AI will create enormous wealth and have bigger impact than industrial revolution, says Ema’s Surojit Chatterjee

The surge in productivity due to advances in AI will lead to the biggest changes in modern history since the industrial revolution and result in massive wealth creation, said Surojit Chatterjee, CEO and Co-founder of Ema Unlimited.

“We are at the cusp of the biggest change the modern history has ever seen since the industrial revolution,” said Chatterjee, who was addressing a packed audience at DevSparks 2024—YourStory’s inaugural developer summit—through a video link from the United States.

Looking back at the Industrial Revolution in the 18th century, he said, “The net increase in productivity was around 1%, which is very big... The Industrial revolution changed everything–how people lived, the geo-political landscape, etc. And this created more wealth.”

Chatterjee emphasised that AI, particularly Gen AI, is the biggest transformation in modern history and will see a much bigger impact.

Shedding light on the opportunities ahead for enterprises, he said, “Today, most enterprises are inefficient, and most of them have not used any level of automation.”

Chatterjee said that if there was more automation in enterprises, the opportunity of wealth creation would be in the order of $1 trillion to $10 trillion. "This is where developers in India can make a dent," he said.

“We should be seeing billion-dollar valuation companies with less than 100 employees with the opportunity presented by Gen AI. We haven't fully felt its impact yet. It’s still early days. But by 2030, it's expected to be bigger than the industrial revolution, bringing big changes to wealth creation and society."  

Headquartered in San Francisco and Bengaluru, Ema, short for Enterprise Machine Assistant, was founded by Chatterjee, Souvik Sen, and Swati Trehan.

The AI startup provides enterprise solutions aimed at optimising workflows, cutting expenses, and accelerating development processes. Emerging from stealth mode in April this year, it launched Universal AI Employee, which is capable of performing complex tasks across various domains. 

“Building AI software has some challenges—the AI has to be responsible, making sure there are no biases or misinformation. Developers have to allow users to align with AI, and lastly, the software has to be adaptable to learn from the environment and people,” said Chatterjee.

The AI employee is built to replicate human workers, with the ability to engage in conversations, grasp context, receive ongoing human feedback, and engage in reasoning. This enables users to make better decisions and also allows the AI to collaborate with humans on complex projects.   

He said that responsible AI can only be built by responsible humans.

“As developers, it's essential to consider how to create products that resonate with human values. You can't develop AI blindly—it needs to be responsible. The software should be adaptable, learning from its environment and the enterprise it serves. Continuous evolution and adaptability are key for responsible AI,” Chatterjee explained. 

The one-year-old enterprise AI solutions provider has raised $25 million from investors such as Accel, Section 32, and Prosus Ventures. 

Ema is backed by several top Silicon Valley names, including Sheryl Sandberg, Former COO, Meta; Dustin Moskovitz, Co-founder, Facebook and Asana; Jerry Yang, Co-founder of Yahoo; Micky Malka, Founder of Ribbit Capital, and Sridhar Ramaswamy, CEO of Snowflake.

India's software services industry has traditionally leveraged cost-effective labour. However, the founder believes Gen AI has the potential to disrupt this model. 

“We are actively engaging with multiple stakeholders to support them in adapting to this change. While some institutions like IITs and top schools offer Gen AI courses, many schools do not. We aim to encourage the introduction of such courses in more educational institutions," he said. "The future is really ours if we tap into this opportunity.”