Half of our AI roadmap is being driven by our team in India: Diligent CEO

Stafford on building AI-powered compliance tools in Bengaluru and the future of governance technology

Brian Stafford, chief executive of Diligent, the world's largest governance, risk and compliance software provider, is betting big on India. The New York-based company has quadrupled its Bengaluru workforce to 400 employees in under two years and plans to expand it again, positioning the city as a critical hub for AI-driven product development. During a recent visit to India, Stafford, in a video interview with Peerzada Abrar, discussed how roughly half of Diligent's AI roadmap now originates from the Bengaluru team, the untapped potential of India's GRC market, and why artificial intelligence will transform how companies manage legal and compliance functions globally. Edited excerpts:

 

What kind of growth is Diligent observing?

 

Diligent is the world's largest governance, risk and compliance company. We work with about 25,000 companies, more than a million users, and close to 80 per cent of the Fortune 1000, including a good number of clients here in India.

 

Diligent India has scaled from 100 to 400 employees in under two years and plans to expand it again. What specific product innovations or engineering capabilities have come out of the Bengaluru team that are now deployed globally?

 

Over the last two years, we have materially increased the size of our R&D team focused on AI. One of the primary places where we’ve invested and grown our R&D team has been in Bengaluru, and we’ve been impressed by the level of talent and the quality of the team that we’ve built here. Our product focus in India spans several of our compliance and governance products, and the team has delivered a lot of great innovation.

 

I was actually joining late today because I was watching a demo of a really great AI-native product coming out of our team here. There’s a lot of opportunity to continue growing the scope of our products with our R&D centre in India. Governance, risk and compliance — especially legal and compliance — are going to be transformed by AI over the next few years. We think there is a big opportunity to continue to build products using AI to offer automation across legal and compliance, and the India team is at the heart of that. These solutions are being deployed across our entire global client base.

 

You've transformed Diligent into an AI-driven GRC platform. How much of your AI development — models, algorithms, implementations — is being built by the India team versus other global centres? And what's the AI roadmap specifically for governance and compliance use cases?

 

Approximately half of our AI roadmap is being driven by our team in India, and all of it is being deployed globally. The roadmap across governance, risk and compliance is incredibly exciting. Many activities within risk and compliance will be transformed through AI.

 

AI offers two big advantages: first, incredible productivity by using agents to perform many activities across compliance; and second, an always-on view of GRC and risk monitoring that helps clients become safer. That is a huge opportunity across our client base. We’ve also seen rapid adoption of our AI products globally, including here in India. The appetite for AI use cases that increase productivity and safety is very strong.

 

You've completed $1.3 billion in acquisitions — Steele Compliance, Accuvio, Galvanize — to build an end-to-end GRC platform. How is the India team involved in integrating these acquisitions?

 

Through one of those acquisitions, we inherited an office of about 100 people in Bengaluru. Since then, we've scaled that team to 400, primarily in R&D. The team is modernising current applications while building new AI-native solutions and integrating AI into existing client products.

 

Diligent serves over 750,000 board members globally, but India's corporate governance landscape is evolving rapidly. What's your India go-to-market strategy? Are you seeing demand from Indian enterprises, and how does the Indian market differ from the US or Europe in terms of GRC maturity?

 

Our go-to-market strategy in India combines direct sales and partners. Interest and demand for AI products in India has been quite material. GRC adoption here lags Europe and the US, but AI will make it more cost-effective, dramatically increasing adoption.

 

How big is the India GRC market? And is the regulatory landscape helping the adoption of GRC technologies?

 

Globally, the GRC market exceeds $20 billion annually. I expect India to be a large and growing market, accelerated by AI. Increasing regulation around AI and data residency drives both awareness and adoption of GRC platforms.

 

What are your India expansion plans in terms of hiring and retaining talent — especially given the competition for skilled professionals?

 

We have many open roles in Bengaluru. There's a strong talent base here, and we adjust our hiring plans to focus on bringing in the right talent to build the organisation. We're especially focused on AI talent. The AI talent landscape globally and in Bengaluru is very competitive, but we do whatever we can to stay ahead.

 

The GRC space is crowded — ServiceNow, SAP, Microsoft, and niche players like MetricStream are all competing. How do you differentiate against platforms with deeper enterprise penetration?

 

We don’t see competitive products in the market from SAP or Microsoft. We are the largest player globally in GRC, and we see a strong opportunity to continue scaling our growth within our client base.

 

I would also say that this is probably the most exciting time in my career to be building products in an AI-centric, AI-powered world. The opportunity to use AI to have a transformative impact in GRC is really exciting.