The Chief Digital Officer at Allied Digital Services Ltd. and the former Head of Artificial Intelligence at YES BANK ,Mr. Utpal Chakraborty is an eminent Data Scientist and AI researcher, quantum scientist, strategist and thought leader. We spoke to him about AI adoption and implementation about different sectors and also about his journey as an renowned AI thought leader.
Q.1 Where does India stand in AI adoption and what more needs to be done?
A. The adoption of AI in different sectors in India has taken a great momentum in last couple of years and I think there will be hardly any industry or field which is untouched by AI. The good part is big enterprises, startups and academia are joining hands in this journey and our Govt. has a huge endorsement for AI initiatives. Even MSMEs has understood the importance of a technology like AI for their survival in the competitive ecosystem. So, overall I would say the adoption is great.
Q.2. Are there any specific sectors which are rapidly adopting AI compared to other sectors? How are governments and public enterprises looking at?
A. I think in Banking & Finance the adoption is brilliant and FinTechs are propelling the adoption further. Other sectors are Ecommerce and Healthcare & Medicine. I believe we are living in the golden era of FinTech and Digital Healthcare and AI is the main catalyst or enabler for the same. Having said that, I don’t want to underplay the other role of other industries. We have seen many brilliant AI solutions in the conventional field like Agriculture, Alternative Medicine, Ayurveda, Yoga etc. So, penetration of AI is not just limited to few known industries but it’s actually versatile.
Q.3 You were the AI head for Yes Bank. How is AI transforming the BFSI Sector and what changes we see happening?
A. AI in Banking is not a fancy today, it’s rather need of the day. Reason being, banking is a Data Intensive business an whoever is in a data intensive business, they can’t avoid AI. If they ignore AI, they will have to extinguish from the competition. Churning out the Data that a financial institution have with machine learning algorithms will not only give them valuable insights but also they can actually do the hyper personalization for their customers which is a need of the day. Coming to the AI applications in BFSI, there are many already bank and financial institutions are building, some examples could be in the areas of Credit Risk , Light-Weight Digital channels like – Chatbot, WhatsApp Banking, Voice Banking etc. There are major work happened in Payments, also on cross-border payments. Fraud & AML are areas where AI has actually revolutionized and there are many solutions built in different banks. Some unique AI solutions and products on customer services area like – customer care quality monitoring and looking for cross-sell and up-sell opportunities within the conversion, real-time suggestions and feedback to customer care executives etc. Also, AI powered advanced analytics has started transforming NPA and asset management verticals. All these are just few examples, in reality the scope is huge and we are just scratching the surface. Smart identity management, cybersecurity, various collaboration and virtual banking platforms are some examples where AI is a key enabler.
Q 4. How is Allied Digital implementing AI for fabricating their products?
A. At Allied Digital, we are building some of the cutting-edge solutions like – Conversational AI for Banking Platform which is going to an unique and industry-first platform, Solution for high-end Infrastructure Analytics for predictive alerts & notifications for infrastructure health and failure, AI Powered Service Management and Cognitive Command & Control Centre solutions for smart cities to name a few.
Q.5 Please tell us something about your journey as one of the Top AI Thought Leaders.
A. The journey was quite exciting and at the same time quite challenging as well. So, it was not only building AI solutions and applications as part of my assignments but also lots of research work that I have done throughout my career that helped me a lot to achieve such recognition by different reputed global platforms. In this journey all my employers, my teams and my association with the academic world and the scientific communities played a major role. Also, my passion for writing articles, blogs, books and speaking at conferences across the globe on AI and other scientific subjects, mentoring newgen startups are key to achieve such a global recognition.
