National Technology Day serves as a powerful reminder of India’s transformative journey in science and technology. As we celebrate milestones of the past, it also offers a unique opportunity for organizations to reflect on the future, which is particularly the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in reshaping industries. Srijan Raychaudhuri, CTO & Leader – Antares, Acies, in an interview with Tech Achieve Media, stated that this day is a call to action for businesses to align their AI strategies with the nation’s technological aspirations, fostering innovation, sustainability, and self-reliance.
TAM: National Technology Day celebrates India’s technological achievements. How can organizations leverage this occasion to reflect on their AI strategies and align with the country’s vision for technological advancement?
Srijan Raychaudhuri: National Technology Day is not only a commemoration of past achievements but also a milestone in India’s technological journey. It marks the shift from being fast followers and importers of technology to becoming self-reliant through investment and innovation.
Given the advancements that we have witnessed in data processing technologies and computing power over the last decade or so, we are definitely at an inflection point of AI beginning to reshape business models, enhance decision-making, and unlock new opportunities across industries. Hence, AI needs to be on the priority investment track while planning technology advancements.
Forward-thinking companies should start re-evaluating their business model with the lens of an AI-powered tomorrow. This will involve the first step of doing a comprehensive diagnostic of solution offerings, technology architecture, supply chain, and most importantly, people and process readiness, while planning a longer-term implementation of the same.
Companies with a focus on India as a market might also want to align such strategic evaluation with national priorities, particularly in sectors where India demonstrates global leadership potential such as precision agriculture, vernacular language processing and inclusive fintech solutions.
TAM: As AI reshapes industries, what role can Indian organizations play in positioning the country as a global leader in AI innovation and adoption?
Srijan Raychaudhuri: There are two parts to this:
Application/Adoption of AI: The scale of India’s domestic market and its unique setup and complex challenges continue to be its biggest strength in terms of tapping AI potential. Harnessing India’s linguistic and socio-cultural diversity provides several opportunities across products and services sectors, which can easily be extended to a global scale. Similarly, predictive agriculture tools that account for our varied agro-climatic zones, models / agents to improve last mile access to quality healthcare and financial inclusion are some of the areas where Indian companies have a lot of potential to lead the way.
Also read: India Celebrates National Technology Day – Driving Innovation for a Sustainable Future
Technology Environment: However, the above potential also requires a lot of investment and research on domestic AI hardware capabilities to reduce critical dependencies. The availability and cost of hosting and availing AI technologies remain big constraints for wider AI adoption across companies in India. Information security and regulatory compliance are prime concerns that exclude small and medium companies in quite a few sectors like financial services from adopting AI capabilities. More initiatives like the IndiaAI mission and the Digital India Bhashini would enable us to invest in mutualised infrastructure to overcome such challenges and to demonstrate our potential to create globally relevant solutions.
TAM: On this day, we celebrate progress. How can organizations prepare their workforce for the transformative impact of AI by fostering innovation and promoting AI literacy?
Srijan Raychaudhuri: Adoption of AI in any meaningful way demands nothing less than a comprehensive reimagining of workforce planning and development. This needs to be done beyond technical teams to cover a majority of the workforce. The successful adoption of AI will require the management of new AI technologies and business and operations teams to harness the power of AI to increase efficiency and re-envision their processes, products, sand services.
Technology team upskilling will revolve around optimised utilisation of available hardware, technology trends around AI hardware, underlying models and mechanisms of different AI modelling classes, technology control points, information security risks to take care of while adopting AI.
Business and operations teams will need role-specific training: from basic AI awareness to advanced machine learning concepts, all anchored in practical business applications. Given the nascency of adoption, making sandboxes available for experimentation would be critical in bringing up a workforce with requisite comfort and fluency in AI technologies.
TAM: National Technology Day emphasizes collaboration. How can organizations, academia, and policymakers work together to ensure that the evolving face of AI benefits all sectors of Indian society?
Srijan Raychaudhuri: Collaboration between corporate and academia has been an area where India has traditionally not been at the same level as other geographies at a more mature stage in their technology journey. It will be essential for this collaboration to move beyond conventional boundaries to make substantial and long-term investments and make rapid strides in AI adoption and innovation.
At Acies, we are committed to such collaboration. We have already started such engagement through longer-term internships and projects. We intend to build onto this with initiatives such as joint innovation labs with premier institutions. Simultaneously, we need more dynamic engagement between technologists and policymakers to craft regulatory frameworks that encourage innovation and protect public interests.
As I mentioned earlier, regulatory discomfort due to information security concerns and risk mitigation have kept a large part of players in the financial services sector from proper adoption of AI technologies. While such precaution is necessary given the current context, collaboration between industry and regulators is crucial for an environment conducive to quick adoption of AI given the long-term nature of AI transformation. These could be through mutualised infrastructures accessible to India’s vast SME sector and startups through shared compute resources, curated datasets, and mentorship programmes.
At Acies, we are committed to our vision of democratising new-age technology and access to AI tools and knowledge. This is reflected in our technology products, consulting services and training programmes that we offer to our clientele.
TAM: What key milestones in AI adoption should organizations celebrate on National Technology Day, and how can these achievements inspire future advancements in technology?
Srijan Raychaudhuri: National Technology Day is one such platform that can be used to reflect on achievements and catalyse future innovations. Organisations need to highlight instances of AI-enabled impact on this occasion. It is already opening up new possibilities in India, such as, predictive maintenance: leading to a reduction in industrial downtime, alternative credit scoring: resulting in the expansion of financial inclusion and satellite imagery analysis: ensuring optimising agricultural yields.
Celebrating India’s other technological breakthroughs is also vital. From AI-driven drug discoveries to advancements in space technology, these success stories, achieved with the right balance of resourcefulness and expertise, are proof of our capability.
Last, but not least, we must recognise the human element behind these achievements. From our homegrown researchers to engineers and business leaders, everyone has had a role to play in reaching the nation’s collective technological milestones. We should applaud these experts and their individual and team effort, vision, and determination. Only by honouring our past accomplishments can we plant the seeds for tomorrow’s breakthroughs.
