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00:00:41 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Hello and welcome to this very special webinar series brought to you by Business Insider India and Nasscom. I'm Ridhma Bhatnagar and I will be your moderator for this session. Today we shed a very well deserved spotlight on one of the industries where India has been a global powerhouse and in fact, a leader for a very long time. We're speaking about the business process management industry or the BPM industry. And as I said, India has been a well deserved leader and in fact, has been a leader for a while now. But as time goes on, what's now becoming increasingly more and more clear that there is still a vast potential that needs to be unlocked. With AI really entering every sector, every industry, the big question is where do we go from here on? What is the next chapter for the BPM industry in India? What really is the future of the BPM industry in India? What is that potential that still needs to be untapped? What are the opportunities that are still waiting for us? And that's exactly what we'll discuss in today's session, which is data, technology, skills, customer, the new value believers of the BPM industry in India. And I have a stellar panel joining me, some of the finest as well as the brightest minds of the industry. So let me not waste any more time and introduce you to our panel. We have Harita Gupta, head of global experience and SVP Global Business Operations solutions and support at Sutherland, also the chairperson for Nasscom BPM Council. Harita, good to have you with us.
00:02:18 Harita Gupta: Hello, thank you.
00:02:20 Ridhima Bhatnagar: We also have Sapna Bhambani, senior VP of Operations and Geo Leader, TaskUs. Hi Sapna, good to have you with us.
00:02:27 Sapna Bhambani: Hi Ridhima.
00:02:29 Ridhima Bhatnagar: We also have Venkatesh Korla, CEO of Americas at HGS. Hi Venkatesh, good to have you with us.
00:02:36 Venkatesh Korla: Thank you, Ridhima. Good to be here.
00:02:38 Ridhima Bhatnagar: And we also have Birendra Sen, President of Business Process Services at Tech Mahindra. Hi, Birendra, good to have you with us.
00:02:46 Birendra Sen: Thanks for having me.
00:02:47 Ridhima Bhatnagar: So ladies and gentlemen, good to have you with us and thank you for taking out time and doing this for us. So we hope to have a lot of fun and also learn a lot by the end of this discussion. So we're talking about the new value levers of the BPM industry. As I said when I started the discussion that we've already established a position as a leader in India, in fact has been a leader for a while now. But the larger question now is what is it that is needed to bring the next Philip or the next chapter of the BPM industry in India and some of the levers while we were researching what data fields, customer and technology. So to understand that where do we stand and where are we headed? That's exactly what we're going to try and figure out. So Harita, if I could actually begin with you before we really begin by understanding what is the kind of push that is needed from the industry? What is the kind of effort that is being put in? Just to set context for the discussion. Where does India currently stand? We are saying India is the the leader of the BPM industry has been once for a while now. What has managed to keep India its position for a while now?
00:03:53 Harita Gupta: So I think a couple of things, Ridhima, if you look at India #1 we're able to provide scale. We're able to provide scale in a country where the ease of doing business has become very high. You know, our government has been voted for the third time. So the stability of the government, the ease of doing business, the policies that have come around, you know, whether it's governance on AI, whether it is how the government is looking at investments in AI, whether it is just building scale across all our emerging hubs, our Tier 2, Tier 3 cities. You know, the availability of talent. And I think just the trust in the system, apart from the fact that, you know, we have lower or fewer number of typhoons and all the natural disasters hitting us. Overall, I think the business landscape is definitely much more conducive in India. And then as a country, we've delivered, We've delivered on growth, we've delivered on numbers. And you know, when you look at the BPM industry, I would say we've delivered not only on our GCCa. So there are a lot of companies who've set up global capability centres who do very similar work to the BPM industry, which is pure outsourcing. And if I put two together, you will see that our growth story is very powerful.
00:05:20 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Interesting. And you speak about scale, you speak about how India has been able to deliver and I agree with you that in fact has been the foundation of how we've managed to dominate with this leadership and also hold this position. But Sapna, now that we've you know established the position, we've understood what is work in our favor. Obviously with every industry, the question is there is hope, there is potential, but what is going to be this factor that promotes this growth as we move into the next phase of the industry at large? And how are the factors, if I begin with one of course is nurturing voice based talent. A lot has been spoken about it among experts and researchers. So currently if I just start to ask you how is today, we're seeing customer interaction in the BPM industry and how is voice-based talent going to change that or bring the next phase of growth for this industry?
00:06:12 Sapna Bhambani: I think Ridhima, taking a cue from what Harita mentioned, right. I mean the economic and political stability is the foundation like the government has put in a lot of efforts in last two decades, right. That stability is there and more than two decades if you see there have been existing hubs who have been providing you know the talent for BPM industry like the southern part of India is very heavy on it. The north part of India, you have Delhi Gurgaon as a base though you go to the West of the world, you have Pune and Mumbai as as existing base. Not only that, but there are Tier 2, tier 3 cities coming up and really getting to match that level when it comes to providing that talent right. A lot of companies have started moving into these Tier 2 cities where the clients would want to reduce for the cost, but at the same time not compromise on the talent. I think the industry has started taking jobs to where the talent is rather than the other way round, right. So that has really helped on one side of it, to answer your second question on the Voice based talent, I think the education system in India has evolved so much. The every year we already have a 340 million English speaking population in the country, right? Going back to the scale that we provide every year, 3,000,000 graduates get added, right. So with that kind of talent availability and the investments and, these investments not only in education, I think is the only industry which is making so much of effort in upskilling people, be it on language, be it on technical skills or AI skills for that matter, you know, to make it easier. So I think the combination of all of this, it's the perfect platform to leverage all all these industries to leverage India as a big source.
00:08:07 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Interesting. So Venkatesh, I want to bring you in and taking on from what Sapna is saying, essentially what Sapna is saying that what we already have is a great scale. We have people coming in, but that could also become a catch 22, right? You have that scale, you have that potential coming in, but if you don't know how to nurture it, then you will not be getting the maximum potential of the maximum outcome of it. Is that currently some sort of a challenge aspart of the BPM industry is concerned that yes, we do have talent, but what are the kind of steps that we need to take to nurture through talent to ensure that we get the best possible outcome for all of us?
00:08:41 Venkatesh Korla: See one of the challenges as you apply the talent to solve customers problems right is that as the technology has evolved, more and more simpler straightforward problems are being solved using self-service technologies, whether it being or automated AI interactions or conversations. But the premiumized service is needed to be provided through voice with real talent and by taking graduates and talent that is coming out of these cities and within India, upskilling them, training them and providing them the assistance that they need to really understand and solve more complicated problems where when the customer calls a voice line, they're not calling because they could solve the problem themselves, right? They've already tried solving the problem themselves. And you really need strong talent that can actually help them solve the problem that they have that they're not able to solve it themselves. So having the talent between think on their feet, who can be more creative, try to use the tools that are available for them to solve, I think becomes imperative. And with India providing the amount of educated, more talented team members that can come into this mix actually benefits us as a country and as organizations as well.
00:10:09 Ridhima Bhatnagar: So I'm very curious to know what you said is very interesting, right? You're saying when a customer calls, they're not calling because they were able to solve that problem. They weren't clearly, and that's why they're looking for a solution. And what you said is also very important that you need to upskill this talent to ensure that they can think on their feet because no two problems are going to be the same. So can you give me an example and sense of some of the solutions or some of the, you know, situations that you see that could become tricky where a talent needs to adapt themselves better?
00:10:39 Venkatesh Korla: Yeah. So let's take an example of an ISP or a telco provider, right? And if a customer is calling related to a problem related to their cell phone, that's not working. As an example, the basic concepts what we used to have voice talent or call centers or BPO industry solved before was the sequence of basic steps of did you restart your phone? Did you reset your network connectivity? Those things customers do now by themselves by default because #1 generally the population is more talented in technology themselves. They've grown up in that world #2 you can go online and find that information today. The place that it comes down to is now you need somebody who can actually troubleshoot beyond the basics. Actually go in and try to figure out why the problem is happening. And that requires a more up-skilled talent than the base talent that you would get. It's not just bringing somebody in and doing basic training. You need people who can think beyond just the basic information that's available.
00:11:44 Ridhima Bhatnagar: OK, interesting. So what Venkatesh in fact is saying that we've now, you know, crossed that first step, which is that, yes, we knew talent was coming in, we had the potential, but now companies have also realized that customers have also become far more evolved, far more smarter. So we need to level up, which is why we need to upskill our own talent in a way that they can cater to these new problems. Can you give me a few steps in terms of from the organization's perspective, what are these steps that are being taken to ensure that these this talent is upskilled? Where various steps and strategies that are being put in place.
00:12:17 Birendra Sen: I'll answer that in two parts. So firstly, Venkatesh is right, the level of complexity in the frontline agents or call center agents, that part of our business is increasing and increasing at an exponential rate primarily driven by automation of of simpler transactions, right. And that problem we are addressing in two parts. Firstly, just in terms of the way we upscale and train frontline agents, it's more scenario based on individual needs rather than you know what we used to do 15 years ago put 20 people in a classroom and take them through the same four weeks of training. It's more digitized and and matched to individual learning needs of our employees. The second one is actually using technology to solve that problem, right. And so putting more support on the agents desktop to actually solve that problem, whether it is real time assistance, real time analytics, prompts that our employees can use when answering complex problems. But I think the fundamental change to notice is complex problem solving, listening and communicating with empathy are more in demand rather than you know, any specific, you know, technology skill that you might have. Hope that answers your question.
00:13:47 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Yes, yes, it does, but it also, you know, and I'm just thinking it gets another aspect to it, which is, you know, Harita, I want to bring you back also in the conversation as Birendra also rightly pointing out that you also need to look at the human factor that you know, you need to have more empathy when you approach a solution. You need to think on your feet as well because the other aspect from an organization point of view, it also is that how are you also increasing efficiency and productivity while you're catering to all those challenges. So are you seeing this upscaling when put in place, rising the bar as far as efficiency and productivity is concerned?
00:14:23 Harita Gupta: So, really now there are two ways to do upscaling. One is to start training your workforce. But you know, the number of scenarios that the customer has, they could be just, you know, and they keep increasing. And as Venkatesh said, you know, customers are getting smarter. So they've done their Google checks and they've come back to you with scenarios which potentially may not be there. So over the years, and remember, AI is not new in our industry. We've been having AI and, and it's not just front office, it's back office. So I'm going to give you 2 scenarios. If you look at front office scenario, the front office scenario is where I'm doing customer support. Customer support can be voice chat, e-mail, text, whatever. Right when I'm doing that, we had a tool called Help Tree. So the help tree was basically a tree which said, you know, if this is the problem, these are the two solutions. Is it this or this? And it was a yes, no kind of tree. But we found that it had limited uses. Yeah, because the minute that flow changed, the agent was not able to use it. So today we've we've gone to a level where we have something called Agent Assist, which is pure generative AI based. And what it does is that while I'm resolving a customer's problems, this particular tool uses NLP and uses a large language model so that it looks at all the knowledge bases that are available first in the internal customer database, our internal learning databases, and sometimes even external to pull together the right answer for the consultant or the agent to give the customer. We found that that itself had a little bit of a challenge because as we're getting more mature in our industry, we're realizing that domain knowledge is very key. And so what we've started to do is for our AI assist, which is our generative AI tool, we started getting our subject matter experts on that process because you know, every process has a subject matter export, whether it's front office, they train the model because unless we train the model, adopting Gen AI is very potentially dangerous. And we've had a customer who adopted it and then they pulled out because the the model was hallucinating and not giving the results that we needed and their CSAT fell. So I think it's this human computer interaction as we move forward. It's not just about the UI. You know, 15-20 years ago, it was about the UI. How you look at UI for that was human computer interaction. But no, HCI has moved to a level where you need to train the model. You need to train it with the right prompts and loop prompt engineering to a level where the model is able to give you results which are predictable and repetitive from time to time. So I'll pause there.
00:17:27 Ridhima Bhatnagar: So I will of course speak about AI at greater length, you know the second part of the discussion. But Harita, before I go back to Sapna quickly, what you said, because you said that you know this is a challenge. So is there a cost element that is also attached that is also going up while all of this is happening? And is that a concern that are we going to get the outcome in terms of the cost that we're putting because that becomes a big concern from an organization perspective?
00:17:52 Harita Gupta: And you're absolutely right with them all. One of the big things is all of us are investing, all of us on the call, we're investing and the ROI will start coming in the next three to five years, I believe. Yeah, right. And and some of these POCs will fail. So it's not as if everything will go forward. But the good news is that, you know, Nasscom did a study with Deloitte, 94% of customers today are saying that they want to invest in POCs. I mean, they did a survey with about 2000 customers primarily in the West and 94% say they want to build POCs. And that's what we are leveraging as companies. We're working with our customers to say yes, let's do it, let's get on the journey and if something fails, we just fail fast and move on.
00:18:42 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Lovely. I like that approach because unless you don't try it, you won't know what the outcome is. The journey, as we say, is far more important and greater than the end result. That's well put. Sapna, I want to bring you in. The other aspect, of course, we know when we speak about the new levers is also to try and understand where this talent is coming from and where are the opportunities. The other aspect that one you know reads about and speaks about the first is the emergence of these emerging hubs. So you know, what are the kind of opportunities in these emerging hubs? What is the role going forward? Do you see the role of emerging hubs also being a game changer as far as the BPM industry is concerned?
00:19:23 Sapna Bhambani: Of course, I mean, I'll take my example, right. Five years back when we started our journey in India, TaskUs was very new and we just started from year to city, you know, and it was a it was a big someone might call it as a big risk and question, why didn't you start from metro city in India?
00:19:42 Ridhima Bhatnagar: That was going to be my next question, right? Isn't it usually easier to begin from a bigger city and then, you know, expand as you have your footprint?
00:19:51 Sapna Bhambani: And I think, that was the core of the strategy, right? I mean, and to to my previous point of why to take, you know, jobs to where all there are already so many jobs, take jobs where the community needs it, the talent needs it, and that's where I think the people value it more. The second thing is those cities, these emerging hubs have any day higher or better happiness index, right? There have been lot of ports. People are happy, there's load, less density, lesser pollution, lower commute times. All of this impacts when when you look at even business. So I think it was really making sense when you look at people business and ultimately what clients need is better efficiency, better quality at a lower cost, right. So I think that really came up as a sweet spot. And today 60% of our business still happens out of Tier 2 cities in India. So that has been a pretty successful strategy. Yeah. The cost element that you touched upon, while you save costs on a lot of other overheads, right, Not necessarily that you save costs on compensation and the benefits, those are pretty standard that the talent expects. I think the other place where the investment really is needed of the cost factor is when you have to keep developing the talent, right. There is a lot of training, development, upscaling because you're not getting a lot of experience, talent pool and then comes the mid management and the leadership sourcing. Yeah, right. You have to really make it a very attractive proposition for the leaders to take a decision to move into those emerging hubs. So that's I think an investment which the industry is making, you know, and I think the states where the government is promising, the government is extending a helping hand. I think those are the successful emerging hubs.
00:21:42 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Can you give me examples of certain states where what you said, where you know the there's a push by the government, where there is a lot of interest and where you've managed to make it lucrative? If you can give me some examples where this is shown beautifully.
00:21:55 Sapna Bhambani: Yeah, like one of the largest hubs for us has been Indore, which is in MP, right. Government has has been investing a lot in this state, attracting a lot of businesses to get into it. One is that second is we entered into Punjab as the second Tier 2 hub which is Mohali. And there's a lot more to explore in the coming times.
00:22:23 Harita Gupta: I'd like to add to what Sapna said and and I think I loved her point about, they're doing over 50% of their business from these emerging hubs. And I want to bring out that Nasscom, along with all our members, we've chosen 4 emerging hubs where we're going to put our focus because, A. the government's been very supportive, B. they believe we get the right talent and we can grow. So those four hubs are going to be Lucknow, Kanpur, it's going to be Coimbatore, Trichy Indore, Bhopal for sure, and Vizag, Vijayawada. So these are going to be our four hubs where all the investment in connecting with universities with talent hubs and getting government support for for growth is going to be the focus.
00:23:10 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Oh lovely. So see, we're already on the next step where we're already seeing this list of shortlisted emerging hub. And I love what Sapna in fact said. She said why should we already invest where talent is? Let's go to a place where we know talent, but maybe the opportunity still havent reached them. But Venkatesh, what Sapna also said also leads us to some sort of a lag, which is that how do you make this a lucrative opportunity for the talent, for the local talent that is available, that you tell them that there is a long term opportunity here. How do you sustain one that intention, how do you make it lucrative and then how do you sustain it from there?
00:23:48 Venkatesh Korla: On the contrary, what we have found is that a lot of talent that has moved to the big metro cities, the Tier 1 metro cities have actually migrated from these Tier 2 cities looking for jobs, looking for these big opportunities that they wanted. By creating these locations where they have jobs. The initial ceiling of talent is actually we're having reverse migration of people moving back from the Tier 1 metros back into the Tier 2 emerging hubs where they're happy to be with their family, close to their family. And you know, it's really intriguing. That also improves retention. People stick around a lot longer and then the next set of talent develops from. The other aspect that we commonly see is in the emerging hubs, especially when you're servicing Western economies, you find the challenge of accent, cultural awareness and things like that, which the metro cities you, you get it much more easily with the new technologies like, you know, accent neutralization, AI capabilities that you have gotten ability to coach people on real time by providing cues of cultural, you know, awareness through using AI again, you're able to overcome those difficulties and those that enables these people to really succeed. At the end of the day, see, people want to really do a good job. They want to be successful. And if you can provide the help that they need to be successful, you'll have happy talent that'll stick around and, you know, you'll be able to create jobs. That's really, at the end of the day, what matters the most.
00:25:32 Ridhima Bhatnagar: But you know, Venkatesh, and I'm just playing the devil's advocate here. I know I started by saying that we are a leader and we've established a position, but this is also an industry that is seen and almost 360 from the BPO days to the BPM. There is also been a change not just from an organizational perspective, but would you agree that there has been a mindset change that has also happened from many negating the opportunities of the BPO to the BPM industry to today many seen potential as well. And I'm going to make it like very simplistic when I say this. When many within the family joined the BP or the BPM industry, it was almost looked like did they not have any other option that they ended up here? Has that also now changed for India to manage his position as a leader today?
00:26:15 Venkatesh Korla: I think it is changing. It's not 100% there yet. I think there's progress happening both from the talent perspective and from the customer's perspective. Most of the customers preferred that the for example the voice work was the preference. Initially it came to India and later on they did not. Unless it was technology related. They they preferred for it not go to India, instead go to other countries where it was easier to deal with the cultural nuances. But as India has progressed, there's more awareness of the culture of the western economies. There is a better accent neutralization capability which is allowing the organizations to come in for the talent itself that is looking for these jobs. There was this rush of this IT work that people wanted to get into, but over time they have realized that there is a lot more stickiness and a lot more opportunity in the BPM space. And we're starting to see talent also wanting to take on these jobs. So I think there is a over time, it's it's a resurgence of the need, especially with AI coming into play. I think that's changing a lot.
00:27:28 Ridhima Bhatnagar: OK, Birendra, I also want to understand, you know, as meditation, others are saying that of course there is more opportunity, but one thing that most panelists have accepted or agreed upon is the fact that upskilling is the need of the hour. So what is the various steps in upskilling that you're taking to ensure that the talent doesn't leave and there is a long term perspective with the talent that's associated as well?
00:27:55 Birendra Sen: Thanks Ridhima. Just to add to the previous point, first, I think there are examples and stories now of great leaders who have come out of the BPO industry, right? And I've gone on to become CEOs of large businesses. In fact, on my leadership team itself, there are multiple examples of people who started on the phone, but now our senior VPs, managing global businesses. And those are the stories that really inspire people to, you know, start a career in the BPO industry. I think in terms of skill sets and, and just, you know, spending time with employees, what really matters to them is do I have a future? What is my next job? What is my growth path? Am I going to grow? Is my job safe? And as long as we can answer those questions on a regular basis and reinforce that, you know, we are here to stay. Their job is here to stay. And these are the next steps that they can take in the next six, 12,18 months, which is in our industry called career development or career paths. And there are multiple career paths on the basis of your strengths as well as your interest areas. And we can help support them with targeted training programs to actually pursue those dreams that they might have in the organization. I think that really works as an ecosystem that really is the core of how to retain talent and keep them excited.
00:29:33 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Could you give me certain examples that you would have taken at your organization to ensure that the talent is retained? Because as you know, we were discussing a short while ago that the customers becoming, you know, smarter, more evolved, even the talent is becoming more sharper and evolved in terms of their own expectations from the organization or the industry at large as well. So some of these factors that you possibly incorporated in the organization to ensure that it's a seamless process for all.
00:30:00 Birendra Sen: Yeah, sure. So you know, to give you an example, I'm sure my panelists will agree most of the talent on the phone after spending 6 to 12 months on the phone wants to get off the phone that's there and and that's quite challenging, right, Because you cannot provide the the kind of opportunities that they are demanding on a regular basis. So what we've done, which I feel is quite unique and has worked really well is actually, you know, incentivizing our employees to stay on the job, on the frontline job, but do a higher complexity job and they're rewarded for that, right. So say, for example, if they move from a very simple kind of transaction, you know, processing to a very complex one, but stay in the front line, it requires skill development, it requires, you know, a lot of investment in terms of tools and training. But at the same time, because we as a business are able to realise a higher revenue for that employee, we are happy to actually pass on that as an incentive to be employed. And the second part is about, you know, actually helping them find the next non phone job, which is in quality or training or WFM. And there are tasks for that. What we've done is that for the, for the support functions, we have a clear policy. We will not hire from outside and it'll be only internal postings. And that means there are enough opportunities for people to join in.
00:31:40 Ridhima Bhatnagar: OK, lovely. Harita, as I come back to you, I now want to focus on the big elephant in the room. Or maybe not, which is the role of artificial intelligence, right? When I say Artificial Intelligence today, you either love it, hate it, you really cannot escape it. And that really is the case with any new technology, any new emerging trend, when it comes, it's usually dismissed because there is a lack of understanding and then usually people get a little more warmed up for it. So from a BPM industry perspective, AI, is it a bane? Is it a boon?
00:32:12 Harita Gupta: So, let me know, step back a little bit more. AI, as I said in our industry is not new, right? What is AI? If you look at AI and machine learning, all we're saying is, as Venkatesh put it, that we want to do a true shift left. We want to be able to enable our customers to do as much self-service as possible. We want our consultants or agents to be as productive as possible and we want to be able to resolve an issue in the shortest time, which means total cost of ownership for our customer is low and we're able to have maximized profitability on whatever we do at the end. This is what we've been doing, right? Sure. Last 15 years, 20 years, maybe more. I think what is new is that now we have generative AI. The minute you put the word generative in it, what changed is that the amount of data available using large language models, using models which are able to do language translation, you know, in real time, right? Earlier you could do language translation on text. I mean text to speech or speech to text has been there for years. 30 years ago it was there.
Right now you can do real time speech to speech in a different language immediately, right? So I think because of the availability of these large language models, generative AI brings a different, I would say, twist to what we've been doing. How does it help if it's a bane? It's neither. I think it's a business opportunity in my mind like any other piece of technology. But like any other piece of technology, we've got to make sure that we've got our policies, our safeguards, you know, what our people can access what they cannot. And and also whatever we put out there in terms of tools needs to be governed to the extent that we're absolutely sure that this is right fit to be put out there. I mean, you saw what happened, right? Cloud strike put a little patch. Yeah. And the world went down. Yeah. And, and you know, we are neither Microsoft nor are we crowd strike, right? And if that can happen with Giants?
00:34:39 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Yeah.
00:34:40 Harita Gupta: The learning for me is that whatever we put there with our customers, we test it thoroughly. We're cognizant of the impact it can have and cognizant of the security challenges.
00:34:51 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Yeah. So Harita, what you said was in fact very interesting. You said AI has always been a part of the BPM industry. What is new, in fact, is generated AI. So am I fair in understanding that one of the aspects where Gen AI really has worked well is how conversations have changed into conversational AI because essentially earlier they were just chat bots and now you have them as conversational AI. Is that correct? Is that airline the customer experience a lot better?
00:35:23 Harita Gupta: Absolutely true. And see there's one of the tenets of conversational AI is that AI actually remembers the thread, right? Bot doesn't remember what you said 2 days ago. The conversational AI, right there is continuity of the content, Yeah. So it's a real conversation that you're having, right? And that of course, brings a completely different ability of that tool, OK.
00:35:55 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Sapna, for you, from an AI perspective, has life really changed or has it just been an additional positive addition as far as the scope or potential is concerned? How do you see the role of AI integrating into the potential of the BPM industry? Let's put it that way.
00:36:15 Sapna Bhambani: I think not that life has completely changed. Yeah, the chatter certainly has increased multiple folds. Every Gen. AI has come in. There's so many publications which say, OK, is Gen AI going to replace the human touch? That's never going to happen, right? We've seen technology changing like at the blink of an eye. We've not seen human element going away anywhere, right? At the end of the day, all of us are humans and if we are accessing services, we're using technology. We need human to solve those problems with technology. I think AI is only going to help human get better, right? All the POCs which are happening, like Harita had mentioned, if you were going to fail, for sure right now everyone is investing in seeing what's working, what's not going to work anything that, and trust me, those POCs not only are being tested by us, but even by our clients, you know, on a larger network level because they're very security conscious. So ultimately we'll see most of the tools, like I'll give you example of tasks, most of the tools that he came up with, like an assist AI, author AI, these tools are only to empower and enable the frontline to get better and do a more value added work, right? So that administrative jobs and repetitive jobs are taken care of by technology. So I think whatever AI really is successful, whichever tools are successful, it's only going to get our jobs easier, better, we'll get more efficient with it only.
00:37:53 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Okay, Venkatesh, do you agree with what Sapna is saying? You know, when AI is, when people really started to understand the potential of AI, the big question was, were humans going to get replaced by AI? Are all our jobs at stake? Should we start looking at something else? Is it really that simplistic? You know, when I was researching, there in fact four very dominant areas where AI starts showing results, which is productivity, performance, prediction, as well as personalization. Do you think that's correct? You've seen the role of AI in each of those spheres.
00:38:25 Venkatesh Korla: Yeah, see, there's a lot of, there's absolutely a lot of noise, right? You know, just because we have a hammer, that doesn't mean that we want to use that hammer trying to find every nail that is there to, you know, nail it. So and for the first time, we have AI in computing where instead of computing taking data that is stored, synthesizing and providing it back to us is actually able to generate something new, right? That's the beauty of generative AI. But on the other hand, do you really want your conversations to be governed by something that's generating which has no context of what's really happening in the real world? So I don't think that's really going to happen. In my opinion, generative AI or any of these AI systems are only going to enhance the conversation. They'll remove the friction out of the conversations that our associates who are the brand ambassadors for our customers, our clients and their customers, right. So today when a call happens, when a more complicated problem comes to one of the customer service associates, they spend a lot of time researching it because not every, not every question is the same that they get. So they spend time researching, finding the answer, and you put the customer on hold.
Instead, that job can be delegated to the AI system to go find, collate, synthesize and generate information that is based on real facts that can then be provided in a summarized format so that the associate can actually deliver that in a very empathetic, related and contextual manner. That is the key that AI is going to provide. Similarly, AI is going to help in coaching. AI is going to help in compliance, quality control. But I call this the Iron Man suit for the Jarvis for Iron Man, right? Because it's literally that never replaced the Iron Man, the human inside the suit, right? So that's really how we need to look at it. And I completely agree that it'll help in personalization, it'll help in contextualization, but I don't think it'll replace the actual human conversation.
00:40:53 Ridhima Bhatnagar: But Birendra, I want to bring you back also in the conversation. And what I essentially want to understand is that Venkatesh and others are saying there's a lot of noise. And every time there's a lot of noise, there is a sense of fear that happens, that something wrong is going to happen. So do we then, you know, take a step back and not realize the true potential of this emerging technology that could in fact become the next lever for us to bring the next chapter in for India?
00:41:17 Birendra Sen: Ridhima, we should be doing our jobs. That's exactly what we need to do and take a step back, right? And TechM, the way we are looking at AI in general and generative AI in specific is it's got a huge opportunity for the BPM industry in India and globally to really transform, right? Yeah. Firstly, I don't think the BPM industry in India is just call centers, right? We do a lot of complex work across, you know, various process centers, but the way we are looking at it is 3 vectors. The first one is generative, is creating huge BPM markets which never exist before, right. All these large language models require training. The last count I had was there are over 60 large language models. We may know only one or two, but there are 60 already and more are are being written and all of them require training, retraining, writing, rewriting, guard railing, you know, stress testing, ensuring that they don't hallucinate and all that is human in the loop BPM work.
There is a huge opportunity out there. Also what we are seeing is all enterprises want to build their own language models, right, because they don't want to with their own data. So large SaaS companies want to integrate their own LLM and their own products and they require the same BPM services to actually train their bots. So that's a huge opportunity which I think the industry has a huge opportunity to actually go and cash on. The second one is what we've been talking about, which is whatever we were doing till date. Generative AI actually helps us do it faster, better, quicker and more at you know, more cost effective rate.
00:43:17 Birendra Sen: And so you know, the conversational AI chat bots are infinitely better than the rule based chat bots as Harita was mentioning. And that's just one example. Enterprise knowledge management, you name it, even in the back office side, there are huge improvements in what we can do to processes. A third real opportunity for us is actually ourselves adopting AI to become really cutting edge in terms of the way we hire talent, we train talent, yeah, we manage their performance, the kind of support that is available to them. How do we at our core becomes AI companies ourselves? That's the third opportunity I see. So huge opportunity on the back of AI.
00:44:05 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Yeah. So you know, Harita, when I bring you back, you know, because we were speaking about conversational AI. A short while ago and you know how it's really changing the game taking on from what all the other panelists are saying. It's also helping in delegate and also cater to a larger demographic. You know, Venkatesh, earlier in the discussion was saying, earlier accent, you know, used to be a problem thinking on the feed, used to be a problem with conversational AI coming in. You can have somebody sitting in India catering to various global languages. Is that something that we've seen work well in the sphere of AI?
00:44:38 Harita Gupta: Absolutely Ridhima. Even before we had generative AI, we were doing this. We have a tool called translate.ai in Sutherland for the last three years, we delivered 40 languages out of India, out of Hyderabad. But keep in mind we were only doing chat. So you know anybody speaking any language with chat and the consultant speaking English in Hyderabad, they're responding. We're doing it even today. I think the generative AI brings two things. First, we've now quickly got onto the voice platform. So we're testing voice because voice in real time requires us to look at latency in great detail. That's number one. And and #2 the conversation becomes more real, right? And then you'd really get into a conversational bot versus an individual sitting and then doing the job. So yes, absolutely, it's, it's a reality. And I think that is the beauty that India can offer because we offer the stability of doing business, scale of doing business. And today, we can support pretty much any language across the globe.
00:45:48 Ridhima Bhatnagar: And isn't that lovely? That makes our job so seamless. And the potential of how much the customers can be serviced also only keeps increasing with each passing day.
00:45:58 Harita Gupta: And at the right price point, which is so important in our industry, I mean, look at it, our customers, for them, cost of ownership of any solution is very, very important. Yeah. And I think India is 1 country which is absolutely poised to do that. And from a Nasscom perspective and all the members of Nasscom, I think they're absolutely focused that as India leads with the AI mission, you know, the Prime Minister's AI mission and all the hubs that we want to focus on, the talent that we want to grow, I think the future is going to be even better.
Ridhima Bhatnagar OK, lovely. You know, ladies and gentlemen, as we move towards the end of, you know, the discussion to the later parts of our sectors that we want to focus on Sapna, of course, the other aspect is, and this is a lot of these issues of course overlap, which is one of them is domain capability, right? We've already just spoken about it. But how crucial today is domain capability as India looks to take the next leap to continue its dominance as far as the sector is concerned?
00:47:03 Sapna Bhambani: I'll tell you one of the beauty that I have seen only and only BPM industry offers, we call it 1 industry, but imagine the house of multiple industries that's that's under this umbrella, right? Today you enter into a BPM side organization, you would realize that you would find a retail vertical leader, You would find a banking vertical leader or a technology vertical leader. I think 1 route and and most of that talent I have seen is really emerging from India even at the leadership level. You, you pick up any other country in this industry somewhere a leader from India who's the vertical expert would be sitting there and leading those roles globally, right? Yeah, I think all thanks to India being the pioneer of, you know, being part of this industry for I think now more than three decades, I would say is when the journey started, right. So imagine the kind of a domain expertise that we have built over the period of these many year. It's not only about the banking, financial and every industry in its own. Like there was a time it was called as BFSI and now the new term that you hear is fintech, fintech combination of you need banking, financial, domain expertise plus you need technology expertise as well. So that's a constant. As I said, one way is organizations would always invest into training and developing resources. 2nd is hiring the industry experts building vertical or domain capability not only at the leadership level but across till the mid management level. You know, so yeah, I think domain expertise is, is something that that can, you don't need to really go to a bank and hire someone to build or to get a vertical leader within the industry itself. Someone who has served banking customers can emerge as a BFSI leader.
00:49:03 Ridhima Bhatnagar: So Venkatesh taking on from what Sapna is essentially saying that yes, of course, you know, to continue our dominance, these you know, factors are very important. But from an organizational perspective, what are these various strategies that need to be put in place to ensure that domain capability continues or any steps in specific that you're taking from an organizational perspective?
00:49:26 Venkatesh Korla: So there's obviously as it was discussed, there is a need to build talent and continue to evolve talent with vertical expertise and we need to keep adding to it. The second aspect is we all, we all have been talking about generative AI and large language models, right. But as time progresses for the speed at which the response needs to be there, the accuracy with which the response needs to be there. Actually the emerging area is the whole idea of SLMs, which is small language models where we need to create domain specific vertical specific language models that are more accurate. And I think taking some of the expertise we have of not just the senior talent who know the understand the processes, but also the junior talent who have participated in the conversations and used the data to create small language models which are vertically focused can actually enhance dramatically how we use technology to support this activity. And that's something that within HGS we're trying to do experimenting with right now. But I believe that there is a huge amount of opportunity there, number one. Number two, you'll also notice that on the technology side, app development, coding and all those areas, because of generative AI, now you're able to generate. You need less engineers to produce the type of outcome or the product or application you need to build, but you still need the domain expert to be able to tell the model what to write and what to create. And that is where the future of this career of the agents or the associates who are in the BPM industry, who understand the core problems of the specific domain can actually help. And that is where the future is.
00:51:22 Ridhima Bhatnagar: OK, Birendra, I actually want to now take a step back because, you know, as we wrap the discussion, we've all spoken about the potential and the opportunities that is there. But I also want to understand from an organization perspective again, and even from a customer perspective with your various interactions, what are these biggest bottlenecks today that absolutely need to go for us to have a more seamless transition with the integration of AI? What are these top three challenges of bottlenecks according to you that absolutely need to be catered with, you know, precision and a sense of immediate solutions as well?
00:52:00 Birendra Sen: Yeah, I think the first and the biggest challenge is generative AI. While it makes good conversations in enterprise contexts where there is a specific, for example, Ridhima has a problem with her phone bill, you know, an approximation of the bill will not solve the purpose. Very definitive answer. So yeah, how do you solve deterministic problems with generative AI? And that will be a lot of technology plumbing underneath the technology that's available. So that is problem set one. And the fact that enterprises do not want to share their own enterprise data with some of the cloud companies and they want to really control it. So unlocking that value chain of the LLMS, whether open source or paid, coming from one organization data sitting on another organization vs technology plus Ops service providers actually stitching it together and you know, the BPM industry using it. There are a lot of handoffs and a lot of resistance in this value chain which we need to unlock. That is the number one problem. I think the second one is just these early examples of hallucination and customers, yeah, you know, crucial conversations going South. And that really puts a lot of pressure on people who are experimenting to actually be super careful and get it absolutely right before they get it out in the market. So there is limited opportunity to test and learn. So creating scenarios where you could test and learn this at scale and ensure that that there are no hallucinations in the real world.
So most customers are looking at enterprise and internal use cases rather than opening it out to customers. Hopefully that answers your question.
00:54:08 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Fair. That does Harita according to you, top 2 challenges that absolutely need to go, otherwise they will be bottlenecks as we move forward.
00:54:17 Harita Gupta: So, and I'm going to talk the India context to them all. Yeah, sure. First biggest challenge is that our industry needs very strong branding. That branding effort has to continue just because we're bringing in these great tools. We've got to continue ensuring that the people who come in out of colleges, out of universities, see the BPM industry as a career. We will continue that effort of branding it as a career opportunity. Yeah. The second, you know, as you really get on to, you know, using generative AI, I think language skills are critical. And the biggest challenge I have faced, and I'll come to one more, is that how in India do you make sure that our level of conversational English is at a level because we work for global companies. Yeah, this is, is acceptable. And the third is we struggle with attrition rates, which I believe are high because the knowledge is something that you need to continue. So I would say these three are challenge areas and we deal with it everyday.
00:55:28 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Sapna, according to you?
00:55:30 Sapna Bhambani: I absolutely agree with that, right. I mean that's that's an industry level issue. And I think there's a there's a constant effort from all the organizations wherever we are established, we are present. We've been making to work with the academic institutions how even you know from from outside we can get the talent pool who is if not within the organizations. We have developed academies, we've hired the language coaches who can work. I think gone are those days when any customer is expecting you to speak their own accent.
Everyone expects a neutral accent. What we need from the market is just the grammatically correctly spoken English and the conversational skills and the confidence, right? And 2nd obstacle or the challenge is there is this worldwide perception about India, you know, so I think everyone now, I think the facts are really clearing that perception out that India is the next best destination not only for the non voice channels but for voice channels.
00:56:40 Ridhima Bhatnagar: This is something that even you had mentioned that, you know, accent some years ago used to be an issue. So according to you, what are the two top challenges that absolutely need to go?
00:56:51 Venkatesh Korla: Definitely the talent related issues, you know, out there, right? And the other side of the story is the hype and expectations around the whole technology, right? Yeah. And that can actually cause more problems than reality. So the I think it is important for the industry as a whole to make sure that we don't add to the hype, but rather bring the customers to reality as well. Because one of the big challenges we'll have is as the customer's expectations go too high, we're pretty disruptive to what's happening and the real facts have to be true. Research has to be done, and real facts have we put out so the customers know where to use it and where not to use it. Not everything can be solved with AI. Not every use case requires AI and I think that is one of the biggest challenges we have today. The big news is being dominated by tech products rather than the truth services and the usage of the technology and that is dangerous and that is something where the industry can step up to actually level set and educate the customer base.
00:58:14 Ridhima Bhatnagar: Perfect. So I think that's a good note for us to in a way, you know, wrap this discussion where we've understood the potential that India has and what are the advantages that work in India's favor, which is clearly its scale and the availability of talent. But it's also recognition by organizations that this is also an opportunity to upscale the talent to try and identify these loopholes so that India can continue its dominance as we enter the next phase of the BPM industry to continue our dominance the next day, 10 decades as well. It's been an absolute pleasure chatting with all of you. We hope the viewers also enjoy the discussion as much as we did. So big thank you to all our panelists, Harita, Sapna, Venkatesh as well as Birendra, thank you so much for all the domain expertise and knowledge that you brought in and the examples that you gave us for people at large to also understand what's really happening as far as the disruption in the BPM industry is concerned. Until we see you next time, it's a wrap from my side. Thanks a lot for watching.
