20% of Indian enterprises use artificial intelligence

APD NEWS

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Indian enterprises have been quick to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) with nearly one in five organizations implementing it in some way, said an Intel India commissioned report undertaken by research firm IDC. By mid-2019, about seven in 10 firms are anticipated to deploy AI. IDC surveyed 194 Indian companies across four verticals — telecom, media & technology (TMT); retail; banking, financial services, & insurance (BFSI) and healthcare.

The report said nearly 75 per cent of the firms surveyed anticipate benefits in business process efficiency and employee productivity with the use of AI, and 64 per cent of the respondents believe that this technology can empower them in revenue augmentation through better targeting of offers and improved sales processes. Despite a higher propensity to adopt AI, firms believe they will face a shortage of skills to unlock the opportunities through AI.

"We all talk about the opportunity that India presents for AI, but often the types of industries that will embrace AI, the challenges that AI can address, and the roadblocks in implementation, are vague. This research is a small step towards comprehending this knowledge, and enabling companies such as ours, shape strategy and move ahead in the right direction," said Prakash Mallya, managing director for sales and marketing at Intel India.

The TMT industry emerges as the top early adopter of AI, with a current adoption rate of 37.5 per cent, followed by BFSI, and healthcare. At least 71 per cent of organisations are looking at increased process automation as a key benefit and an almost equal number of firms (69 per cent) are looking at increased employee productivity across several business functions, the report said.

However, concerns around adoption of AI continue with high cost of solutions, acute shortage of skilled professionals, unclear return on investment, and cybersecurity emerging as the key hindrances. To bridge the talent gap, the Intel AI Academy Program that covers training on Intel's distribution of Python (leading AI programming language), tools, libraries, frameworks and platforms for AI, is targeted at educating 15,000 scientists, developers, analysts, and engineers on key AI technologies.

(ASIA TIMES)