New Delhi, Apr 23 (PTI) Restoring revenue growth in IT firms and evangelising the rising role of artificial intelligence and technologies in companies will be key priority areas for Nasscom, Srikanth Velamakanni, the newly appointed Chairman of the IT industry body, said on Thursday.
Fractal co-founder and Group Chief Executive Velamakanni told PTI in an interview that during his tenure, he would like to see India compete even better and more aggressively in the age of AI, and the industry body would look at policy support to enable it to build more capacity and introduce an AI-led curriculum in the education system.
"Restoring revenue growth is very important across the (IT) industry. As we progress through the year, there will be some restoration of revenue growth. We will also see that companies will drive revenue per employee growth as well," Velamakanni said.
He said that with the rapid progress in technology, machines will surpass human work, but that does not mean a decrease in the importance of human roles.
"Both can be true at the same time. That's what I would look at, whether companies are really transforming in the age of AI. I would look at whether companies in India are spending more on technology. I sincerely believe that India should be spending more on technology than they're spending at present," he pointed out.
Velamakanni said that during his tenure, he will drive Nasscom to evangelise the increasing role of technology and AI in every company, which would lead to an increase in spending for technology within the country.
The government has launched several programmes like India AI mission and National Quantum Mission, among others, to promote technology, and during his tenure, he would look at policy support to build higher capacity and higher innovation around that in the next one year, he added.
"I think it's very important that we are creating a new entrance of the workforce who are fundamentally much more equipped with AI and new age tech skills," he added.
On employment generation in an AI-dominated era, Velamakanni said that the net addition of jobs has been positive for the last year, and it continues to stay positive.
He also said the tech industry, which was driving a significant headcount addition every year, consistently for many years, hasn't done so in the last couple of years because growth has been lower than expected.
Velamakanni said there is compression coming from various kinds of AI technologies, which are making it easier to do the same work with fewer human hours, and as AI becomes better, the need for enterprise AI will just dramatically go up.
"That multi-trillion dollar opportunity, as it scales up, even though tech per se will become cheaper, the number of things that we need in tech will dramatically expand. The best days of the tech industry are ahead of us. And as growth restores, employment will also start to pick up," he said.
AI progress is unlocking unprecedented opportunities for enterprises, large and small, to reimagine their businesses.
"India will play a pivotal role in this AI-led transformation. Over the coming year, our focus will be to drive the next cycle of AI-powered growth across services and products and prepare our workforce to lead with AI," Velamakanni said.