Five years ago Nina Hernandez founded Kuala Lumpur-based Iraya Energies. The company harnesses AI techniques to extract extra value from unstructured document databases stored in oil and gas and energy sector companies. Hernandez has degrees in chemical engineering and petroleum engineering from the University of Philippines and Technical University of Denmark. In this first article in our new Personal Record interview series, she provides a glimpse into the life and times of a start-up entrepreneur.
Tell us a little about your background and how you got into geoscience?
I was born in a small village at a foot of a volcano and as a child used to watch the lava flow from our window. My first summer job as a student engineer was to repair corroding water pipes in a geothermal field close by. I thought it was very cool to wear a steel toe and be with nature at the same time, so I fell in love with the idea of measuring the earth as a profession.
How did the idea for your company arise?
It was during the oil crisis of 2016 (we seem to have a lot these days). There was another round of reorganization in Schlumberger where I worked for almost 13 years, and I had to leave. The new-found time gave me an opportunity to study the latest trends in digital technology such as Netflix, Spotify, and understand how we could use those human-tech interaction principles in a very traditional industry such as oil and gas.
What were the main challenges in starting and financing your own company?
When we started in Singapore, it was already a very hip and happening place for B2C tech start-ups. However, there was a limited support system for a B2B energy deep tech like us. So Iraya bootstrapped for several years, which enabled us to develop the technology very fast, and we are deeply proud about that. Fast forward, Microsoft became a partner and Petronas in Malaysia came in as an institutional investor, and that changed many things for us. We were able to scale our infrastructures and professionalize our support functions so we can serve our customers better.
You are working with EAGE on EarthDoc. What would be the benefit to members?
ED2K is our very ambitious, and future-forward collaboration with EAGE. All of EarthDoc’s 70,000 articles are geotagged to 800+ basins. Natural language processing, auto-image recognition, and recommender systems are fully built-in into the ED2K system. The goal is to use decades of O&G subsurface knowledge to provide answers to some of the most pressing questions of our generation: energy sustainability, transition, and climate change. The benefits – now we can read the Earth better, and hopefully support the net zero agenda by 2050.
Your moonshot moment?
Perseverance, Nasa’s fifth rover and geologist landed on Mars on 18 February this year to seek signs of ancient life. In Iraya part of our work is using neural network techniques to detect fossils and understand biomarkers. My ‘Mars-shot’ moment is for Iraya’s technology to support space exploration by doing what we do best – reading the earth.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years time?
I hope to see myself to be in a position where I can mentor young tech movers and be an angel investor myself, or maybe in government policymaking. I believe that the world is changing a lot these days; there are many great, benevolent tech ideas from our young people for an equitable world. We need to enable them because they will be the ones to inherit the planet that we will leave behind.
What would be your advice to young entrepreneurs?
Gain experience, do a job, work for a boss. From a practical perspective, not everyone can drop out of college and be Mark Zuckerberg, as we often have family and financial responsibilities that have to be balanced with entrepreneurship. Before founding Iraya, I learnt many things in my normal job – how to manage priorities, deal with people, sales, technique. Invest in your training and in yourself.
How do you spend your free time?
As much as possible I try to do long walks in my free time, and listen to music. Ensuring that we take care of our physical and mental health is one of the best gifts that we can give to ourselves and families in this time.
