Unlocking India's digital potential: Intel and Jio are envisioning the future with AI, security, and cloud united

Top leaders from Intel and Jio convened for the latest episode of Moneycontrol and Intel Xeon's video series "Envisioning the Future with AI, Security, and Cloud United", hosted by Reema Tendulkar. The latest episode brought together Santhosh Viswanathan, VP and MD India region, Intel; Anish Shah, President, Chief of Information Technology and Digital Platforms, Jio; and Kiran Thomas, CEO, Jio Platforms in a thought-provoking discussion that explored how emerging technologies will shape India's innovation landscape.

Reema introduced the powerful trio of AI, Security, and Cloud shaping the future of industries in the digital era. Anish Shah spoke eloquently about the importance of managed services that bring these three drivers together to deliver end-to-end solutions across connectivity, cloud and security. These aren't just tailored to business domains, but often, the businesses themselves.

Santhosh Viswanathan, VP and MD Intel, India region, expressed fascination with India's widespread digital transformation fueled in no small part by Jio. He credited Jio for helping power the data revolution and sees 5G as the logical next step, serving as a "lifeline" connecting various elements and satisfying AI's data hunger. He sees Intel's role as fundamental to that dream of connecting India and unlocking the raw power all this data can unleash.

Building on that theme, Kiran Thomas spoke of Jio's vision to connect everyone, everything, everywhere affordably. He credits this vision in propelling India into becoming one of the world's largest data consumers. He believes this connectivity creates possibilities for all applications, with the next layer being compute infrastructure enabling emerging solutions.

Anish however, stressed the need for security to keep pace. He stressed that it must be embedded in architecture as an ongoing process. Santhosh concurred that the work of security is never completed: it is ever evolving as data grows.

Kiran detailed Jio's cloud-native 5G network architecture which enables secure "network slicing" for businesses across industries. Most remarkably, Jio's network and capabilities are fully developed in India using domestic talent and resources, in line with the government's Atmanirbhar Bharat and Make In India initiatives.

Santhosh observed that this makes Jio a key part of Intel's globally diversified supply chain as well. "From an Intel point of view when we had our CEO Patrick Gelsinger come in, he was very clear that we have to go back and build a globally diversified supply chain. It's good for the world, it's good for humanity and, more importantly, I think it also helps us be resilient in times of crisis."

Santhosh also credited the India stack as a game changer as an agent for fueling disruption. "I don't think many places in the world have a structured road map like the India stack. To start a business, you've got to have identity as a foundation and we have got identity with biometrics as the foundation. Then you do payments and transactions which is again an open horizontal platform. The beauty is the third step which is data: once you have data then it goes back and reinvents business models!"

As Santhosh said so eloquently, a knowledge-based society is the one that leapfrogs. The digital future, according to these industry pioneers, is bright for India.

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