Building the future of business automation with AI

Dear Partner,

At Avent, we believe in a future where industrial trade moves at the speed of software, where AI handles commerce, operations, and fulfillment so humans can focus on relationships and strategy.

I grew up in the distribution industry. I watched my father build a successful industrial distribution business from the ground up, and being around it from a young age taught me to think like an operator, not a theorist.

My brother and I spent years talking about how to grow the business. Almost every conversation ended in the same place: hiring.

Our sales team spent most of their day making quotations, entering orders, and handling administrative work instead of talking to customers. We had opportunities to grow, but the team simply didn’t have the time to go after new accounts. They were busy processing what was already on their plate. Growth was always limited by how fast we could hire and train good people.

And hiring in our industry is hard.

It’s expensive. It takes months, sometimes years, for someone to become fully productive. Pricing knowledge lives in inboxes or in someone’s head. When people leave or move roles, everything slows down. Even when you do everything right, you never really know who will stick around.

That frustration is where Avent came from.

We wanted to build something that could take on the repetitive, admin-heavy inside sales work with the same competence as an experienced rep, so teams could spend their time where it actually matters, with customers.

We’re building AI infrastructure for distribution.

Every physical product in the world passes through a distributor or a manufacturer. Yet the systems that power industrial trade still rely on email threads, phone calls, PDFs, and decades-old ERPs. AI has promised to help, but most tools were not built for the realities of how this industry actually works.

Avent brings your customers, products, transactions and rules into one connected business model. People and AI work together within it, automating quoting, order entry, purchasing, invoicing and the work around them.

Your business will keep changing. You should be able to see how your automation works, change the rules and build on what you already have. That is why Avent gives your team control of the workflows, knowledge and permissions that run the work.

We’re not building this to replace people.

We’re building it so great operators aren’t buried in work that never should have required them in the first place.

This is long-term work. And it’s deeply personal for us.

— Abhay Kalra,
    CEO & Founder of Avent