Startup Veezoo emerges from stealth with NLQ-based platform

Startup business intelligence vendor Veezoo emerged from stealth on Tuesday with a platform that enables customers to query data using natural language.

Founded in 2016 and based in Zurich, Switzerland, Veezoo's founders first developed the concept for the vendor's tools during a hackathon in 2015 before forming a company the following year.

Frustrated by the inability to explore data without preexisting expertise in data science and data analysis, they set out to design an analytics platform that could be used not only without coding knowledge but also without the need to drag and drop files to develop data sets and queries, according to co-founder and CEO Marcos Monteiro.

Essentially, their goal was to develop what they refer to as a "Siri for analytics," after the Apple personal assistant/voice recognition system.

Now, customers can simply load data into a cloud data warehouse and ask questions of their data using natural language. Veezoo is then able to instantly respond with answers in chart, graph and dashboard form that lead to insight-driven decisions.

In addition, Veezoo has the capability to comprehend the follow-up questions that often arise after an initial query, and even suggest follow-up questions that might be relevant.

"It's really about enabling all the nontechnical people to get the information they need to do their job," Monteiro said. "It's not about what [executives] think they need that limits them. They have their own questions and so many ideas about how to look at data. Veezoo empowers them to use all the information that's in the data."

As it emerges from stealth, Veezoo is cloud agnostic with the ability to connect to data stored in cloud data warehouses such as Amazon Redshift, Google BigQuery and Snowflake. In addition, according to the vendor, a connector has already been developed for Shopify, and others for market-specific databases, including Salesforce, are in the works.

Meanwhile, the platform is capable of responding to questions asked in English, German, Italian and French.

Regarding the depth of analysis Veezoo is capable of using natural language, Monteiro said Veezoo can be the primary BI tool for some organizations but is not designed to be the primary tool for a large organization with a dedicated analytics team. Its target audience is instead the end user -- a sales manager or sales representative, for example -- who doesn't have deep technical expertise but uses analytics in their job, and Veezoo can work to complement another analytics platform.

Veezoo, meanwhile, is not the first analytics vendor to offer a platform with natural language search at its core. ThoughtSpot, for example, is similarly focused on search-based analysis while vendors including Tableau and Qlik have natural language processing capabilities as part of their offerings.

The ease with which customers can start using Veezoo, however, could be a differentiator, according to Mike Leone, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. While some platforms can take months to get up and running, including the time it takes to load data and train users, Veezoo can be up and running in minutes.

It's really about enabling all the nontechnical people to get the information they need to do their job.

"The NLQ [natural language query] space is starting to heat up," he said. "Several BI vendors are implementing NLQ within their platforms, [but] I would argue the greatest advantage that Veezoo has today over the competition is ramp-up period. It's just so quick and easy to get started. It may very well be the fastest ramp up to exploring data with NLQ on the market."

Customers can simply take a spreadsheet, upload it and explore the data using natural language.

In addition, Veezoo's focus on NLQ as its core capability has the potential to separate it from other tools on the market, Leone added. In particular, the ability to use natural language to not only ask questions of their data but also sophisticated follow-up questions stands out.

"As you go deeper and ask more questions, that's where I think their platform really takes off," he said.

As Veezoo emerges from stealth, it does so claiming more than 1,000 daily users and three pricing options.

Veezoo Standard is available at $29 per viewer, per month, or $49 per creator, per month, if billed annually; Veezoo Professional costs $49 per viewer, per month, or $69 per creator, per month, if billed annually; and pricing is not listed for Veezoo Enterprise.

Now that Veezoo is generally available, the vendor plans to continue honing its capabilities.

"The complexity of questions we can answer is our core, but there are always more questions we can be capable of answering," Monteiro said. "We are always working to be able to answer more and more questions."

In addition, Monteiro said there are plans to add more languages -- Spanish and Portuguese in particular -- develop more connectors and enable organizations to embed Veezoo into their existing applications.

"Our objective is to make it as seamless as possible," he said.

Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) is a division of TechTarget.