How has India been doing in terms of keenness for AI agents compared to the rest of the world?

 We commissioned an AI maturity index study looking at various factors of readiness, and the good news is India is amongst the leading where 25 per cent of customers are in the transformation-ready stage, one of the more advanced ones. That is ahead of Australia and Singapore. However, overall AI maturity declined 6 points year over year. That tells us there is is a very strong appetite to do things. AI investments are now approximately 13 per cent of the overall IT budget in India. Customers believe that for every dollar or rupee put into AI, they are going to get $/₹4.6 back in terms of return.

So, where is the gap? 

 In our study, only approximately 40 per cent respondents said they have an enterprise-wide AI metrics. So, India’s leadership needs to lean on to a platform vision which increases outcomes to over 50 per cent versus 30 per cent. Then investing in the right talent is critical. Governance and security are also a big thing.  

Is the leadership talking about these points? 

It is the conversation. I have been in Mumbai for 2-3 days meeting with top banks, global conglomerates and all conversations are around AI, not just AI to cut costs but to improve productivity, speed of operations, grow topline revenue. We just did a joint investment with TMRW, an Aditya Birla company, and they are leveraging AI to sustain a competitive advantage. For financial services, a big part of the conversation was how do we use AI to reduce the regulatory burden while staying in compliance. The starting point may be different by industry, but it is in every conversation. When you get to a fully agentic workforce, you can reallocate 50-60 plus per cent of the headcount to drive growth for your company.

Some Service Now reports in the past said AI can increase job opportunity. What we are seeing is that the market seems to be in a complete flux. What will happen once AI agents come in?

With every big technology shift, there is always a fear of massive job loss and it seldom pans out. In the short term, there is always a bit of uncertainty. While a lot of the routine, mundane work is going to go away and move to agents, there is going to be new jobs and new roles that open up like AI configurators, AI specialists, people monitoring AI ethics. We are in such early stages of AI, we do not yet know the new jobs and roles that are going to open up but I am fully confident they will.

In that sense, do you find the popularity for GCCs these days surprising? 

 While we are on this AI journey, we need GCCs in the traditional form for cost arbitrage, talent availability, etc. As AI starts to take hold, you still need humans to monitor what the AI is doing. I think the opportunity would be for the GCCs to start also doing more and more strategic work, which comes with skills development. I can say with 100 per cent confidence, the GCC of today will look very different from the GCC a year from now.  

How knowledgeable do you feel the leadership is about AI literacy?”

 India is actually leading compared to some of the other countries. Broadening the question to AI literacy overall versus just leaders, approximately 20-30 per cent Indian companies in our study said AI literacy is one of the biggest risks. Leaders are investing in AI literacy programs. Every employee needs to have a level one literacy. Analysts, engineer need level two, level three literacy, then there is level four, building the AI.  

Among your clientele so far, how many have sort of established Chief AI Officer roles or similar roles?

 I don’t have a percentage but we are seeing more CAIOs pop up because AI is that important. Companies are saying let’s create a dedicated role for this. A lot of times CAIOs happen to be the Chief Intelligence Officers and what we see is CIOs are generally leading the pack and charged with the AI transformation. Some organisations may create a specialised role. But over time, everybody is going to be doing AI. I see it over time folding naturally into the CIO function.

What has Service Now i planned for the next year or two years? 

 In India, we will continue to grow our engineering center, technology and business center in Hyderabad over the next year. Around 45 per cent of our products are built out of our engineering center in India. And it’s growing at about a 25 per cent CAGR in terms of hiring. India is absolutely super critical to our growth. On the sales side, it’s continuing to verticalise our sales teams.