ASTRA

References

AI and data work that went into production.

ASTRA delivers AI & data consulting and end-to-end implementation — from architecture and operating model through to the system running inside your environment. Below is a selection of past and current engagements, described at project level.


The six

Brought in where the foundation has to change.

We are called in when the data foundation, the model, or the operating model around it has to change — and we stay through implementation rather than handing a recommendation to someone else to build.

01

From a legacy operational store to a lakehouse.

Luxury goods & retailRead the record

02

Eight times the modelling capacity, on the same compute.

Real estate & propertyRead the record

03

A data architecture and operating model, from ground zero.

Property technology · overseas start-upRead the record

04

A children's news platform that runs itself.

Media & EdTech · Hong KongRead the record

05

Anti-scam intelligence that exposes the whole ring.

Anti-scam & financial crime · Hong KongRead the record

06

Agentic QA inside two enterprise test functions.

Telecommunications · InsuranceRead the record


The record

In full.

Each described the same way — what the project was, what our role was, what we delivered, and what changed as a result. Work still in pilot is labelled as such.

01

Luxury goods & retail

From a legacy operational store to a lakehouse.

Data platform migration and modernisation — end-to-end implementation.

The challenge

Reporting ran off a legacy operational store: siloed extracts, a short retention window, and analytics competing with the transactional workload.

Our role

End-to-end delivery partner — current-state assessment, target lakehouse architecture, migration execution, reconciliation and cutover, handover and enablement.

What we delivered

Target-state lakehouse architecture on open table formats; ingestion and transformation pipelines off the legacy store; a layered data model from raw through conformed to curated; data-quality, reconciliation and cutover controls; historical backfill; a governed semantic layer for BI; documentation and team handover.

The outcome
  • One governed source of truth — siloed extracts and spreadsheet reconciliation retired.
  • Analytics decoupled from operations — reporting no longer competes with the transactional workload, so both got faster.
  • Full history retained and queryable, where the legacy store held only a limited window.
  • Structured and semi-structured data in one place — BI and ML read the same foundation instead of diverging copies.
  • Elastic, decoupled storage and compute — capacity follows demand rather than being provisioned for the peak.
  • Governance applied once, in the platform — lineage, access control and auditability, not bolted on per report.
  • AI-ready by construction — a curated, documented, permissioned foundation that GenAI and ML work can be grounded on without ad-hoc data pulls.
02

Real estate & property

Eight times the modelling capacity, on the same compute.

Machine-learning optimisation — scalability engineering and model refinement.

The challenge

The forecasting capability could not scale with the portfolio, and quality was hard to hold as coverage grew. Buying more compute was not an acceptable answer.

Our role

ML engineering partner — diagnose the bottleneck, re-engineer the training and scoring pipeline, and refine the training regime for accuracy.

What we delivered

Profiling of the existing training and scoring pipeline; re-engineered feature computation; parallelised and vectorised training; scheduling and resource-allocation optimisation; a repeatable retraining and validation regime; accuracy work through feature engineering and model refinement; ongoing monitoring of forecast quality.

The outcome
  • Roughly eight times the modelling capacity on the same compute footprint — the gain came from engineering, not from new infrastructure spend.
  • Better forecast accuracy from a refined training regime.
  • Retraining became routine rather than a project — models keep pace with the market instead of ageing between refreshes.
03

Property technology · overseas start-up

A data architecture and operating model, from ground zero.

Greenfield architecture and target operating model — advisory through to build and GenAI prototyping.

The challenge

Ground zero. No data platform, no pipeline, no operating model — and multiple external sources that each needed onboarding.

Our role

Data architecture advisor and build partner from the ground up — we set the architecture and the operating model, then built the first working version of both.

What we delivered

Target data architecture across ingestion, processing and serving; a target operating model for the end-to-end data pipeline — ownership, roles, run process and ways of working, sized for a start-up team; an ingestion strategy for multiple heterogeneous external sources; platform selection and setup; a processing and data-quality framework; GenAI prototyping on the resulting foundation; and a staged roadmap with the skills shape needed to run it.

The outcome
  • New sources onboard against a repeatable pattern instead of bespoke code each time — the marginal cost of the next source drops.
  • A platform sized for the stage the company is at, with a defined path to scale rather than an architecture it will outgrow.
  • Clear ownership — a small team can actually run the pipeline, because the operating model says who does what when it breaks.
  • GenAI evidenced before it was committed to — prototypes on real data showed what was worth building.
  • The re-platforming cost avoided — the expensive rebuild that follows a first architecture chosen by accident.
04

Media & EdTech · Hong Kong

A children's news platform that runs itself.

AI product design, legal and compliance advisory, prototype and implementation.

The challenge

A news platform for children, operated end-to-end by AI with only limited human checkpoints — which puts the whole weight of safety, reading level and factual accuracy on the pipeline design.

Our role

AI and data design authority for the platform, legal and compliance advisor, and prototyping and implementation partner.

What we delivered

The end-to-end AI editorial pipeline — source ingestion, story selection, rewriting to an age-appropriate reading level, safety screening, factual and consistency checking, and publication; human-in-the-loop gates at a small number of defined checkpoints rather than across the whole flow; content guardrails calibrated for a child audience; legal and compliance advisory; a working prototype, then the production implementation.

The outcome
  • An editorial operation that runs on AI — a publishing cadence a newsroom of that size could not sustain manually.
  • Consistent, age-calibrated output — reading level and safety screening are applied by the system to every item, not by whoever is on shift.
  • Compliance designed in, not bolted on — the legal position was set before the pipeline was built, which is materially cheaper than retrofitting it.
  • Human effort concentrated where it counts — oversight at the gates that matter, instead of review of everything.
05

Anti-scam & financial crime · Hong Kong

Anti-scam intelligence that exposes the whole ring.

Large-scale intelligence system — AI and data engineering, end-to-end, for a major Hong Kong institution with a city-wide mandate.

The challenge

Scams do not operate alone — they run as rings, scattered across public platforms, the dark web and the chain. The signal that exposes them sits across parties that have never been read together.

Where it stands

A long-running pilot, still in progress. The system is built and fully operational, working on real data day to day — the wider programme has not yet concluded.

Our role

Core AI and data engineering across collection, knowledge construction and GenAI integration.

What we delivered

Social-media collection at scale; dark-web collection; blockchain and on-chain tracing; ontology design and knowledge-graph construction; entity resolution and network detection; GenAI integrated into the analyst workflow; intelligence output into the client's own process.

The outcome
  • Scattered signals related into networks — analysts see the ring, not the single scam.
  • Social, dark-web and on-chain evidence in one picture, where these have historically sat in separate tools and separate teams.
  • Analyst throughput raised by GenAI on the parts of the work that are reading and summarising rather than judging.
06

Telecommunications · Insurance

Agentic QA inside two enterprise test functions.

Agentic QA — AI-driven testing across the test lifecycle.

The challenge

Two large enterprises — a major mainland telecommunications operator and a major insurance firm — with release cadences their test functions could not keep pace with by writing and running cases by hand.

Our role

Product and delivery — ASTRA's Agentic QA capability deployed into the client's test function and run alongside their QA team.

What we delivered

Automated test-case generation from requirements and specifications, produced in the client's own templates; vision-driven automated execution — a vision model reads the application screen the way a tester does, rather than depending on brittle element selectors; automated regression runs; automated test-report generation; and traceability from requirement to test case to result.

The outcome
  • Test design shifts from authoring to reviewing — the QA team approves and corrects generated cases instead of writing them from scratch.
  • UI automation that survives front-end change, because the agent reads the screen rather than a selector that breaks on every release.
  • Coverage expanded without a matching headcount increase.
  • A consistent evidence pack for every release — generated, not assembled.

Why no names

Confidentiality is part of the work.

Several of these engagements touch regulated data, live investigative work, or systems our clients would rather not advertise. We describe the work; we do not trade on the name. Named references are available on request, under NDA.

How to read this

Work-area level, not marketing.

Each entry states what the project was, what our role in it was, what we actually delivered, and what changed. Work still in pilot is labelled as such. Where an outcome cannot be published as a figure, it is stated qualitatively rather than dressed up.

Also see

Case studies.

These are engagements. If you want the capability view — what kind of intelligence we can build across financial services, fraud and financial crime, and digital assets — that sits on the Case studies page.


Start

Your situation is not on this list.

It rarely is. Bring us the data you actually have, the decision you are trying to make, and the constraints you cannot move — and we'll sketch the system worth building.