Wipro aims to become AI-first firm; more than 220K trained in GenAI

Till date, over 220,000 of our employees have completed training on AI fundamentals and the responsible use of AI, said Subha Tatavarti, Chief Technology Officer, Wipro Ltd

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Bengaluru-based IT major Wipro aims to train nearly all its employees in artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) as it rushes to become an AI-first firm, a top company executive said.

As part of this strategy, Wipro last year committed to investing $1 billion to advance its AI capabilities over the next three years.

It launched ai360, an “AI-first innovation ecosystem” aimed at integrating AI into every platform, tool, and solution used internally and offered to clients.

“On some level, all Wipro employees are working on and with AI or GenAI. When we announced Wipro ai360 last summer, it was about creating an AI-first culture. And, part of that means, we all need to be dedicated to AI,” Subha Tatavarti, chief technology officer (CTO), Wipro, told Business Standard.      

Till date, over 220,000 of our employees have completed training on AI fundamentals and the responsible use of AI, said Tatavarti. This includes the vast majority given Wipro had a total employee strength of 240,234 as of December 31.   

“We have over 55,000 AI practitioners in our ecosystem, who are AI experts, engineers, consultants, and data scientists. They are dedicated towards infusing AI/GenAI across industries, technologies, and domain ecosystems,” Tatavarti said.

Wipro has developed a training curriculum for employees to learn AI, machine learning, and GenAI.

It includes a variety of courses at different levels, from awareness to advanced specialisation catering to individuals across varying levels of knowledge and expertise.

“The courses are designed to help associates develop the skills necessary to use AI and contribute to the ongoing advancements in these areas. There are multiple learning paths to ensure all employees are getting the appropriate AI education and tools based on their roles,” said Tatavarti.

She added that Wipro has access to 1.7 million engineers and developers on its talent Cloud platform, Topcoder.

This plays a critical role in the company’s skilling and up-skilling efforts, and helping clients scale and accelerate AI projects.

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“Finally, we will further augment our talent pool through acquisitions, investments, and the incubation programme with startups via our ventures arm, which has brought significant strength to our AI portfolio,” Tatavarti said.

She added that AI is at an “inflection point” where enterprises are experimenting with various proof of concepts (PoCs).

“They are looking to scale, shifting from the age of adoption to the age of value…which will be found from efficiencies created, savings realised, increased productivity and monetization, and new revenue streams. This means clients are looking for more ways to implement AI and for more solutions integrated with AI.” 

 
ALSO READ: Wipro GE Healthcare to invest Rs 8K cr in 5 yrs on medical devices, R&D