Orchestrating the AI-Driven Future: Peeyoosh Pandey, Hoonartek

As enterprises across the world accelerate their shift toward data-driven ecosystems, the intersection of artificial intelligence, automation, and cloud technologies is reshaping how organizations create value. In this rapidly evolving landscape, the role of data engineering and governance has become central to sustainable digital transformation. In an interview with Tech Achieve Media, Peeyoosh Pandey, CEO of Hoonartek, discusses how India’s digital infrastructure and data diversity are positioning it to become the “Data Capital of the World.” He also outlines how Hoonartek is helping enterprises move from data collection to true value creation while redefining the future of system integration in the age of AI.

TAM: From your perspective, what factors make India uniquely positioned to become the “Data Capital of the World”?

Peeyoosh Pandey: India is on an unmatched trajectory to become the global Data Capital, underpinned by a powerful synergy of massive digital scale, sophisticated sovereign infrastructure, and inherent data diversity.

• Sovereign Infrastructure and Scale: The foundation is the India Stack (Digital Public Infrastructure or DPI), which supports over 1.3 billion citizens and manages more than 10 billion monthly transactions. This provides a secure, standardized, and transparent layer, significantly reducing time-to-market for enterprises and accelerating development.
• Consumer Data Velocity: We are a nation of over 700 million connected consumers, benefiting from some of the lowest data rates globally. This provides the continuous, high-volume data flow essential for training and validating next-generation AI models.
• Diversity as an Innovation Engine: India’s complexity, particularly its linguistic diversity (Hindi, Tamil, Bengali), acts as a profound innovation engine. Domestic efforts like Bhashini and the development of Indic Large Language Models (LLMs) like BharatGen and Nanda 1 mean AI models originating here are trained on some of the world’s most varied and demanding real-world data, making them inherently more robust and globally resilient.

The government’s commitment, projecting that accelerated AI adoption could boost India’s GDP by up to $600 billion by 2035, solidifies this national imperative.

TAM: What are the biggest barriers organizations face in moving from “data collection” to “data value creation,” and how is Hoonartek helping bridge this gap?

Peeyoosh Pandey: Organizations typically encounter a triarchy of systemic roadblocks as they seek to transition from simple data collection to genuine data value creation:

1. The Governance Abyss: Many organizations treat data governance purely as a compliance mandate, failing to establish crucial Data Lineage, Data Quality, and Standardization. This instability compels enterprises to keep data siloed, stalling innovation.
2. The Operationalization Gap (MLOps): Data science teams struggle to move ML models from the lab to secure, scalable production environments, a challenge amplified by insufficient pipeline automation and a lack of data versioning.
3. Cultural and Organizational Silos: Collaboration gaps between data scientists, DevOps, and core business operations disconnect the data strategy from tangible business goals.
4. Data Share Infrastructure: The data sharing is always and afterthought and it becomes as impediment towards monetisation and enrichment. Without this the value of data is limited by the attributes available with one organisation. 

Hoonartek’s Data Value Bridge Strategy directly addresses these by treating robust engineering and governance as interconnected disciplines:

• Trust through Governance by Design: We overcome the Governance Abyss by establishing comprehensive Data Governance focusing on quality, security, and critical Data Lineage. This methodical approach fundamentally resolves the risk/agility paradox, accelerating data-driven decision-making.
• Engineering Scalable Operations: We bridge the MLOps gap by building secure, automated pipelines using agile digital engineering practices and leveraging our expert partnerships with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. This eliminates infrastructural silos and boosts performance.
• Data Clean Room and Data Share: We have delivered Data Clean room(DCR) solutions based on all the leading platforms – enabling secure data sharing and enrichment of data leading to greater personalised marketing use cases. 

TAM: What lessons from global experiences are most relevant to Indian enterprises accelerating digital transformation today?

Peeyoosh Pandey: Indian enterprises have a distinct architectural speed advantage: they can utilize global experiences to leapfrog directly into modern, cloud-native models. The key lessons for acceleration are:

• The Principle of Hyper-Scalability: Business agility is intrinsically linked to infrastructure agility. A stringent “Cloud-First” mandate is pivotal, enabling rapid scaling without the immense upfront capital expenditure of traditional hardware. As a certified hyperscaler partner, Hoonartek is focused on deploying world-class IaaS and PaaS solutions to ensure this competitive speed advantage.
• Regulatory Foresight and Global Compliance: As our businesses expand, solutions must be built with international regulatory resilience embedded from the start. Aligning internal data security and governance with best global practices, such as those governing privacy (e.g., GDPR), ensures that Indian innovation is trusted and readily exportable across all major markets.
• Platform Thinking: Successful global cases emphasize integrating the principles of DPI—specifically security by design and open standards—to build digital products that integrate seamlessly with the national platform.

TAM: As AI adoption gathers pace, how do you see disruptive technologies like generative AI, automation, and cloud shaping the future of system integration and enterprise growth in the near future?

Peeyoosh Pandey: The convergence of AI, Generative AI (GenAI), and cloud is fundamentally altering the landscape, mandating the evolution of the traditional System Integrator (SI) into the AI Integrator. For us with Data being our DNA – the new paradigm is a god send. 

• The Rise of the AI Integrator: The traditional SI model is insufficient; the modern AI Integrator must be expert at synthesizing complex data and leveraging foundation models to redefine how customers generate insights and execute functions.
• Generative AI and the Orchestration Mandate: GenAI is the catalyst, powering sophisticated AI Agents. These agents utilize generative models to interpret high-level business goals, reason, and autonomously execute tasks across multiple, disparate enterprise systems. The AI Integrator’s role is to become the architect of these intelligent agents and their complex workflow orchestration.
• Cloud as the Non-Negotiable Prerequisite: Cloud infrastructure provides the scalable, elastic foundation required for deploying these large-scale AI models.
• Strategic Automation: Automation, now accessible to SMEs through cloud-native tools, liberates internal IT teams from time-consuming manual tasks (e.g., ticket routing) to focus on strategic, growth-driving initiatives.

TAM: How are you leveraging AI, ML, and real-world data solutions to drive hypergrowth for both Indian and global enterprises?

Peeyoosh Pandey: We drive hypergrowth by converting our deep experience into scalable, productized intelligence, all built on a cloud-native foundation.

• Value Delivery using AI  (RealizeAI): We have transformed our expertise into verticalized Intellectual Property (IP) through RealizeAI. This comprehensive platform offers advanced, vertical-specific solutions built on a governed foundation of predictive and generative AI. It significantly reduces the time-to-value for AI investments by providing pre-built, reusable frameworks tailored to specific industry needs.
• Global Scale and Trust: A cloud-native foundation, reinforced by our certified partnerships with AWS, Azure, and GCP, allows us to deploy world-class data platforms globally (including the US, Europe, and South Africa). This robust execution inherently meets the real-time scalability demands of hypergrowth.
• Efficiency Arbitrage: We embed the high efficiency, operational rigor, and low-latency architectural lessons derived from working in India’s high-volume, cost-sensitive market into our core solutions. We then export this superior operational efficiency, coupled with world-class hyperscaler expertise, to mature global enterprises, enabling transformational speeds and cost efficiencies.
• Governance-Led Adoption: Crucially, every AI/ML solution is built upon stringent data governance, security, and quality protocols. This rigor de-risks AI adoption, fostering the confidence businesses need to scale rapidly and with assurance.

TAM: As a leader who has built businesses from the ground up, what is your vision for Hoonartek’s next phase of growth, and how do you see the company contributing to India’s positioning as a global hub for AI-driven innovation?

Peeyoosh Pandey: My vision for Hoonartek’s next phase is defined by scaling with intent and precision.

The next decade is focused on three strategic imperatives:

1. Global Vertical Value: We will intensify our focus on regulated, data-intensive industries—Telecom, Financial Services, and Manufacturing. The strategy is to systematically migrate clients beyond mere RPA based automation to full-scale Agentic AI based automation and data monetization using our platforms like RealizeAI.
2. The Governance Commitment: Our competitive distinction will rely on a profound commitment to robust AI governance, guided by the principle that “AI without governance is a non-starter”. This reliability positions us as a premium, trusted partner for global enterprises operating under stringent compliance frameworks.
3. Agility and Ownership: We will foster a cultural ethos that emphasizes agility and continuous improvement to ensure our solutions remain relevant, scalable, and impactful in a fast-moving environment.

Contribution to India’s Global AI Hub Ambition:

We contribute to the national strategic goal through two critical avenues:

• IP Creation and Export: Through the development of advanced, proprietary vertical solutions like RealizeAI, we are actively transforming India’s economic role. We are moving India from being viewed primarily as a service delivery center to a global source of sophisticated AI Intellectual Property.
• Building Global Trust: Our resolute commitment to delivering governed, high-quality, and compliant solutions in highly regulated global markets (US, Europe) validates India’s capability to define, deliver, and operationalize the future of responsible, effective AI on the global stage. This execution is essential for realizing the full economic potential of the projected $600 billion AI contribution to India’s GDP.