Inside Arvist: Why quality control (QC) is the missing link in logistics automation
An interview with the CEO and Founder of Arvist, Nilay Parikh
For years, the logistics world has been promised the future: robots gliding across warehouses, IoT sensors tracking every movement, automated workflows eliminating errors and delays. Billions have been poured into Industry 4.0 tools — yet adoption has lagged. Many of these technologies simply fail to scale once they hit the real world.
For Nilay Parikh, the Founder and CEO of Arvist, that disconnect was impossible to ignore. Fresh out of his aerospace engineering master’s program, he spent years on the ground in more than 60 warehouses and manufacturing sites across the U.S., Europe, China, and India. And what he kept seeing was not a lack of ambition — it was a lack of fit. “The technology was impressive,” Nilay explains. “But it demanded new hardware, new processes, and new workflows. Most operators just don’t have the bandwidth for that level of change.” And beneath these stalled deployments was a deeper, more fundamental issue: quality control (QC). Despite being a major driver of cost, customer disputes, and operational risk, QC remained manual, inconsistent, and painfully slow. For logistics providers — especially third-party logistics’ (3PLs) providers — the stakes were enormous. Some lose millions each year to preventable errors.
That is when Nilay realised that QC was not just a problem; it was the problem. And unlike infrastructure-heavy automation, it was also solvable with the systems warehouses already had in place. That insight led to the founding of Arvist — a plug-and-play vision AI platform that uses existing security cameras, tablets, and warehouse management systems to deliver real-time QC and compliance monitoring, without interrupting workflows.
In this edition of Meet the Founder, Nilay shares how that realisation reshaped his view of automation, why pivoting early mattered, and what it means for a global industry under pressure to perform.
The Interview: Inside Arvist
Q: What “aha” moment made you realise this was the right problem to solve?
Nilay recalls that the breakthrough wasn’t sudden — it was cumulative.“After travelling through more than 60 industrial sites, I kept seeing Industry 4.0 tools stall because they required heavy infrastructure changes,” he explains. But the turning point came once Arvist began working directly with operators.
“We realised quality control was the real bottleneck — slow, manual, and overlooked,” he says. “Once that clicked, everything aligned. We needed to build vision AI that worked with what companies already had: cameras, tablets, and their WMS. That’s where the value was.”
Q: Can you share a recent success story where your technology created real value?
Nilay points to a third-party logistics (3PL) customer as a vivid example. “They were losing nearly $2 million a year in damage-related claims,” he explains. “Within weeks of deploying Arvist on their existing security cameras, we were detecting packaging defects and loading issues in real time.”
A seemingly small shift — a 0.5% improvement in accuracy — translated into almost $1 million saved. “That’s the power of real-time QC,” he notes. “Small improvements compound fast. And now we’re helping them move toward zero-error shipments.”
Q: What is the biggest risk you have taken so far—and how has it shaped your journey?
“Starting the company was the first big leap,” Nilay says with a smile. “But the real risk came a year in.”
He explains that Arvist initially focused on safety applications. But market demand was pointing somewhere else. “We realised QC was where customers were truly hurting,” he says. “Pivoting the company toward quality was a major shift — but it’s what unlocked real product-market fit. It validated everything we believed about frictionless automation.”
Q: What unexpected lesson have you learned from working with traditional industries?
Nilay laughed when asked this — not out of dismissiveness, but recognition. “People assume legacy industries are slow. They are not,” he explains. “They are focused. Their job is moving goods; everything else is secondary.”
He highlights that successful adoption comes down to clarity and timing. “Simplicity wins. But education matters just as much,” he says. “Customers adopt when they’re ready, and when the value is measurable. You need patience, and a very clear ROI.”
Q: What ripple effects do you see if your technology is adopted globally?
Nilay believes the impact extends far beyond catching errors. “When real-time QC becomes standard, everything downstream improves,” he notes. “Fewer disputes, lower costs, smoother operations, stronger trust between manufacturers, logistics providers, and end customers.”
And at scale, the effect compounds. “It accelerates the shift toward automation,” he adds, “and creates supply chains that are transparent, resilient, and globally more efficient.”
About Arvist
Arvist is a vision AI platform that delivers real-time quality control and compliance monitoring using the infrastructure companies already have.
By turning existing cameras and operational data into actionable insights, Arvist helps logistics providers reduce errors, cut costs, and move closer to fully automated, zero-defect operations.
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