Nina Alag Suri, founder and CEO of X0PA AI: Each week, My Morning Routine looks at how a successful member of the community starts their day — and then throws in a couple of random business questions just for fun. Speaking to us this week is Nina Alag Suri (LinkedIn), founder and CEO of X0PA AI. Edited excerpts from our conversation:

I founded X0PA AI back in 2017 as my second venture. We’re headquartered in Singapore.

Prior to that, I ran my previous company, which was an HR consulting firm, for 16 years. I had founded it back in 1999 when I was in my late 20s. I started in India, expanded it to Europe, the UK, US, Canada, and then eventually moved the headquarters to Singapore.

I come from an engineering background, so I felt that there was a great window for us to pivot to a tech platform and to use artificial intelligence to improve companies’ abilities to hire and retain their employees, and make the process not only efficient and automated, but also intelligent.

We’ve been very successful in Singapore. Our focus on ethical AI and removing bias from the hiring process has resonated very well with large enterprise clients, as well as with a lot of government agencies. We also help with internship matching and college admissions, so the use cases are going beyond just hiring. We help achieve an 85% reduction in screening time, and companies have reported more than 50% in cost savings.

As far as the UAE is concerned, there’s been so much focus by the government on digital adoption, and there is a general hunger for AI and automation, so we felt that this was a prime market for us to set up our regional headquarters. There’s also a lot of synergies with the other markets that we are in: Singapore, Indonesia, and India — we call it the golden triangle.

None of our algorithms use anything of personal nature. There is no gender, school, ethnicity, or age — it is a purely skill-based platform. The reason why we have a patent for our AI is because it also looks at complementary skills, so for example, if somebody wants to hire a data scientist with 20 years of experience, that’s a challenge because that title did not really exist, so what our AI does is it looks at complementary skills, like if you have a statistics or modeling background.

It really helps open up the talent pool to include people who may previously be overlooked with a cookie-cutter approach to hiring, and that starts from the employer’s mindset and extends all the way to the data we use and to constant reinforcement and algorithm testing to make sure that no biases are creeping in.

We were the first company in HR tech to receive AI Verify status, which adheres to 11 principles like maintaining quality and constant monitoring of data, as well as keeping the human in the loop so that the machine is not taking decisions on behalf of humans. Another important thing when it comes to ethical AI is transparency, meaning your AI is able to explain why the algorithm is making a specific judgment and can explain why it is doing what it is doing in a transparent way so that there is no room for ambiguity.

My morning routine starts early because I work with the Singapore office, and that’s ahead four hours. I get up around 6am, and the first thing I do is play with my dogs, which kicks off the day with a lot of positive energy. Then I usually jump right into it.

The one thing that I always do before I end my day is I plan for the next one. Otherwise, going in to start work at 6:30am without a plan would be a bit overwhelming. I make sure calls and meetings for the Singapore office are planned out for the first portion of the day, and I take a mid-morning break and then my work for the UAE begins. I usually take all my meetings and calls with investors and clients here for the afternoon.

Walking and swimming are really important for me; without them, the stress just builds up a lot. Usually in the afternoon once the weather has cooled down, I go for a swim or my husband and I go to a mall for a walk to get out 7-10k steps in. I also tend to take a lot of staycations on the weekend to decompress and be ready for a new week.

I enjoy podcasts when I’m driving or walking, mostly boring ones about startups and artificial intelligence. Everything I listen to is about new technologies and the latest in agentic AI. I am also a massive movie buff so if there’s a good movie out there, I love going to the cinema to see it.

In terms of my goals, I took the plunge without hiring a team here because I really wanted to understand the culture first and how to do business here from a grassroots perspective so that with my experience, I can then guide my team as opposed to just hiring a team and not really being cognizant of how the market works.

I am being very hands on at the moment, and I hope I can continue to meet clients and broaden my network until the end of the year so that I’m ready to start building a really strong team. On a personal level, Dubai has such good connections, so I do really want to see the region and explore more.

One thing that has stuck with me throughout my career was something my first boss used to say, which is: I will never ask you to do something I can’t do. I think it’s really important to not have unrealistic expectations for your team, and to practice what you preach. Secondly, keep a very strong eye on fiscal health, and pay attention not just to your topline but also your bottom line.

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