Establishing AI Strategy Key To Overcoming Top Barriers In Its Adoption: Siddhesh Naik, IBM

In conversation with BW Businessworld's Rohit Chintapali, Siddhesh Naik (Data, AI & Automation sales leader, IBM Technology Sales, IBM India/South Asia) spoke about the AI adoption statistics and challenges limiting the application of AI in India. Read on for excerpts from the interview.

How does India’s AI adoption compare with other countries in Asia?

AI adoption differs across companies, geographies and industries. Recent data from IBM Global AI Adoption Index shows that Indian and Chinese companies are leading the way in AI adoption, with nearly 60 per cent of IT professionals in those countries saying their organisation already actively uses AI, a dramatically higher rate of adoption than in markets like Australia (24 per cent) and Singapore (39 per cent). 

Additionally, the report reveals that over half of IT professionals at Indian companies exploring or deploying AI plan to invest in R&D (56 per cent), which is higher than the Australian market (43 per cent). Meanwhile, 52 per cent of IT professionals in India say their organisations plan to invest in reskilling and workforce development in the next year, higher than the Singapore market (48 per cent). Clearly, Indian companies are beginning to realize the power of AI and are beginning to invest in it to gain an edge over their competitors. These trends indicate a growing role for AI within organisations as well as within society.

How do you see AI affecting the overall tech and business ecosystem in India?

Two major reasons enterprises are embracing AI are to improve customer experience and operational efficiency. Businesses are using AI to automate customer service and personalise it; telecom companies are using AI to offer new 5G services; and breakthrough capabilities for detecting fraud in real-time and automating business processes using AI. Furthermore, AI is bringing new efficiency to IT operations through automation, and clients are using AI to reduce carbon footprints and improve asset management, supply chain management, and environmental intelligence.

Are there any significant challenges that are limiting the application of AI in the country?

Indian enterprises face a variety of data challenges today, including a variety of sources, types, structures, environments, and platforms. The hybrid and multicloud architectures further complicate this multidimensional predicament. Many enterprises today have siloed and hidden their operational data, resulting in a lot of dark information. A key step to overcoming AI adoption's top barriers is establishing an AI strategy, whether it's a lack of skills, lack of tools, or how to deal with issues like data complexity. 

With the growth of data and AI, what are IBM’s plans for India?

With enterprise AI adoption rates on the rise in the region, IBM is well-positioned to capture this growing market opportunity after years of investment in R&D, experimentation, delivering innovative new software capabilities, acquisitions, a wide range of expertise through IBM Consulting, and more. IBM is focused on AI for business, differentiating itself from competitors by giving organisations the key capabilities needed to scale AI: natural language processing, trust, automation and the ability to run anywhere across any hybrid, multi-cloud environment.

With data more siloed than ever, IBM is uniquely positioned to help organisations in India adopt a data fabric architecture to centrally access, manage and gain insights from vast amounts of data – regardless of where it resides, how it is stored and without ever having to move it. To help organisations address challenges related to data complexity, we propose an approach called a data fabric. IBM Cloud Pak for Data delivers a data fabric architecture that allows an enterprise to connect and access siloed data, across distributed environments without ever having to copy or move it – and with governance and privacy embedded.  

IBM is helping to meet the accelerating demand for AI in the region and helping organisations overcome the barriers to adoption with IBM Watson. IBM Watson is AI for business. Today, IBM Watson provides cutting-edge AI capabilities for users with a range of AI skills, from business professionals looking to reclaim their time to data scientists, IT and security professionals who are operationalising AI at scale.

Also Read: IBM Quarterly Revenue Beats Estimates