The hype around artificial intelligence is very real in India with the country building deep tech pockets in robotics and deep learning areas. Research centres are rife in Bengaluru and Hyderabad where these solutions are being applied in the local economy, businesses and enterprises. Even with this progress, many organisations still pose the question: How can businesses benefit from AI.

According to a study by Accenture, organisations which incorporated AI into their business models predicted that their revenue would rise by 38% by 2035. AI has become business-friendly because it simplifies communication with clients by assessing user behaviour patterns. AI systems are also being used to control production processes and interconnected devices. At Cypher 2018, Dakshinamurthy V Kolluru Of INSOFE highlighted several use cases that indicated the paradigm shift that happened over the last five years with diminishing investments in AI, but output and performance surging, thereby resulting in a higher return on investment (ROI).

So pegged as the future of growth, AI has become a productivity enhancer, which has the potential to

• Reverse the falling profit growth through automation
• Augment human labour

A recent research indicates how artificial intelligence has the potential to double annual economic growth, change the nature of work between people and machines and push innovations. By 2035, AI is expected to double the annual economic growth rate. The study further indicated that manufacturing, BFSI and information and communication sectors would see the highest growth rate. Also, with AI being integrated into the economic processes, it means the bottom line revenue gets boosted. The three key methods are:

• Intelligent automation/virtual workforce
• Labour and capital augmentation
• Technology innovations

AI As A Productivity Solution

Automating Back Office Operations: Leading in the field of white-collar and business process automation would indeed force India to compete on technical developments, rather than price. Automating office and IT work is an opportunity for all businesses and markets. For this reason, when India proves its dominance in automating and augmenting its BPO and IT services, it will be competing with startups and with large consulting firms on many fronts.

BPO Industry Can Capitalise On The AI Boom: Equifax identified scenarios where Indian sectors can leverage AI. According to their study, the BPO industry in India may find an opportunity in data cleaning and tagging in massive datasets, which will eventually be used to train and error-correct AI. Cheap skilled IT labor can potentially enable this opportunity. By leveraging BPO and back-office expertise, India’s IT services firms could potentially develop the world’s best office automation and BPO AI applications. This would allow India to develop a higher margin product industry, in addition to their wide low-cost services sector

The key for Indian BPO, IT, and tech firms will be to pick the domains of focus where their expertise is strongest as compared to the rest of the countries, and which domain provides maximum economic opportunity.

Partnering With Third-Party Vendors: By building an AI roadmap, businesses can plan to broaden their use cases. Business leaders and strategic planners from across the business have sufficient grasp of AI to effectively transform existing business plans and to define key decision points and to guide appropriate investment decisions. This is a growing trend in India where leading enterprises partner with third-party providers who can work on specific use cases through bleeding edge technology. Companies are also pushing for AI integration and upskilling employees to counter the lack of expertise in AI technologies. While there are interim roadblocks in implementation, companies are deploying a winning mindset towards AI and have leveraged a continuous, iterative approach.

Outlook

However, for AI to become a critical enabler in India, it must go beyond automation to truly harness the potential of self-learning machines. The potential benefits of AI can be considerably greater than the past impact of automation. According to Bosch, more than $2 billion of additional revenues and savings from the widespread use of intelligent systems and machines by 2020.