Angel Mendez
Executive Chairman, LevaData
About LevaData
From a pile of spreadsheets to LevaData Zeta
LevaData started with one buyer's frustration: huge sourcing decisions made from spreadsheets and email, with no way to know if a price was good. It took years of data work to answer that question with the LevaData Benchmark.
LevaData Zeta is the next step. It takes buyers from knowing the right price to getting it agreed, awarded and used.
- 2013Where it startedA Cisco supply chain leader gets tired of guessing.
- The plumbing yearsOne engine for the dataCustomer, derived and market insights blended into one view.
- The BenchmarkSavings found, then lostCustomers find the gap, then the work leaves for email.
- NowLevaData ZetaFindNegotiateConfirmThe flow LevaData Zeta finishes, inside LevaData.
01Where it started
Billion-dollar decisions, made in spreadsheets
Rajesh Kalidindi founded LevaData in 2013, after years as Director of Supply Chain Operations at Cisco. He managed multibillion-dollar spend across thousands of component parts and hundreds of suppliers, and the tools did not keep up.
Sourcing teams made huge buying and negotiating decisions from a pile of spreadsheets, disconnected databases and long email threads. Nobody could say with confidence whether a price was good.
He left Cisco with one idea: supply management should be a competitive edge, not just a cost center to squeeze. And the people who buy the components and materials inside physical products deserved better tools than anyone was building for them.
A sourcing desk, before
02The hard part first
Years of boring plumbing, so the answer can be simple
Before any AI could help, the data had to make sense. A customer's data arrives from every direction: ERP systems, PLMs and random spreadsheets. LevaData had to combine it so demand, pricing and the product hierarchy lined up, and so each manufacturer had one name instead of five.
Then every part had to be matched to insights that LevaData creates or gets from partners, like lifecycle status and distributor benchmarks.
That work became the LevaData engine. It blends customer and market insights quickly and accurately, then derives what no single source can show: savings opportunity, spend optimization, negotiation paths and manufacturer discount averages. The result is one view of what drives sourcing: price, lead time variance, inventory optimization and sourcing lifecycle.
The LevaData Benchmark, the fair-market price for every part at your volume, is built on that engine. How the Benchmark is calculated →
1Pull it in
Customer data from wherever it lives.
2Normalize it
Demand, pricing and hierarchy that line up, and one name per manufacturer.
TITexas Instr.TEXAS INSTRUMENTS INC
Texas Instruments
3Match it
Every part connected to LevaData and partner insights.
Then it all goes into the engine ↓
The LevaData engine
Customer and market insights go in. What no single source can show comes out.
Customer insightsDemand, prices, suppliers, product hierarchy
Market insightsDistributor prices, lifecycle, partner data
What LevaData derives
Savings opportunityDollars above market, part by part
Spend optimizationWhere your spend can work harder
Negotiation pathsWhich supplier, which parts, which ask first
Manufacturer discount averagesWhat buyers typically get off market, by manufacturer
One view of what drives sourcing
Price
Lead time variance
Inventory optimization
Sourcing lifecycle
03The problem we're solving
Knowing the price was never the finish line. Getting it is.
Customers love the Benchmark. But once they find a part they're overpaying for, the work leaves LevaData. They export to Excel, email suppliers, chase replies, and hope the agreed price actually reaches the contract manufacturer and the buyers who place orders.
That's where savings leak. There is no assurance the supplier agreed, no assurance the new price is used across the company, and no record that proves what the effort was worth.
The gap isn't finding the savings. It's everything after.Why we built LevaData Zeta
In LevaDataFind the gap
The Benchmark shows the parts above market.
SpreadsheetsExport & sort
Copied into Excel to build a target list.
EmailAsk suppliers
Threads, attachments, and replies to chase.
UnknownAgreed?
Did the supplier actually accept the price?
UnknownUsed?
Did the contract manufacturer and buyers switch to it?
Every step outside LevaData is a place the savings can disappear.
04How LevaData Zeta solves it
Find it. Negotiate it. Confirm it.
LevaData Zeta keeps every step after the Benchmark inside LevaData, on simple shared screens. What used to take dozens of emails and files now takes a few clicks, and LevaData moves the work along with you, from the first coffee of the day to a price everyone has confirmed.
Step 1
Find it
Start the day knowing where the money is.
- A morning brief of what changed since you last logged in
- The Benchmark ranks parts by dollars above market
- AI explains what the gap means for you, in plain language
Step 2
Negotiate it
Walk in with a plan, and let LevaData do the chasing.
- A negotiation playbook for the supplier or contract manufacturer you're about to meet
- Quote requests go out to every supplier at once, through a secure link from your own email
- Every reply and counter-offer tracked in one place until you agree
Step 3
Confirm it
Everyone looks at the same price, and says so.
- Awarded prices go to your contract manufacturer and your buyers
- Each of them confirms with one click that they've seen the price
- LevaData marks it closed, with the date and who confirmed
Closed
The full history stays in LevaData: what was asked, what was agreed, and who confirmed it. So you can see, and prove, the savings LevaData helped you capture.
NICHICON UPW1J331MHD1TO · SANMINAIllustrative example, the same part and supplier as the platform tour
- Find
Morning brief flagged the part as priced above market
LevaData - Find
AI explained the gap and which supplier to talk to
You asked - Negotiate
Negotiation playbook built for SANMINA
You - Negotiate
Quote requests sent through secure links
From your email - Negotiate
SANMINA replied, round 1
Supplier - Negotiate
Counter-offer sent, round 2
You - Negotiate
SANMINA agreed to the new price
Supplier - Confirm
Awarded prices sent to the contract manufacturer and buyer
You - Confirm
Contract manufacturer confirmed
Contract mfr - Confirm
Buyer confirmed
Buyer - Closed
Closed, with the date and who confirmed, kept for good
LevaData
05Leadership
The people behind LevaData
Rajesh Kalidindi
Founder, LevaData
Aaron Fleishman
Partner, Tola Capital
Kenneth Frank
Partner, Banneker Partners
Terrance Bei
Principal, Banneker Partners
Harjot Sachdeva
Operating Partner, Banneker Partners
Jon Hiner
Head of Finance
Brian York
Chief Product Officer
LinkedIn profile of Brian York
Read bio
Brian has extensive experience in product innovation, product management, and delivering contextualized data to drive better decision-making. He uses AI to build products faster, and puts it to work for customers: generative AI that explains insights in plain language people can act on, and agentic AI, not as a buzzword but as skills that run automatically and together to take the tedious work off a procurement team so people can focus on strategy. He also knows MCP (Model Context Protocol), from connecting to MCP servers to building them, so valuable data isn't locked inside a platform and can flow straight into a customer's own AI. Prior to his journey at LevaData, Brian was Executive Director at IHS Markit, responsible for the cost benchmarking product management and teardowns business. He has additional experience with HTC and was a Founder at Savant GPS. Brian holds a BS in Civil Engineering degree from the University of Texas at Austin.