India is very uniquely placed in AI tech capability, says Jason Graefe

Microsoft's Jason Graefe says India's AI strength lies in multilingual innovation and SaaS roots, positioning startups to build globally scalable solutions

Indian startups developing artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are “unique” because they deal with a large population and multiple languages. Their work can go places if it “cracks the code on language”, Jason Graefe, corporate vice-president at Microsoft’s AI Partner Catalyst Team, tells Avik Das in an interview in Bengaluru. Edited excerpt:

 

How does the AI Partner Catalyst Programme engage with startups?

 

At Microsoft, we have a new group called the AI Partner Catalyst Team. What we do is that we kind of look around the globe to identify, engage, and help nurture startups and AI natives developing products. We do that in two distinct ways. It is how do we help them build on our platform, as we believe that we offer one of the best AI and full-stack technology platforms in the world as a hyperscaler. Then, as they develop their products, we help them go to the market as well. One of our strengths is around enterprise relationships: The work we do with large companies around the world. As we look around the world, we see a few countries really starting to rise: India being one of them; the United States, China and Israel. India is very uniquely placed with its environment, ecosystem and technological capability.

 

What about Indian startups impresses you?

 

As I look around the world and see AI starting to take shape, though it is still very early in the innings, India is definitely moving to the front and centre. It is among the few to really start to shape things in AI and have a big impact. India is a unique market, where this ecosystem has evolved through the eras of Software as a Service (SaaS) and Cloud. Now, there are more interesting founders and people coming out of these other companies that have done so well. I think what we represent to them is a global scale; internet-scale platform for them to build on. For many of them — who are working on Indian language models — this is a great market where they can operate at scale and develop very powerful solutions. At the same time, it gives them the capability and the skills to go global as well. I think we give them the platform to do that. I am just seeing some phenomenal technology being developed.

 

What new technologies being developed in India excite you?

 

The language capability is one of the most unique things. Not only do you have to deal with a large population, but also with multiple facets of languages. The spoken language, the written language, the variants of languages across the country. If you can crack the code on language, whether it is a speech-to-text or text-to-speech AI in India, you have just developed a capability that can go to many places in the world.

 

I think it’s also interesting to watch a lot of builders thinking through how they build enterprise-scale applications. They are not as worried about the LLM level. They’re taking their SaaS knowledge and heritage and really defining their own space in the enterprise by building horizontal applications or applications and workflows that can really transform a horizontal area of a business. 

 

How can these AI-native startups help enterprises in adopting AI?

 

AI has been at the generative AI scale for just two or three years and so we’re still very much at early innings. Some industries are embracing this faster than others — the financial services industry. You have leaders and laggards within there. The best builders and founders are very cognisant of that and they understand what is slowing adoption down within an enterprise.