AI levels the playing field for startups, says nasscom’s Sangeeta Gupta

Artificial Intelligence can provide an equal field for startups to compete with bigger services companies, with more possibilities of partnerships and collaborations between the two, said Sangeeta Gupta, Sr. Vice President & Chief Strategy Officer at nasscom.

“On the developer side, startups building AI solutions are gung ho about this technology. A new AI services startup can compete with bigger players because what they are creating is new for everybody; there is no legacy here. For implementation in the enterprise sector, there have to be partnerships. For example, big banks might find it hard to work directly with a startup for a big use case, but if the latter can partner with a traditional services company, it’s a win-win situation,” she explained, noting that more partnerships may come forth.

However, she added, companies that provide point-case solution rather than enterprise-wide solutions can move forward in this area, while also partnering with services companies to take their solutions to market.

On the enterprise side, among companies adopting these solutions, some people believe AI is yet another tech wave that will come and go, while others  believe this is different.

“For bigger services or product companies that have been around for some time, AI is about creating competitive differentiation. If they don’t do it, they can lose their edge. So whether they believe in it or not, they might have to do it,” said Gupta.

Adding that AI should not become a divisive factor, the SVP said, “A lot of work is happening with proprietary models and open source models. Companies are experimenting with them, allowing smaller companies to build small language models for their applications.”

Gupta added that while some large language models (LLMs) are being built in India, vertical or small language models are equally important and can implement more domain-specific solutions to democratise AI, particularly for SMEs, a critical sector of every economy and more so for India.

While GenAI might not directly create revenue for most companies using these solutions, it will impact the same. “As a contact center or a customer care office, if I implement GenAI, my call handling time can go from 10 to 3 minutes. With that productivity improvement, I can reuse the time to serve three more customers. There is value creation at every level by implementing AI and GenAI.”

The SVP observed that companies building AI computing  directly generate  revenue from GenAI, with large players like Nvidia being the biggest beneficiary of this boom. Since the services sector is a large component of the Indian tech industry, as enterprises accelerate their AI journey, AI services implemented by companies in India may generate significant revenue, she said.

Gupta added that two things to watch out for over the next 18-24 months will be to enhance trust in this technology. Addressing the ROI from these investments, she stated organisations will start prioritising areas where it makes sense to implement AI or GenAI to create more impact. “This prioritisation will increase because the question of ROI will become equally important after the initial hype curve.”