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Mark: Hey, folks let’s learn something new about the oil and gas industry.

All right. We’re sitting here with Ali and Khizer from Rig Basket. How are you doing, Khizer?

Khizer: Good. Not too bad. Thanks for having us.

Ali: Thanks for having us, Mark. We’re doing fine.

Mark: So, y’all do something actually fascinating something that has been done on paper and done in old school for a million years in oil and gas industry and you’re bringing it actually up the twentieth century. You want to talk a little about what you do?

Ali: Certainly. In terms of our perspective what we’re trying to do is bring more control to the oil and gas base and help people utilize their resources better. Khizer, do you want to add anything technology-wise?

Khizer: So, we’re taking concepts from manufacturing and applying them to oil field operations to help them lean them out more, but in a more automated systematic way. And I can explain the details if people need later, but that’s the gist of it.

Mark: Yeah. And so, you’re actually driving cost down at the same time you’re increasing productivity, that’s like impossible.

Ali: Well, yeah, I mean it came from a lot of insights. I used to work around. Just a bit of background about myself and Khizer can fill in about himself.

I used to work on the well sites and  for four years internationally for a big oil food services company. So, I picked up a lot just come moving up the ranks, you know, in terms of the business side, the operation side. And we saw a lot of inefficiencies that we thought we could being from our generation part with software.

Khizer: So, I worked in manufacturing primarily in the oil and gas sector. And we were dong similar stuff, but in a more systematic and arranged way. We were using technique a methodology called Lean Six Sigma.

I realized that Ali did not use that on the field and that improves your operations a lot, but the problem is it’s very manual. So, we came up with the way to automate it, make it more systematic and take projects that may be take six months to figuring out the analytics within half an hour.

Mark: Wow. That’s super powerful. So, I’ve got to ask you a question. How did y’all two meet?

Ali: So, Khizer and I met on nine, maybe ten years now going in college. We went to the University of Pennsylvania, both studied engineering. He studied Economics and then, we went to grad school as well. I didn’t know Khizer that much back in college, but then we work through the same company and then we just got – I got this idea that I want to be an entrepreneur now and I reached out to him as the tenth person actually to doing the company and he was the first person to say yes. So, that’s our story.

Mark: Yeah. That’s a great story. So, automating Lean Six Sigma, that’s — I’ve never heard anybody doing that. Six Sigma has been in this industry for a long time, but being able to automate, does that mean that the people that use your tools don’t actually have to know Six Sigma?

Khizer: Yes. So, the whole goal was to take – so, Six Sigma is a whole methodology. You have your analytics portion and your strategy portion. We’re taking care of the entire analytics so people don’t need to know what different metrics mean. We give that to them in a very visual intuitive ways. So, people need – they have a very short learning curve and it will be intuitive what decision is the optimal for them.

Ali: Yeah. So, what I felt was that, you know, not everyone in this downturn can ex –, you know, afford like a $3,000 consultant coming in and telling them where to cut. So, we said, what if we can use the power of software use our statistical knowledge and our business knowledge and build it into a system that could tap in real time to whatever data you have, run our algorithms and provide you with the insights you needed.

And, that’s what we really felt for, I mean I know a lot of companies are struggling with working capital right now, supply chains being pushed, a lot of departments are being closed. So, we wanted companies to do more request and that’s what we thought we could do with starting with software.

Mark: Yeah. So, if you’re in the oil and gas company and you’re out there struggling and even if you aren’t struggling even if you’re in downstream and your business is on fire, you still need to worry about optimization and performance. Reach out to these guys, have a chat with them because what they’re doing is revolutionary.

If people want to find out more about you and your company, where should they go?

Khizer: www.rigbasket.com. We’re on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

Mark: Yeah. So, we’ll put a link in the show notes so you don’t have to be writing anything down.

So, thank you both very much for today.

Ali: Well, thank you again, Mark for having us.

Khizer: Thanks again, Mark. Thank you.

Mark: So, folks I hope this helped. We will see you next time.