About Us
The people behind DecisionOpt, and why we started it.
Origin Story
DecisionOpt began with a problem that kept appearing across industries.
Over years of working in Operations Research, building optimization solutions, and mentoring practitioners, Alok was frequently approached by companies looking for help with the same questions: How should we frame this decision problem? Is optimization the right approach? How do we build the right team? And how do we turn a promising model into something that works in day-to-day operations?
The opportunity was clear. Operations Research had the potential to create significant business impact, but deep optimization expertise remained concentrated in a relatively small number of organizations. For many companies, the challenge was not recognizing the value of optimization, but finding the specialist capability to build and deploy it effectively.
DecisionOpt was founded in 2024 to bridge that gap.
The goal was simple: bring deep Operations Research and decision intelligence expertise to real business problems, and deliver working decision systems rather than models that remain in presentations or prototypes. Solutions should not stop at mathematical elegance. They should be usable, scalable, and produce measurable operational impact.
That philosophy continues to shape DecisionOpt today.
The mission also extends beyond client engagements. DecisionOpt actively contributes to the Operations Research community through teaching, mentoring, industry workshops, and initiatives that bring practitioners, researchers, and businesses together.
Our Leadership
Dr. Alok Patel
Founder
Alok holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at IIT Bombay. Before founding DecisionOpt, he led the development of decision-support applications at Udaan, one of India's largest B2B e-commerce companies, and previously headed ExxonMobil's optimization team for LNG supply chain operations and production planning.
Over the past decade, Alok has led optimization initiatives across logistics, supply chain, manufacturing, e-commerce, and energy. His expertise spans network design, production planning, routing, scheduling, inventory optimization, and capacity planning, with a focus on building scalable, production-grade optimization engines that deliver measurable business impact.
Beyond his consulting work, Alok founded OR Guru to mentor the next generation of Operations Research professionals. He also conducts industry workshops on mathematical programming, solver performance, and deploying optimization solutions at scale.
Dr. Arvind Kumar
Partner
Dr. Arvind Kumar is a Partner at DecisionOpt, where he advises on algorithms, product development, user experience, and business development. He holds a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Florida and a B.Tech from IIT Madras.
Across more than twenty years, he has led the development and deployment of optimization systems in railways, airlines, warehousing, and fulfillment. That experience shapes how we work: the mathematics has to be sound, and the plan it produces has to hold up in a live operation.
Beyond his consulting work, Arvind teaches optimization at leading Indian business schools and IITs, mentors startups on applying decision science to real business problems, and has led the Operations Research India Meetup since 2014, connecting practitioners, researchers, and students through workshops and knowledge-sharing initiatives.
Akanksha Patel
Director, Decision Intelligence Solutions
Akanksha leads the design and deployment of optimization and decision intelligence solutions for supply chain, logistics, manufacturing, scheduling, and production planning. She partners with clients to translate complex operational challenges into scalable decision-support systems that improve planning quality and business performance.
Before joining DecisionOpt, Akanksha led the delivery of optimization and decision intelligence solutions for ExxonMobil across Supply Chain, Logistics, Maintenance, and Trading. Her work spanned production and distribution optimization, maintenance and vessel scheduling, portfolio optimization, computer vision-based document intelligence, and enterprise optimization applications supporting critical business decisions. Earlier in her career, she developed optimization solutions for transportation and distribution planning, bid price prediction, assignment problems, and logistics optimization across multiple industries.
Akanksha's expertise spans mathematical optimization, heuristics and metaheuristics, machine learning, and enterprise decision intelligence, covering the full lifecycle from problem scoping and solution design to deployment and adoption. She holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and Engineering and has research experience from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay.
Founder-Led, Team-Delivered
Your solution is built by our 15+ member team of OR scientists and engineers, including PhD and master's degree holders in Operations Research, with our leadership personally involved throughout: shaping the approach, reviewing the models, mentoring the team, and staying accountable for delivery.
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