India can be a world leader in cognitive computing: IBM CEO

Ginni Rometty says the country has an edge over others in this field

India should bet on cognitive computing to differentiate itself from the rest of the world and to achieve a prominent position in the technology sector, IBM’s president and chief executive officer Ginni Rometty (pictured) said on Tuesday.

“The 21st century will be the Indian century and India can leapfrog over others in many areas. We believe that the cognitive era will help you differentiate yourself,” Rometty said at the IBM India Watson Summit in Bengaluru on Tuesday.

The IBM CEO is in India on a three-day trip to showcase technologies including IBM Watson, its cognitive computing platform, to customers. She will meet Reserve Bank of India Governor Raghuram Rajan in Mumbai later this week.

Haryana-based talent development service InspireOne Technologies and marketing insights firm TEXTIENT from Chennai have become the first Indian companies to adopt the Watson platform to develop smart solutions for their customers.

The two firms will leverage Watson’s application program interface, or API, to analyse natural language and gauge sentiment to turn dark data into valuable insights. They are looking to leverage Watson’s human-like cognitive abilities to extract intelligence — something not possible with traditional analytics.

InspireOne Technologies has built Supernova, a product that assesses employees’ eligibility to take up leadership positions by gathering intelligence through emails they send and analysed by Watson. “Over the course of 6-12 months, even if a fraction of emails can be analysed, we can build a leadership profile of a person,” said Kartik Mohla, founder and CEO of InspireOne.

IBM Watson made its debut in India in collaboration with Manipal Hospitals to improve individualised care for cancer patients back in December 2015. Oncology has been one of the key focuses for Watson in the healthcare space.

In two years, IBM Watson has gone from having three partners to 500 partners now. While several firms partnering with the company are oriented towards carrying out research and aren’t financially viable, it claims one-third of its partners are on the market.

“Today, when we look at what’s happening in the world, much of the data is being left untapped. A third of all data today is video. There’s a tremendous amount of knowledge, but it goes virtually untapped. Data is much like oil in the ground. By itself, it’s not very valuable but if you extract it and refine it you start to get new insights,” said Stephen Gold, chief marketing officer, IBM Watson.