 "India Inc is excited about generative AI, says Salesforce India CEO")
India Inc is excited about generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI), but the actual deployment of the new-age technology would still take substantial time, Salesforce India Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer Arundhati Bhattacharya said on Tuesday.
“We are still quite a distance from the actual deployment of generative AI at India Inc. Even if you look at the use of Cloud at India Inc, it’s still not at all that common,” she said while speaking to the media.
“For access of a huge capacity of data, one needs a Cloud ecosystem. So, until we do not see more adoption of Cloud itself, it would be very difficult for India Inc to actually come up and adopt AI and Gen AI,” she added.
Bhattacharya also sought to assuage general concerns around AI leading to mass job losses but added that the nature of jobs may change, requiring upskilling and reskilling of talent pools.
“So, India does have the opportunity to leapfrog into AI and generative AI. Now, how far and how long it will take, it's anybody's guess... generative AI is something that's maturing... it's not something that's completely mature...” she said.
The macro-environment in India is "very supportive", Bhattacharya said, underlining India's advantage of a large talent pool as also the digital public infrastructure.
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“The India stack... Aadhaar, UPI and healthcare platforms... are not something available in most countries. The Indian public goods space is a huge enabler and most of the other countries don't have this, so we have a big advantage,” she said.
IT is evolving fast and companies not keeping pace with it, will be left behind, the former chief of public lender State Bank of India said.
With various “enablers” in place in the country, Bhattacharya exuded confidence that industry and enterprises will rise to the challenge and leverage digital fully to gain an edge. Salesforce, a leading player in customer relationship management (CRM), on Tuesday, announced the launch of Salesforce ‘Starter’ for micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME) businesses in India.
Starter is a CRM that includes sales, service, and e-mail outreach tools in one suite, helping companies get started so that they have the tools to improve customer experiences, reduce costs, and drive revenue, the company said.