In the last few years, we saw digitalisation as one of the themes and we saw talent acquisition in that area. Now as we are going for FY 24-25, you have artificial intelligence coming in, you have ChatGPTs; how it will change companies and how it will change coding as well, if I can add. How do you see these kinds of disruptions impacting tech companies and are the Indian companies geared for those kinds of disruptions?
Anant Maheshwari: So, first up, you are absolutely right that there is a lot of conversation, there is a lot of trial that is happening at this point in time. Now, every company is not going to use technology just because it’s in the news. They will use new technology if there is real value in their profit and loss statement, if there is revenue enhancement that they can drive. If there is a productive driver that they can have in their business, if their new business models that can emerge for them to do business. Now, all of that is real.
So, today, the companies are asking those questions about this technology, especially around generative AI, and the conversation is just about four to six months old, and therefore how does it apply to solve fundamental problems in my business? How does it apply to accelerate my business going forward? So, they have therefore started bringing in tech services firms to have those conversations.
Now, once these conversations are done and once the problem statements and the architecture are defined, you need people who are skilled to actually do this work. Where are the AI skills on the planet and if you looked at LinkedIn and see how many people are putting out their tech certifications, that’s a very good indicator of where the tech skills exist. India has amongst the highest, if not the highest, AI skill sets on the planet. So therefore, India has a natural positioning of being able to serve all of these companies with talent capability that will be required to create those solutions and deliver those solutions.
Now is it enough? Unlikely. I think the entire world is short of AI talent. There is a lot of AI skilling that will need to get done. But the good news is that India is starting ahead of the rest of the world and has a very strong skilling ecosystem to drive that power. So, purely from a demand signal point of view and the requirement of skill sets, I think if you take AI, if you take cybersecurity, if you take cloud capability, the data work that needs to get done to enable all of this, India’s very well positioned in terms of having those skill sets. So that’s how I would think about the demand going forward. Will it have supply side effects? Very likely. There will be some supply side effects also, but people are working through it at this point in time and we will see how that shapes in the next two to four quarters.
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