Restoring revenue growth, evangelising rising role of AI will be key priority areas: Nasscom

The newly appointed Chairman of the IT industry body -- Nasscom, Srikanth Velamakanni, has said that restoring revenue growth in IT firms and evangelising the rising role of artificial intelligence (AI) and technologies in companies will be key priority areas for Nasscom. Also, he said the industry body would aim for policy support to enable the country to build more AI capacity and introduce an AI-led curriculum in the education system.

He emphasised increasing spending and said India should be spending more on technology than the country is spending at present. He also highlighted programmes like the India AI mission and the National Quantum Mission, launched by the government to promote technology.

Besides, he pointed out that creating a new entrance of the workforce who are fundamentally much more equipped with AI and new age tech skills is very important. On employment generation in an AI-dominated era, he said that the net addition of jobs has been positive for the last year, and it continues to stay positive.

He added that the tech industry, which was consistently driving a significant headcount addition every year, consistently for many years, hasn't done so in the last couple of years because growth has been lower than expected.

He noted that there is compression coming from various kinds of AI technologies, which are making it easier to do the same work with fewer human hours. Further, the need for enterprise AI will go up as AI becomes better, creating a ‘multi-trillion-dollar opportunity’.

AI progress is unlocking unprecedented opportunities for enterprises, large and small, to reimagine their businesses. He said that India will play a pivotal role in this AI-led transformation. He added that Nasscom will focus on driving the next cycle of AI-powered growth across services and products and prepare the workforce to lead with AI, over the coming year.