(L-R) Dipesh Karki Co-Founder and CTO LenDenClub, Shiv Kumar Bhasin CTO, National Stock Exchange of India, Neville Vincent Vice President – India, ASEAN and ANZ, Ramesh Lakshminarayanan CIO, CRISIL Ltd., Dinesh Gangwani CIO-Financial Services, Piramal Capital & Housing Finance, Amit Khanna CIO, WNS Global Services, Gururaj Rao CIO and Business Leader - BFSI, Mahindra Finance, Ekhlaque Bari EVP - CTO, Fullerton India
Image: Aditi Tailang
India’s banking and financial sector (BFSI) has been amongst the early adaptors of innovation, whether it be voice authentication for phone banking, chatbots to improve a customer’s banking experience or machine-learning led algorithms to personalize offers for customers.
But there is a need for the sector to build on its investments, data security and strategy for growth using the mix of Artificial Intelligence-Machine learning (AI-ML), Internet of Things (IoT) and Cloud technology. This is why Forbes India met industry experts in May at the Innovations Dialogue series “From Sci-Fi to Reality”, powered by Nutanix, to discuss the journey of these technologies in India and challenges ahead.
The panelists included Ekhlaque Bari, EVP, CTO, Fullerton India; Shiv Kumar Bhasin, CTO, National Stock Exchange of India, Ramesh Lakshminarayanan, CIO CRISIL, Gururaj Rao, CIO and Business Leader, BFSI, Mahindra Finance, Dinesh Gangwani, CIO, Financial Services, Piramal Capital & Housing Finance, Dipesh Karki, co-founder & CTO, LenDenClub and Amit Khanna, CIO of WNS India, alongside Neville Vincent, VP (ASEAN, India and ANZ), Nutanix.
The challenge of using AI
Considering that banks in India have always been keen to improve their customer engagement model and boost productivity, innovation was always on their minds. This includes using technologies such as AI and Cloud. A Microsoft-IDC report in May said that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is expected to more than double the rate of innovation and employee productivity in India by 2021. The study surveyed 200 business leaders and 202 workers in the country.
But the reality is also that only one-third of organisations in India have embarked on their AI journey. Vincent from Nutanix had said earlier that the hybrid cloud workflow in India would more than triple to 43 percent from 13 percent today. The future is not Cloud, but managing Cloud. This then will be the biggest challenge that Indian companies will face.
“AI is one of the buzz words of the day but I’m not actually seeing a huge demand where companies budget for AI. So I still think it is some early days,” he told speakers.
Lakshminarayanan from Crisil, who has experience in selling machine learning solutions online, said: “I don’t think the situation is that corporates are not ready to adopt AI…I think that there is lot of work which is taking place, but this is in drips. But project –related is kind of Tsunami, so there is a fundamental difference between the hype and what the country has done… and that is okay.”