instead, focus only on the design and experiments that will be profitable; and yes, it sounds simple. Yet, in actuality, many startups experiment with features that will not generate increased profit at the current moment. A wide variety of features may be cool, and they may even be what users want. Still, at this moment, when it comes to the possibility of your company going bankrupt, it is time to look at your backlog and weed out any ideas that will not generate a profit and increase business success today. In addition to streamlining the focus of your work, it is vital to be implementing new features for testing at a quick pace. This process is two-fold in that it will maximize your runway time and help you achieve more profitable results during that time as you figure out quickly what is working and what is not. That 6-12 month runway should contain 2-3 experiments per month to help move your startup from “default dead” to “default alive” throughout the downturn and into a secure position where you can acquire more opportunities when the market bounces back. Expert Tip People are aware of what is going on. Because of this, it is better to be straightforward and present the facts than to sugarcoat with hopeful promises that may not come to fruition. The way you talk about this situation matters, and by being honest, you are better able to continue trust and collaboration through these unpredictable times. This shift includes using leadership skills to be prepared for the worst and letting your team know that you are. With budget constraints, there may be no bonuses, but the shared goal of reaching “default alive” will help everyone stay on the same page and bring confidence to the team. Final Thought It’s going to be a tight squeeze. But the best thing to do is set yourself and your business up to be as prepared as possible. That means acquiring more funding if you are able, using the planning time to pause and reflect, focus on your bottom line, and know you can come out the other side just fine, if not better, than many of your competitors.

How to Recession-Proof Your Startup Right Now

Crypto Crash? Not Really... 

Hi Aharon, welcome to our series “Behind the Startup.” Please tell us about yourself and the story behind ? Ishan Pandey: AutoLeadStar Thank you! I am excited to be here. Aharon Horwitz: was co-founded in Jerusalem by myself, Eliav Moshe, and Yishai Goldstein. We became friends in the military and university and connected years later over a shared passion about empowering small businesses to win at modern marketing and stay relevant against the monopolizing forces sweeping modern capitalism. We got going in the broad category for small and medium enterprises until, in 2016, an advisor angel of ours suggested we look at the automotive industry. This was 2016 going into 2017. We dove in and never looked back, today offering a powerful platform to car retailers that uses AI to understand shoppers and dealer inventory and help dealers market and sell online the way they would in a showroom. AutoLeadStar Every year, cars with new features are launched by companies that wish to keep their market competitiveness alive and thriving. What role does digital marketing play in aligning the buyer’s wishes to the automotive company’s goals? Ishan Pandey: So much is dependent on the vehicle and car maker. A bad run of models, either lack of shopper interest or quality manufacturing issues, absolutely kills a brand and can set it back for four, five years or longer. The opposite is true too. So a big part has to do with the manufacturer. But the retailers play a massive role in guiding shoppers to the features that they need and want. Aharon Horwitz: The best salespeople at car dealers today are not pushy or aggressive; they are entirely consultative and supportive. Many dealers are moving to one-price models to remove all the haggling and complexity from what’s inherently a complicated process. We think that digital marketing has to be like this. First, it should be super specific to the shopper interest. No billboards on the internet. Second, it should be fully scaled on all the offerings and features available in the inventory so it can find the right matches. This should be updated and optimized around the clock to meet shoppers when and where they want it. Can you explain how automated marketing strategies work and why content marketing strategy plays a key role in attracting the desired customer base? Ishan Pandey: Great question. Google and Facebook today are not the Google and Facebook of five years ago. When dealing with a huge amount of inventory and first-party data, there’s practically no way for a manual-oriented marketer to max out the opportunities these platforms provide truly. An automated platform that can sync with the niche market is entirely necessary. Content has to be useful, but it’s much more important to test and optimise continually than designing the perfect ad or website CTA. Having learning built into automation is the key to success. Aharon Horwitz: How exactly has digital marketing remodelled the automotive industry and what has been the most significant shift in terms of it becoming a trendsetter for innovation? Ishan Pandey: This is a fascinating little history. Car dealers are the inheritors of the previous modes of mass transportation, including carriages dealerships and bike shops. Inherently these were family-owned community businesses, passed down through the generations, and employing locals. Dealers were known hubs and destinations in towns across the US and really beyond. Aharon Horwitz: When the internet emerged, dealers began to get disintermediated from their customers. In the early days, they started to build their own rudimentary websites and online catalogues, but quite soon along came classified websites that became mass aggregators of vehicles. As shopping shifted online suddenly, dealers were no longer community rooted brands, and they came to be seen as merely a price, a phone number, and email address. This started to change around 2015 when dealers started to regain their direct to customer brand and marketing channels. I’d bet spend on aggregator sites has dropped since, and spend on direct has gone up. The reasons for this change came from dealers understanding what digital mastery and maturity look like; the rise of pure-play digital dealers like Carvana, Shift and Vroom spurred this on as well. What technology stack is deployed by AutoLeadStar to increase the sales of vehicles? Ishan Pandey: AutoLeadStar knows how to mimic dealer insights into digital, and uses a very powerful engine to find high-quality shoppers on the web, engage them with differentiated personalization on the website, and support the ongoing sale and nurture by activating the dealer’s data through the process. Aharon Horwitz: Technically, we merge a marketing automation platform (think Hubspot or Drift with advertising automation baked in) with commerce enablement tools. The impact is usually a far more significant amount of quality leads for less cost, which is the result of how AutoLeadStar leverages data, optimizes performance, and interacts with the marketing platforms According to you, what policies and practices should digital marketing companies employ to protect consumers against data exploitation, especially in automated ads? Ishan Pandey: Aharon Horwitz: I think the principle of treating people the way you would want to be treated should be the guiding star. We think first-party opt-in data is the best data to market around. We have largely stayed away from 3rd party data and showed dealers that we can heavily bring results that outperform those using 3rd party data. From what I’ve seen in the industry, most dealers are looking for top-tier solutions that follow consumer protection guidelines and best practices. There are bad actors, but we’ve largely seen those as the exception, not the rule. In this age of technological advancement, what do you think will be the future of small, personally owned car dealerships? Ishan Pandey: It’s clear that buying a car is a different sort of purchase than a pair of shoes or a new shirt. There’s a clear value add in a customer-centric operation on the other side of that massive purchase. Therefore, I believe that dealerships should excel in customer service and support and embrace technology wherever it supports that mission. Those that do have a future, though we also see a lot of consolidation around bigger, more corporate and tech-forward groups. Aharon Horwitz: Why do you think automated marketing is necessary for these small businesses? Ishan Pandey: To compete and win business on the internet today, you need a pretty robust and sophisticated strategy. It’s very hard to do this manually. What ends up having is you start working for the tech instead of the tech working for you. It becomes a bottomless pit of frustration and missed opportunity. An automated solution like AutoLeadStar’s does all the work, leverages the data to get results beyond what any human could do, and does it under the dealer marketing leader’s strategic guidance. Aharon Horwitz: In the automotive industry, the Covid-19 pandemic and its aftermath will cause negative impact and sudden shifts in consumer purchasing behaviour. What are your views on Tesla and the future of the automotive industry? Ishan Pandey: Similar to general retail, we saw in our data that COVID drove a huge spike in digital activity in automotive. However, unlike retail, automotive digital shopping didn’t make up for the loss in foot traffic. It’s simply clear that buying cars purely online isn’t fully baked yet for the mass market. Aharon Horwitz: In this sense, Tesla is an exception that proves a rule and reinforces what’s common in the more traditional retail universe. For example, Tesla makes use of showrooms, test drives, and dealer-like activity. People largely still want to touch, feel, and experience a vehicle before buying. We, therefore, believe dealers need to become “click and brick,” or even better, “click or brick.” Sell, service and support customers in the way they want. In that constellation a physical store can be a big compliment to the digital showroom and order process. Today only about 2% of cars are sold through pure-play digital dealers (Carvana, Tesla). 98% of non-private transactions are on traditional retailers. They are modernizing and aim to be a significant force in the future. As a side note, but incredibly important: it’s those 98%, the traditional car dealers, that employ millions of people across the US with reasonable wages. It’s one of those few strongholds left where you can get a good-paying job without a degree from MIT. I cherish that, and that’s why we’re proud to provide them with powerful technology to thrive in the future. According to you, what new trends are we going to see in digital marketing in the auto industry moving forward? Ishan Pandey: Everything is going to be about customer service. The whole industry is shifting to the philosophies and processes that reflect high-end consumer expectations, and that will be very apparent in the digital infrastructure that dealers build over the next few years. Aharon Horwitz: Thank you! The purpose of this article is to remove informational asymmetry existing today in our digital markets by performing due diligence by asking the right questions and equipping readers with better opinions to make informed decisions. The material does not constitute any investment, financial, or legal advice. Please do your research before investing in any digital assets or tokens, etc. The writer does not have any vested interest in the company.

The Current State of Automotive Marketing with Aharon Horwitz

Interview with Kaggle Grandmaster, Senior CV Engineer at Lyft: Dr. Vladimir I. Iglovikov

Part 22 of where I interview my heroes. The series Index to “Interviews with ML Heroes” Today I’m honored to be interviewing a Kaggle Grandmaster from the community. ods.ai I’m excited to be talking to Competitions GrandMaster (Ranked #29, kaggle: @drn01z3) and Kernels (Ranked #159), Discussions Expert: (Ranked #58),: Artur Kuzin Artur has a background in Physics and Applied Math with a Masters Degree. Currently, he is working as the Head of Computer Vision at (Largest multi-format retailer in Russia), before X5 Group- he has worked as Lead Data Scientist at Dbrain (Dbrain.io), and as a Data Scientist at Avito (the second largest classifieds site in the world, part OLX group). X5 Retail Group About the Series: I have very recently started making some progress with my . But to be honest, it wouldn’t be possible at all without the amazing community online and the great people that have helped me. Self-Taught Machine Learning Journey In this Series of Blog Posts, I talk with people that have really inspired me and whom I look up to as my role-models. The motivation behind doing this is that you might see some patterns and hopefully, you’d be able to learn from the amazing people that I have had the chance to learn from. **Sanyam Bhutani:**​ Hello Grandmaster, Thank you for taking the time to do this. Hello! Thanks for doing the interview series. Artur Kuzin: **Sanyam Bhutani:**​ Currently, you’re a Comp GrandMaster as well as a Discussions & Kernels Expert. You have a background in Physics and Applied Math. How did you get interested in Machine and in kaggle at first? Learning When I was a student, I tried different activities in parallel with working in the lab. A few of my friends were called to work in a strange startup that was engaged in the development of Artificial Intelligence. I still do not understand how I was persuaded, because it was strongly away from my flow of life at that time. The tasks were mostly related to computer vision. Artur Kuzin: The startup was fun and diverse, but now it seems to me that the speed of my training was rather low. I got a real boost when I started participating in local ML competitions from Avito. I was placed 3rd at my first competition which was about the classification of cars. I was excited and motivated. In the next competition from Avito, I secured the 1st rank. Due to which I got an offer from them. You’re currently working as the Head of Computer Vision at X5 Retail Group and have been working in the Data Science space during the past few years. Sanyam Bhutani: Where does kaggle come in the picture? Is it related to your other projects? After winning the Avito competition, I realized those machine learning competitions are a very cool activity and with a unique atmosphere. Since then, I have always tried to take part in interesting competitions. All this time I had a full-time job and kaggle looked like a second unpaid job (yes, there were prizes, but they hardly claim to be something stable). Artur Kuzin: Well, I really got into it seriously and for a long time after (Kaggle: @iglovikov) pushed me and many other participants from top teams to participate, for which I am very grateful to him. It was a very difficult, interesting and emotional competition. After that, I realised that kaggle has become my addiction. So far, competitions itself did not lead me to start my own projects. But often, I have been approached by people with many interesting offers. Kaggle Dstl Satellite Imagery Feature Detection Vladimir Iglovikov Could you tell us more about your role at your current job? Sanyam Bhutani: What projects are you working on and what is your role in the same? The X5 Retail Group has recently created the department for video analytics. Tasks are to develop and implement solutions using computer vision. including analysis of the availability of goods on the shelf, queue control, KYC, staff analysis, etc. I am leading a team of 10 engineers and researchers. Tasks that the team cover both, R&D in the ML and CV domains as well as envelop the whole solution from shaping hardware architecture to integration with the data warehouse. Artur Kuzin: You’ve had many amazing finishes in competitions.Could you tell what was your favorite challenge? Sanyam Bhutani: The most important and significant one for me was the . In that period of my life, I was considering to take up the role of a team lead, but I was not sure that I would be able to manage. And I decided to try this role in the kaggle team. Typically, everyone in the team develops own solution from the beginning to the end. And then someone blends them up or builds second-level models. We went the other way. collected data, trained models. And I just gave them hardware, ideas, and advice. The only part that I did with my own hands is data filtering and mixing the final submission 5 minutes before the deadline. As a result, we took off from the 6th place in the public to the 2nd on the private. This gave me a firm assurance that I could handle the leadership. Artur Kuzin: 2nd place on the kaggle IEEE camera Arthur Fattakhov Ilya Kibardin About the solution of this competition there are two resources that you can checkout: A video with English subtitles An article We also decided to use a high place on the leaderboard. And we cooperated with and his graduate student to write an article. As a result, the article was taken to the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data: . Vladimir Iglovikov Link to the abstract You’ve had great results-both in solo finishes and team finishes. Sanyam Bhutani: For a noob kaggler-What tips do you have when forming a team or not? If you are participating for the first time, then I highly recommend participating in a team. Moreover, it is highly desirable to find an experienced participant at least at the Master level. He will protect from stupid mistakes and save a lot of nerves. It is also desirable for the team to have a person who is familiar with the development practices and will be able to adjust the processes with the split into common folds, git, the place for exchanging data, a place for discussion. Artur Kuzin: In fact, even experienced participants are better off participating in a team. I see a lot of value in forming a team with different levels of skills. Young and inexperienced people are usually overwhelmed with enthusiasm, so if you motivate them correctly, you can assign them to do boring stuff, such as clearing the data and testing non-trivial hypotheses. Middles / kaggle Masters can write good code under the supervision of senior team members. And Senior / kaggle Grandmasters can be the solution architect and fully delegate the work to others. What kind of challenges do you look for today? How do you decide to enter a new competition? Sanyam Bhutani: Now the main challenge for me is to bring a large-scale project in X5 Retail Group to roll out, I’m completely focused on that. However, I still see a lot of value in participating in contests, especially if they are relevant to the work. For example, currently there is a competition with whales and this task is very much similar to defining the goods on a shelf. Artur Kuzin: What opportunities for newbies does kaggle open up if you give him enough time? Sanyam Bhutani: Kaggle allows you to very quickly develop a specific skill set. With the right approach, these skills can be converted into the necessary quality for work ( ). Also, competitions allow you to try a lot of different tasks and greatly expand your knowledge. Finally, it is insanely fun if you are able to find such a friendly community like ODS.ai. Artur Kuzin: https://habr.com/ru/company/ods/blog/439812/ If we are talking about more experienced participants of the Master or Grandmaster level, then for them it is an opportunity to try yourself as a team leader. At work, it is very rare when you manage to become a team leader just because you wanted to. But in the case of successful performance in this format, it becomes easier to move towards the leadership. For myself, I used kaggle as a way to find smart guys. For instance, together with Ilya Kibardin ( ) and Miras Amir ( ), I participated in several competitions. So they were on top in shortlist of a candidate for my team at X5 Retail Group. https://www.kaggle.com/ikibardin https://www.kaggle.com/amiras And as the last argument. When Ilya and Miras got a job, one of the arguments in favor of a high salary was their achievements in kaggle, despite the fact that they are still students. What best pieces of advice do you have for beginners who want to score well in the Deep Learning Competitions. However, do not have a beefy GPU box setup with themselves? Sanyam Bhutani: How can do well against the others that are doing tremendous stacking at times? I see the following strategy: Artur Kuzin: Find computing resources. These can be Kaggle GPU kernels or credits for Google Cloud or AWS for academics. Start participating as early as possible. The lack of computing resources can be compensated by time and the number of attempts. As soon as you get a decent result, you propose to team up with more experienced participants who have computing resources. Fight together till the end. This strategy was implemented by . He did not have any video cards at all, however, he was able to show a good result on Carvana. Therefore, I teamed up with him and as a result, our team received a gold medal. Valery Babushkin Kaggle What are your first steps and go to techniques when starting out on a new competition? Sanyam Bhutani: Everything is typical here: Artur Kuzin: I read the description, the forum. If the leaks have not yet been found, then you can participate EDA Split into folds and think about local validation scheme Baseline Next steps depend on the competition. For the readers and noobs like me who want to become better kagglers, what would be your best advice? Sanyam Bhutani: Perhaps I have a somewhat alternative point of view. But strongly believe that the most important thing is the ability to desire and to be obsessed with something. This is the ability to get interested, not to surrender halfway, put all on till the end and fight to the last second. If you have the desire, then you will understand how to become the best. Artur Kuzin: Given the explosive growth rate of ML, How do you stay updated with the recent developments? Sanyam Bhutani: Almost all events and results are discussed in ODS.ai. But I’m rather not interested in academic discoveries, but in practical techniques that allow one to train an accurate and lightweight model for production. In this regard, you can follow the overview of solutions after the competition. Some of the participants share their solutions even with source code, which is highly respectable. Artur Kuzin: What developments in the field do you find to be the most exciting? Sanyam Bhutani: I am still under the impression of AlphaStar. We live in a very interesting time. I think this is the beginning of very significant discoveries that will change our lifestyle soon. Artur Kuzin: What are your thoughts about Machine Learning as a field, do think its Overhyped? Sanyam Bhutani: I think it is definitely overhyped. But it happens not without reason. This area does not look like a fake to me, because now a lot of companies are using machine learning in a large variety of different applications. The labor market also seems to be still unsettled. But over time, the level of competence on the part of ML will grow and everything will even out, as it happens with the usual software development. Artur Kuzin: Before we conclude, any tips for the beginners who aspire to be like you someday but feel completely overwhelmed to even start competing? Sanyam Bhutani: Just get started! Just do it! It’s not gods who make pots. I do not consider myself insanely talented, clever or shrewd. I have a bunch of friends who are better than me in every aspect. But I know for sure that I can compensate for all my shortcomings with the number of attempts and the time I devote to achieving the result. Artur Kuzin: Thank you so much for doing this interview. Sanyam Bhutani: If you found this interesting and would like to be a part of My Learning Path , you can find me on Twitter here . If you’re interested in reading about Deep Learning and Computer Vision news, you can checkout my newsletter here .

Interview with Kaggle Grandmaster, Lead Data Scientist at Dbrain: Artur Kunzin

Do you think today’s children will be learning to drive 10 to 15 years from now? Or will connected cars and self-driving technology transform this once standard rite-of-passage toward adulthood into a ritual of the past? The explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT), combined with major advancements in connected car technologies, has taken the world of driving to an entirely new level, and the auto industry is responding by working with technological innovators in a race to bring the latest features to market. The drive is fueled by the significant revenue opportunity, that, according to PwC is set to soar from $52.5 billion in 2017 to $155.9 billion in just five years. Incredibly, many functions that were once relegated to futuristic movies are now present in commercially-available vehicles, such as rear-facing cameras, windshield-based heads-up displays showing a car’s speed, GPS navigation directions and more, and driver-assistance systems capable of changing lanes and executing other complex driving tasks without any human intervention. We are living in a very exciting time for transportation, as our vehicles resemble their predecessors less and less every year. Tesla’s Autopilot feature is one of the most advanced driver-assistance systems on the market. Consumer opinions vary greatly between excited anticipation of a future with fully-autonomous cars to utter terror about the thought of trusting a computer to navigate the road while sitting in the back seat focusing on something entirely different, such as working, watching a movie, or even catching up on sleep. Virtually all experts in the auto industry predict radical changes over the next 5 to 15 years, with technology research company Gartner forecasting a market of 250 million connected cars on the road by 2020. And the reality is that much of that growth will be new data services and new offerings, as opposed to changes in the actual metal and rubber of the car itself. The Internet of Things is a key aspect of this technological revolution, and it’s expected that a massive range of new business models will emerge out of connected car data. In fact, consulting firm McKinsey estimates that connected car data will be worth a staggering $1.5 trillion per year by 2030. These new technologies in the auto industry affect every aspect of buying, selling and driving a car, from the emergence of online used-vehicle companies such as Vroom and Beepi, to the unveiling of other innovators like Carvana, with its fully-automated, coin-operated car vending machine. And how about the recent explosion of on-demand transportation options, such as Uber and Lyft? These advancements have already had a profound effect on the manner in which consumers view automobiles, shifting priorities away from ownership and toward convenience and advanced technological functionality. The next five years are expected to see a radical transformation of the auto industry as we know it. Although no one can predict every detail with absolute certainty, it’s impossible to deny the massive changes that are on the horizon. Guess it’s the perfect time to buckle up and enjoy the ride. Written by Igor Ilunin, head of IoT at DataArt .

IoT in the Fast Lane: Connected Cars Changing the Way We Buy, Sell and Drive

A music box helped the company sing its way to 2000 Crores INR  (264 million USD) in Revenue in 5 years From ’s we learn that creating a great product is one thing; positioning it in the right market is another. This is a story of a music box that holds ‘ ’ and has earned its parent company a revenue of over INR 2000 crores. Sa Re Ga Ma Carvaan, 5,000 timeless Bollywood songs I was at my work desk and this urge to listen to an old classic came upon me. YouTube was the easy choice. So I ran a search for this song and stumbled upon an advertisement before the melody came alive. The ad was for a jukebox called . And the ad told me that it was the best gift for my parents. It said it in Hindi, which I think makes it feel even better - “ ”. Carvaan Mummy Papa ke liye best gift I don’t know if it’s a professional hazard or whether it was just because I was at work, but the ad got me thinking about why the company pitched the product the way it did. So I began doing some digging. And I managed to narrow down what seems like a very plausible reason for this strategic piece of marketing. The first thing I did was . When I did, I found that they’d made their space in a market of their choosing and their sales numbers were solid proof of their success. Obviously, I then tried to understand how they managed to achieve such astounding success in the times of streaming services where music is available in hundreds of thousands as opposed to Carvaan’s library of 5,000 songs. analyse their sales numbers Sa Re Ga Ma focused its strategy on . A niche market focuses exclusively on a group that stands to benefit most from a product. This kind of marketing strategy allows a brand to stand out from the crowd, establish a dominant presence, make itself appear more valuable, and establish longer, deeper connections with its customers. a niche market Here’s a breakdown of what Sa Re Ga Ma did when marketing Carvaan - five reasons attributable to its success. What Made Sa Re Ga Ma’s a Marketing Success? Caravaan Extensive Consumer Research Narrowing down on a list of 5,000 songs from even one era of Bollywood music is no mean feat. The team studied data from 134 partners to understand the kind of content that was being consumed. 1.1 billion consumption points were identified and analyzed before the list of 5,000 songs was curated. Identifying the Right Target Audience The product was targeted at the generation that is not most tech savvy, yet loves to revel in nostalgia. And what better way to transport people in time than through music? The middle-class Indian parent was the persona that was the company’s prime target audience. A 5-Step Thoughtful Positioning Plan Target Audience The target audience for the product were the children (the buyers 20-30 years old) of middle class parents (the users - 50-60 years old). The users were unlikely to spend a sum of INR 6000 on a jukebox that played a limited number of songs. Hence the millennials, who have huge spending power, became an ideal choice for the target segment. Unmet Need With the advent of digital music, physical cassettes and CDs were soon becoming relics. Access to music became easy for the younger generation but the older generation was not very comfortable with the idea of digital music. The Chief Marketing Officer of Sa Re Ga Ma had this to say, “ Our research showed that a majority of that age group had simply stopped listening to music and it was ironic because when this population was young, there was no social media. All they had was the radio but advancements in technology took that away from them. Our research also gave us the reasons why people liked using the radio, it was owing to the device’s simplicity. And that was the genesis of Carvaan.” Hence there were two unmet needs: For Buyer The millennials, living away from home, are constantly looking for things to gift their parents. As gifting helps them take away a little portion of guilt that they are not able to live with their parents. Gifts help them convey a gesture of love for their parents. For User here was a need for a product in the market that could rejoice the love for music for this chunk of people. A product that they can very easily operate. T Competitive Advantage The element of nostalgia is brought alive with 5,000 evergreen songs available through simple controls. The uniqueness of the concept and design made it the only available product of its kind in the market, giving Carvaan the perfect advantage. Besides, the target users can operate Carvaan just like a transistor radio - something they are extremely familiar with. Unique Point of Difference Compared to various gift options available in the market like clothing and cosmetics - Carvaan has much more to offer. It brings a feeling of nostalgia. The songs when played  lighten the mood in the house. The pitch - “ ” is a masterstroke. Kudos to the copywriter! Mummy Papa ke liye Best Gift Reasons to Believe The target market had no easy access to music any more, and pre-loading 5,000 songs that the middle class parents connected with deeply was bound to make a successful product. Ease of use and familiar interface made it an attractive choice. The last five years have seen sales of over INR 2000 crores! It makes complete sense for the company to extend the range of Carvaan products and offerings. Like song libraries in multiple regional languages, Carvaan mini, Carvaan karaoke etc. Consistent Branding Sa Re Ga Ma is India’s oldest music label released its first-ever studio recorded song in 1902. The company probably was the biggest seller of cassettes and CDs at one point in time. For over a century, Sa Re Ga Ma has been bringing Indian music to all homes in India whether it was through CDs or cassettes then and through Carvaan now. Carvaan is a great extension of the company's endeavour in keeping Indian music close to its people. Creative Advertising The company has come up with brilliant ads and placed them on the right channels to reach millennials. For instance, I was watching a remix of a popular bollywood song on YouTube and I saw the ad for Carvaan. It caught my 100% attention. Here is one of their super creative ads: https://youtu.be/ptjpoFemNQU Observe the happiness on the mother’s face while she enjoys listening to a song on Carvaan. Accurate Channel for Distribution The next logical step was for Sa Re Ga Ma to make the product available in a marketplace that was accessible to those who will be ideal buyers. What better place than for the generation that’s at their desks and online for the most part of their day? Amazon Sa Re Ga Ma partnered with Amazon for distribution and surprise, surprise! Carvaan became a bestseller on the site. Today, Carvaan has expanded into various markets. It not only holds the evergreen songs of Bollywood but also has other variants like Bengali, Punjabi, Tamil, etc. are now sold in other geographies that target the nostalgic, expat population who are constantly craving the feeling of home. Carvaans Sum and Substance Here is how we can make the most of the inspirational story of Sa Re Ga Ma - Carvaan: Clearly define the user and buyer Fulfil an unmet need Use emotion to drive sales Stick to the ethos of your company Hope you enjoyed reading this one. Here is another interesting one for you to read - “ “ How the pandemic sensation Wordle went viral?

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