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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly evolving and continuously changing the landscape for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in India and can boost efficiency & business growth for SMEs, according to the leaders who converged at Nasscom Global Confluence 2025 in New Delhi.
The event, designed to empower Indian technology companies for global success, witnessed the leaders discuss the roadmap of connected systems in the era of AI and its impact on SMEs in India. The rise of AI technologies, particularly Agentic AI, presents a unique opportunity for SMEs to innovate and scale without the traditional constraints of workforce size and unlock new opportunities, the experts highlighted. The experts reiterated the growing need to leverage AI and called for its rapid adoption by SMEs in India to support their business growth. During the discussion on 'Engineering the connected AI Future: Building Smarter Systems Together', Jagdish Mitra, Founder and CEO, Humanize Tech, discussed the transformative potential of AI for SMEs, suggesting that SMEs can now scale without needing large workforces. He said, "This is a watershed moment for SMEs. I strongly believe India will leapfrog through the ingenuity of its SME ecosystem. AI and cloud-driven models now allow founders to achieve scale 100x faster with far fewer resources." The experts also highlighted that the models should be trained on datasets that are relevant to specific populations or local regions, as existing models may be biased towards data from different contexts (e.g., Western datasets). The leaders called for more collaboration between governments and enterprises to democratize data, enabling innovation and research in AI. Anurag Sahay, Managing Director- AI and Data Science, Nagarro, highlighted that while data is abundant and renewable, its quality is crucial for effective AI model building. The process of cleaning and preparing data is labor-intensive, often consuming a significant portion of resources. He said, "The interesting thing is that while data is a new oil, data is renewable! We can create data, generate data and also synthesize data." Jagdish Mitra also highlighted the potential for redefining service delivery models (SaaS) as "Service as Software". He added, "A key enabler in this journey is the emergence of Services as a Software -- turning traditional services into scalable, productized solutions powered by AI and automation. During the event, experts also reiterated the pressing need to align educational outputs with the actual demands of the AI job market to address the talent shortage and called for educational institutions to evolve their curricula to foster critical thinking and innovative problem-solving skills, which are essential for the future of AI development. (ANI)
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