The AI & Cloud Summit got off to an interesting start with the keynote address delivered by Mr Ramanan Ramanathan, Former (First) Mission Director, Atal Innovation Mission and Additional Secretary at Niti Aayog. He spoke at length about how innovation and entrepreneurship leveraging emerging technologies can benefit not only India but the rest of the world.

“India is a country of a billion people and a million challenges which can be converted into a million opportunities. The government has embarked on a series of initiatives to capture this power of innovation to spur and create a vibrant ecosystem of innovation and entrepreneurship.” said Mr. Ramanan. According to him, India has the dual advantages of demographic dividend and exponentially changing technology that is affordable, accessible and available which can propel it forward to achieve high growth.

The session was followed by a fireside chat with Anand Ganapathy, Country Manager, Dell EMC and Reema Tendulkar from CNBC-TV 18 where they discussed the emerging technology disruptors like Cloud, AI, ML and Edge Computing and how they will shape the tomorrow for businesses and consumers. The conversation focused on how organisations have adopted technology to help them design, manufacture, and manage supply chains and how Edge computing along with 5G is poised to be a game-changer in the near future.

Following the chat was an interesting panel discussion on using AI and ML to propel business growth in the next decade. Moderated by Reema Tendulkar, the discussion had eminent industry leaders including Saurabh Thukral (Senior Specialist Niti Aayog), Kuriyan Xavier (Director, Solutions & Alliances, Dell EMC, India), Venkat Varadarajan (Head, Cloud and Digital, Intel India), and Kumar Rajagopalan (CEO, Retailers Association of India).

The Future Technology

Speaking about how AI has helped businesses understand consumer needs, Kumar Rajagopalan talked about the four pillars of a digital transformation which is supported by Cloud, Artificial Intelligence, 5G and Edge Computing and how these future technologies will form the backbone of the industry in times to come.

Role of AI in healthcare

AI can play an extremely useful role in healthcare and would have a far-reaching effect in a densely populated country like India. Venkat Varadarajan opined that it is impossible for the medical system to expand its reach without the help of technology. Adding to it Kurian Xavier discussed the accuracy of AI in computing and how it helps in building accurate predictions.

Role of Government and GDP Growth

Taking the conversation forward Saurabh Thukral referred to the use of AI in various segments including the development of a biobank for storing reference samples.and the need for AI to be integrated across the government health centres in the country. He also spoke about the government initiatives to bring technology to the mainstream and improve digital literacy.

The Technology Roadmap

All the panellists expressed highly futuristic expectations on how they expected technology to impact lives. Whether it is autonomous driving, smart manufacturing, simplified processes or an increase in AI and Blockchain use cases in education, healthcare and agriculture, the next five years look extremely exciting for businesses and consumers as technology takes a smart leap forward.

If you have missed the live session, you can catch the action right here.

First Published:Oct 5, 2021 11:58 AM IST