We never stopped hiring in India, says IBM India MD Sandip Patel

While there are pockets of recessionary tendencies that we see in different parts of the world, I believe that India is in a good spot, says IBM India MD Sandip Patel

For IBM Corporation, India remains the bright spot. Its India business is growing. Sandip Patel, managing director, IBM India, says this geography is the perfect microcosm of the global firm. In conversation with Shivani Shinde and Sourabh Lele, he talks about the focus for 2023, how it is pivoting the artificial intelligence (AI) model to work for India, and continues to hire (the IBM careers page shows over 3,000 openings in India). Edited excerpts:

With recessionary trends impacting the global economy, how is India looking?

While there are pockets of recessionary tendencies that we see in different parts of the world, I believe India is in a good place. Especially in the way we look at growth projections.

Technology continues to serve as a deflationary factor in any economy. The reason being in today’s world, technology is playing the role of sutradhar, in how it connects the unconnected, but is also accelerating digital transformation.

We believe that the elements of hybrid Cloud, AI, and enterprise-grade security will continue to evolve.

Within this, I am extremely proud of our operations in India. We have just exited 2022 with about five quarters of double-digit growth in India. We have more than mirrored the growth trajectory of what we have seen globally. This is in a way testimony to what this geography means to IBM globally.

It is the true microcosm of IBM Corporation. We have technology businesses and delivery centres but we also have software laboratories (labs), systems labs, and research labs encompassed here. Our labs are making and developing products that go into our software and hardware the world over.

You mentioned five quarters of double-digit growth in India. What does 2023 look like?

In terms of priorities, it is hybrid Cloud and AI, underpinned by security. In our consulting and technology, we are working closely with a focus on the existing client base.

We announced two fundamental shifts in our partnership and go-to-market towards the end of 2021. A big focus is on business partners, and ecosystem partners to address what we are already doing with them but to also look into white spaces that enable us to expand and grow with deep technical skills.

Is IBM also hiring in India?

We never stopped hiring in India. We continue to do so in India. We do not declare headcount numbers for specific geographies but we have only grown in India in the past two years.

The finance minister in the Budget said ‘make AI work for India’. How do you see IBM contributing to this?

While ChatGPT and Google Bard have generated a lot of conversation around AI, and these are defining moments in the trajectory of AI, we are pivoting our AI focus a little. Two or three years back, about 9 per cent of businesses spoke about AI. Today, 52 per cent of clients talk about it.

AI has become front and centre. But the concern that clients have is whether AI will work for them. Will it add value and return on investment (RoI)? Will it cost a lot?

Our work in AI has been on how we can use core AI technology to take data sets and create foundational models that help to get solutions to results quickly.

We are doing this both in the public and private sectors. We also believe that AI will never replace human beings. To illustrate an example of making AI work for India, we are working with one of the government departments for policy formation and fraud detection.

We created a data platform and 43 AI models and they have seen 50x RoI, they have seen 2,000-plus fraud cases that they filed, and over $5 billion of frauds have been detected. This is a very India-specific AI model used to make AI work for India.

Likewise, we are working with clients like Asian Paints, Parle, State Bank of India and others to create AI-enabled models specific to their businesses.

Do you think AI can impact skilling?

Globally skilling is an issue. There are fewer people available for jobs. Skilling and getting people ready for future skills is a huge challenge India is up against. AI can help enhance productivity through the right automation and skill augmentation.

How do you drive automation of things that are non-skill-based tasks so that one can enhance and better utilise the skilled workers you have?

We have been focusing on this area along with the National Association of Software and Service Companies. Creating a skills programme at scale is the need of the hour. We have been one of the pioneers to introduce the AI curriculum at the Central Board of Secondary Education final four years of education.

In India, there have been scenarios where jobs get posted but there are not enough people to fill those vacancies. According to a United Nations report, in 2011, half of the total population was of working age and this will continue for two decades. We will add 183 million people to this working group by 2050. This means, 22 per cent of the global workforce which is added over the next three decades is going to come from India.