On 20th March 2024, TIG held its first Chief Technology Officer (CTO)-focused Bridge Forum Connects event in India at the Museum of Art and Photography in Bangalore. This gathering brought together GIC’s extensive network of partners in the country and broader region to explore their generative AI roadmaps, a key focus area for many.

The event was attended by 35 founders and global partners who joined us for a night of engaging discussions and networking. Attendees included founders and CTOs from companies such as Flipkart, Razorpay, Cred, Groww, Postman, Whatfix, Zepto, and Spotdraft, as well as senior executives from Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Databricks, Snowflake, Stripe, Indigo, Disney, Atlassian, Mphasis, and Virtusa.

The event commenced with private tours of the gallery, guided by the museum’s curators. Subsequently, Chris Emanuel, Head of TIG, and Gaurav Jain, Senior Vice President, TIG, took to the stage to discuss GIC’s technology investing strategy and introduce the Bridge Forum event. This was followed by two engaging and interactive panel discussions centered around AI, moderated by Pankaj Sood, Head of India Office, and Gaurav. The event wrapped up with a networking session over drinks and dinner.

Panel: AI in Action: How enterprises are preparing themselves to adopt generative AI

• Ed Lenta (Senior Vice President and General Manager, Asia Pacific and Japan, Databricks)
• Jeyandran Venugopal (Chief Product & Technical Officer, Flipkart)
• Shashank Kumar (Co-Founder, Razorpay)
• Moderator: Pankaj Sood
• With all disruptive technologies, it is important to remember the fundamental principle of starting “problem-first”. Generative AI should not be treated as a hammer that is in search of nails.
• While many organisations have expressed an interest in AI, it is important to think about the specific value that can be unlocked with AI and the organisational challenges that might come with it.
• Flipkart, a GIC portfolio company, started their generative AI journey by exploring more than two dozen use cases. Half of them have gone live, including generative customer service bots, automated e-commerce catalog hygiene checks, and improved product descriptions.
• Razorpay, another GIC portfolio company, processes payroll for more than 200,000 employees through their product, and has built an AI assistant to help employees ask questions on their payroll and optimise taxes.
• The rise of generative AI underscores the importance of making tools more accessible to everyone by deriving value from data. This can be achieved by integrating generative AI capabilities within internal data platforms.
• Generative AI is a transformational technology. Most companies are still in a build and evaluate phase of AI, where it might be too early to ascertain definitive return on investment (ROI). However, a good strategy is to select a few high-value problem statements and apply targeted solutions to demonstrate potential ROI.

Panel: Exploring AI Frontiers: Exploring the future of AI and the enterprise journey towards adoption

• Abhijit Kane (Co-Founder, Postman)
• Dr. Jennifer Belissent (Principal Data Strategist, Snowflake)
• Dr. Rohini Srivathsa (CTO, Microsoft India & South Asia)
• Moderator: Gaurav Jain
• Certain aspects of AI and machine learning have remained constant over the past three decades. Selecting the right problems to solve, maintaining a robust data estate, and utilising the correct data for analysis are as crucial now, if not more so, as they were in the past.
• The most challenging aspect of generative AI is data management. Many clients ask about the changes they need to make to optimise their data strategy for adopting AI. The response is not about altering the data strategy, but rather, it’s about accelerating its implementation.
• What has changed is that for the first time in history, we now have AI systems that can naturally interface with humans, reason, and be multi-modal and multi-task. This is a paradigm shift.
• Generative AI fundamentally breaks some constraints that have existed since the beginning of software development. It is akin to the launch of the iPhone – the concept of touch screens existed before the iPhone, but the iPhone changed how developers thought about leveraging it. We must now be creative and question what an AI-native user experience (UX) might look like.
• It’s likely there won’t be any non-adopters of generative AI. The real question is how to develop a cohesive communication strategy to educate and train employees within an organisation that will build confidence in AI. It’s crucial to dedicate adequate time and attention to this cause and develop this expertise in-house.