'Roles within IBM in India haven't dipped'
India is among the fastest growing markets for IBM, which expects to open a new centre in Lucknow by September this year, said Sandip Patel, the technology giant's managing director for India and South Asia.
'India is designated as one of the five growth markets for IBM around the world, the other ones being Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Mexico, and UAE,' Patel told ET.
In the last four years or so, IBM has more than doubled its business in India, he said.
It has also been expanding in tier-2 and 3 cities, such as Gandhinagar and Kochi. Now, it is looking for fresh talent for the proposed Lucknow centre.
'We are going to make it the hub for a lot of our data capabilities… hoping we will inaugurate sometime in September,' said Patel.
India with its demographic dividend can become the 'skill capital' of the world, but meaningful upskilling is needed, he said.
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'Work is going to take fewer people-no questions about it. With automation, the traditional jobs will go away. So, if you don't skill yourself to stay ahead of the curve, it is going to be very difficult,' said Patel.
At IBM,
artificial intelligence
(AI)-aided productivity boost has saved the company $3.5 billion in the last two years.
'There is a lot of coding that is automated, but that automation of that coding does not preclude people who are good test engineers, who can develop the right kind of test scripts around it, (from evolving into) prompt engineering, which is becoming a huge discipline--so those roles are getting created,' said Patel, adding that we are yet to scratch the surface of these new roles.
'For those roles, you will need basic technology acumen of people who have the right way of thinking logically about programming and writing code,' he said.
While most Indians are apprehensive that lower-level roles in the IT sector may be taken over by AI, disrupting the traditional pyramid hiring structure, Patel believes that early professional hired talent is a good thing, with more staying power within an organisation and the ability to adapt culturally.
'Shaping talent to adapt to the kinds of technologies that you ultimately want to proliferate, I think it's going to still be a blend of both (fresh and experienced hires),' he said.
The total number of roles within IBM in India has not dipped, Patel said, adding that the level may be higher than before it divested its managed infrastructure services arm Kyndryl in 2021.
Today, businesses haven't yet scaled AI to the point where the jobs are being impacted, he said.
While about 97% of Indian businesses say they are investing in AI, only 25-26% are moving from experimentation to scale, according to an IBM study. The top challenge is
AI governance
.
'That ties back to the lack of trust-can you really trust the data that is being used? Can you trust the models? Can you trust the provenance of models? Can you ensure that there is no bias that has crept into these models?' said Patel.
IBM has been investing in 'client engineering' to run proofs of concepts (POCs) to demonstrate solutions rather than simply talking about them, he said.
'Now, banks and public sector units and others that we have been working with, they are moving into getting their data platforms organised so that they can take advantage of AI,' said Patel. 'That is another phase of transformation.
Digital transformation
(in) core banking was done, but now core banking has become stale. What do you do with it to actually get to the next phase?'
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