COVID-19 left the world looking for smarter solutions, reimagining work and business operations. So it wasn’t surprising when the pandemic accelerated the adoption of new-age technologies like Artificial Intelligence (AI). During the pandemic, contactless services such as digital payments put AI-related services in sectors like e-commerce in the spotlight. AI algorithms were used to make real-time decisions and analyse data, making a huge impact on businesses. It was the hero in elevating customer experience in sectors like sales and marketing. As e-commerce boomed, AI played a critical role in logistics, supply chain and manufacturing. It also was a steady support for HR, IT and finance.
As per research firm IDC, the Indian artificial intelligence market is expected to touch $7.8 billion by 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 20.2 percent. The growth of AI in India can be partly attributed to the government’s keen interest in the technology. Recently, on the occasion of the first anniversary of National Education Policy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the ‘AI For All’ initiative with the purpose of making AI easy to understand for every citizen in the country.
Key AI trends
Apart from the government, India’s new-age entrepreneurs and leaders are responsible for making AI an integral part of enterprises today. As per IDC’s AI Strategies Buyerview, 2021 survey, the most preferred AI solutions are conversational AI, recommendation engines and enterprise knowledge graphs. But in the next few years, entrepreneurs want to experience other AI solutions like Natural Language Processing (NLP), computer vision, and augmented intelligence, to name a few. For example, eCommerceInsights.ai, which is a part of NetApp Excellerator cohort 9, has a deep learning NLP platform that monitors the voice of customers via unstructured product reviews and transforms them into actionable insights for brands and about their products, customers, and competitive landscape.
Various trends that could hit the sector in the next few years, IDC reports. AIOps adoption will become the new normal for IT operations by 2025, with 40 percent of large enterprises automating their operations with AIOps solutions. By 2024, 50 percent of enterprises will run varying levels of analytic and AI models at the edge and 30 percent of those edge AI applications will be accelerated by heterogeneous accelerators. AI-powered development will also rise by 2025 and the number of data analysts and scientists to adopt AutoML for the end-to-end machine learning pipeline from data preparation to model deployment will double.
By most accounts, today, data is key to succeeding. For Indian CXOs, leveraging data and analysing customer behaviour, partners and employees has become the top priority. Using data, leaders are tweaking and reimaging their strategy to serve their customers and employees better. AI has become critical for insight-driven decisions in improving productivity and bringing in profits. For example, Spectrum Analytics, another startup from NetApp Excellerator cohort 9, is a data innovation startup that helps organisations use data to drive operational improvements and make evidence-based decisions.
How AI is pushing sectors forward
While entrepreneurs are leveraging AI for various solutions to increase efficiency and thrive in their fields, it is still a technology that is slowly gathering steam. But there are certain sectors that are truly succeeding, thanks to AI.
Healthcare: From enterprises building AI-powered low cost ventilators to AI solutions that analyse x-rays, the healthcare industry has truly made strides in AI adoption.
Finance: Banks and fintech organisations have leveraged AI to improve customer experience, investment returns and reduce risks.
Sales and marketing: The marketing automation system helps in customer targeting, creating on-point communications and drawing conclusions based on customer behaviour. This has helped enterprises leverage customer experience and form a bond, even in the pandemic. Another aspect AI helps in is training. AI tools record and transcribe calls of sales representatives, helping them compare strategies and focus on the most successful practices.
Cybersecurity: AI tools help protect data and counter threats. Through these tools, companies can pin-point suspicious behaviours, spot vulnerabilities and protect themselves.
HR: AI, with data, identifies talent and matches those with existing employees. Digital assistants (DA) make the onboarding experience seamless, wherein candidates can get their answers from a digital bot instead of HR employees. Along with DA, companies have also used technologies like Robotic Process Automation (RPA) to perform highly repetitive tasks.
Operations: Using data-driven decisions, various companies are increasing predictive supply chain visibility. With AI, operations can be streamlined and optimised, reducing costs. Geocoding and location-based services also help in gathering real-time traffic insights and ensuring optimum fleet management. Another aspect of this is automation of distribution. Large e-commerce companies have introduced a fleet of robots in their warehouses across India, which diminishes human error and offers further customer satisfaction.
Agriculture: New-age entrepreneurs are leveraging AI tools to check crop and soil conditions and AI-based analytics is being used to decide when to harvest and fertilise crops.
Today, companies are looking at scalable innovations to survive in the ecosystem. While India is still a growing market in AI, it is expected to boom in the next few years. All the trends point towards a massive AI wave, hitting all enterprises, ensuring it is here to stay.
(Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of YourStory.)
