AI has been the most disruptive change over the last few decades said Rishad Premji, Executive Chairman of Wipro Ltd. He added that he is excited about what the technology can do for companies, countries, governments, and individuals.

“Over the last few years, AI is been the most disruptive and profound change I’ve seen. It is moving at a rapid pace. We work with 1,400 enterprises across the world and 150 Fortune 500 companies. Customers are in experimentation mode and are POCing with the technology. Even if they aren’t moving to scale production yet, they are increasingly moving from piloting to production,” he said, speaking at the 27th edition of the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2024.

India has become the tech capital of the world, Premji observed. A change during Covid was that till then, companies came to India because it was inexpensive, but stayed for quality; the industry grew.

“As you talk to more and more stakeholders and customers, they are shifting their decision-making and actioning to India. It’s not simply a low-cost destination. If you want impact, they’ll say walk the corridors of Bangalore, Chennai, and Hyderabad and not New York and London. That’s a fundamental but important change. It’s become easier today to be relevant on the global map than before. That’s the advantage for India,” he explained.

The challenge and the opportunity at the same time are how disruptive technologies become and how quickly they change. The need to be able to adapt and to constantly stay relevant will be higher, Premji said. “If you declutter the services model, the value of providing skills on scale wrapped in a strong domain and solution context story still stays. The question of challenges will be if you can build skills on scale as they disruptively change.”

On the country’s thriving startup ecosystem, he said that the focus should be on building an organization with the right values. “I want them to obsess with the people they bring on early into the organisation. Ultimately, if you want to create a valuation, you have to create a sustainably valuable business. Focus on returns, because cash is king.”