SmartOne: Building an AI Data Business

The case opens in August 2021, as Habib and Shahysta Hassim, husband and wife co-founders of the data labeling company SmartOne, contemplate the strategy of the high growth company. Between 2016 and 2021, SmartOne had kept doubling its size every two years and now, with its workforce of 1,000, it was annotating data for global tech clients.
The case provides a background on SmartOne’s journey from call center operations to data labeling and elaborates on the company’s operating and business model, providing details on processes such as: recruiting, training, managing the workforce, project management, and quality control. The case also provides a background on data labeling, data pipeline and the AI factory (a term explained in the case which represents the AI industry value chain) for larger context and gives an overview of the competitive environment.
In August 2021, the co-founders needed a strategy to shape the company’s future. Where in the AI factory could SmartOne position itself to remain relevant and take a piece of the evolving pie? Should the company grow upstream, to become a full data pipeline provider, or downstream into developing algorithms?