Technology trinity key to Viksit Bharat dreams, says Sandip Patel

We have always been predominant in the BFSI [banking, financial services, and insurance] sector, but also in a lot of essential services within India, said Sandip Patel

The “technology trinity” of artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors and quantum is key to India’s digital future, says Sandip Patel, managing director for IBM India and South Asia. CXOs must educate themselves and apply technology contextually, he told Pranjal Sharma in a video interview. Edited excerpts:

 

Which sectors are important to IBM in India?

 

I always think about IBM India as being the microcosm of the corporation. Our strategy is very singularly what the corporate strategy is, which is AI and hybrid Cloud. I think every dollar of investment that we make globally, as well as in India, goes into that dimension, including acquisitions.

 

We have always been predominant in the BFSI [banking, financial services, and insurance] sector, but also in a lot of essential services within India. Just to give you a couple of data points, 95 plus per cent of all banking transactions go through IBM systems and software — a 100 per cent of credit card transactions go through IBM mainframes in India.

 

We like to think of ourselves as IBM being inside, sort of, the supply chains that run India — both on the financial as well as the citizen services space.

 

For example, a lot of milk production and distribution [processes] — for companies like Amul and others —happens on IBM systems and software and technology.

 

You talk about an emerging tech trinity. What do you mean by that?

 

I truly believe that we are actually living in a digital renaissance, sort of what I call the naya daur (new age) of technology which will take us to Viksit Bharat. I think about it as the technology trinity of AI, semiconductors and quantum. What is AI really? It’s basically taking use of a lot of the data, both data that we’ve known traditionally, but also unstructured data that until now we didn’t really have the ability to capture and take advantage of.

 

It’s all of that — AI, automation — that that comes [together] in sort of one domain to drive productivity. It also enables us to make better decisions, deliver better customer service. Semiconductors enable the hybrid Cloud agenda because we need to continue having infrastructure that is more agile and that is more variable.

 

Semiconductors provide better and more efficient infrastructure for AI as well. I think the work that the government is doing in terms of building leadership in that space is brilliant. That is the second leg of the trinity. The third one is frontier technologies — quantum as a technology — that is probably three to five years away in terms of commercial, large-scale applications.

 

Ahead of any renaissance, there is confusion. Everybody wants to be AI first, but few know how to adopt technology

 

We did an AI adoption index survey — it was a global survey. Almost 79 per cent of Indian enterprises — that was probably the highest number around the world — are actually experimenting with AI. I think about 80 plus percent of them believe that they are getting the benefits out of it. However, the number that have actually moved from box to scaling is only about 29 per cent. That’s not a lot. A lot of people are concerned about scaling from POC [proof of concept] to issues that they talk about — skill.

 

Do they have the right skills to scale it and sustain it? There are cost considerations to make sure that if you build something and if it’s scaled in the right way, do we have the right cost structures? The third area, which I think is very relevant within AI, is whether you can trust the outcomes.

 

People jump into POC without thinking of the end. Two-and-half years ago when we started to look at how we can apply this to ourselves, we picked some low-hanging fruit, things like human resources (HR), procurement processes, IT helpdesk, those kinds of processes we picked.

 

Today, 94 per cent plus of our HR transactions are all done through AI and we didn’t start with this agenda.

 

I actually tell my peers — CXOs and others —to get educated and see if they really understand what this technology is all about and what it can do. I think it has to start from the top down.

 

There are concerns about the fact that AI is letting go of a lot of jobs. Some 100,000 jobs go over here, another hundred thousand get created there. What is the best way ahead to manage this rapid transition? 

 

I think skilling at scale is really important. The government is doing a lot of work in terms of skilling programmes. What we as tech firms collectively can do is channel a lot of the work that we do in skilling in the right direction, so that it actually creates a multiplier effect. Many of us are working through organisations like Nasscom.

 

About seven years ago or so, we introduced AI as an elective curriculum for the CBSE programme. It is available through a lot of CBSE schools. The impact has been very good. What we find is that kids who have the aptitude, they pick up skills significantly. It’s to the point where if that [CBSE programme] can be translated into a vocational programme those kids can actually be better than college graduates and employment-ready with new skills.

 

If people can be picked up for the right areas and trained in technologies, we can truly become the talent capital of the world