About CygnusAlpha
Built to last.
Not only to impress.
We turn AI ambition into AI operations. A platform that arrives already knowing how your industry runs, forward-deployed engineers who get it live, and the outcome written into the contract.
The origin story.
Not a market spotted in a report. A pattern seen from inside an operation at scale — and then everywhere else.
It was 2 a.m. during a major sale at ShopClues. Order volume we had never seen before. Queues exploding. And one thought that stuck: we have no system for the hard cases — the failed delivery, the payment dispute, the customer who needed a real decision, not a script.
We got through it the way most operations do: heroics, tribal knowledge, people working through the night. When it was over, nothing had accumulated. The judgment that saved the night went home with the people who had it.
Years later, the same shape showed up wherever AI was being deployed. Every department bought its own AI. The work kept running across them — and the rules that decide what happens next still lived in people’s heads, inboxes and prompts.
CygnusAlpha is the company we needed then. A rulebook the system enforces, a live picture of the work, and a record of every move — so the organization’s wisdom moves into the walls instead of walking out of the door.
Three beliefs. Accept all three, and the rest follows.
Not values on a wall. The positions that decide how we design the platform, how we structure an engagement, and what we say no to.
Teams will be people and AI.
Same roster, same queue, same performance bar. Not AI replacing a team, and not a copilot bolted onto one — one team, with agents and people each doing the work they do best.
A person stays accountable.
“The AI made the mistake” will not hold up with a customer, a regulator, or a court. So every automated move runs under rules a named person owns, and every decision is on the record.
The asset is the rulebook.
Agents are becoming a commodity — interchangeable, and cheaper every month. The rulebook is not: what a valid order looks like, when a credit needs a supervisor, whose terms differ and why. It is only yours, and it deepens every month. One is bought by the pound. The other has to be accumulated.
Operators and builders.
Not researchers.
The people behind CygnusAlpha have built and run operations at scale. The founder is named here; references for the wider team and our advisors are available on request.
Sanjay Sethi
Sanjay co-founded ShopClues — one of India’s first unicorns — and scaled it to more than 50 million customers, building the team from zero to over 1,000.
Before that, he spent seven years in senior product roles at eBay. CygnusAlpha is built on what running operations at that scale teaches — where the cost of getting it wrong is real and immediate.
LinkedIn →Technology and commercial
A senior technology leader runs the platform and the forward-deployed engineering team — the people who connect a client’s systems and get the first workflow live.
A senior commercial leader runs the client relationships — making sure the number agreed in the contract is the number the operation is measured against.
Enterprise scale and economics
References available on requestA former chief executive of two major IT services firms, advising on enterprise go-to-market and on scaling delivery with the operating discipline enterprise clients expect. And the Principal Economist of a leading US retailer, formerly an LSE academic, advising on how the economics of operations change when AI does the work.
Nobody is paid to close the gap.
Horizontal platforms hand you powerful tools. Agents inside one department stop at that department’s wall. The work that matters runs between them.
Software is accountable for software. Delivery is accountable for delivery. Nobody is accountable for the outcome.
And agents get cheaper every month, so the advantage moves to what can’t be bought: how your business runs, written down and enforced. The companies that start accumulating it now pull ahead.
Obligation ends at go-live
Powerful tools, handed over. You integrate them, staff them, and run them.
Obligation ends at the invoice
Delivery against a scope. When the project closes, so does the accountability.
Obligation ends when the number moves
A platform, forward-deployed engineers, and the outcome in the contract. If the number doesn’t move, we go back in at our cost.
The commitments we hold ourselves to.
Not aspirational values. Operating principles that shape how we behave with clients, prospects and each other — especially when it’s inconvenient.
We tell you when we’re not the right fit
If your problem doesn’t match what we do, we say so in the first conversation. We would rather disqualify quickly than start an engagement that isn’t right for either side.
We measure the number, not the activity
Reports, documents and go-live celebrations are not outcomes. Resolution rate up, escalation rate down, cost to serve down — those are. That is what goes in the contract.
We earn the right to stay
Everything configured for you is yours from day one. Clients stay because the operation keeps getting better — so the decision to stay is always theirs.
Production accountability is non-negotiable
If the number isn’t tracking to the agreed target, we go back in — at our cost — until it is. We do not hand over an operation that isn’t working.
We work in the open
No black boxes. Every rule is readable, every decision is on the record, every metric is shared — so your team can own it when we step back.
A product, not a project
Your house rules sit on top of the platform: they can add and narrow, never break it. We improve the platform once and every client gets it — and your rules survive the upgrade.
If you’re building for the long term,
so are we.
We take on a small number of clients at a time. If the problem fits, we’ll tell you quickly — and if it doesn’t, we’ll tell you that too.