AI models built to serve India can be springboarded to a global platform: EdgeVerve’s Sateesh Seetharamiah

Solutions delivered through Artificial Intelligence (AI) models are on the path to become more mainstream as companies worldwide embrace these tools.

For eight years, EdgeVerve Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Infosys, has been working on AI solutions to make them industry-ready. According to Sateesh Seetharamiah, CEO of Edge platforms, EdgeVerve Systems, India has the potential to become a leading destination for AI technologies.

“India’s fertile technology and consumer diversity landscape make it an ideal ground to mature and grow AI models,” Seetharamiah told Enterprise Story in an interview.

Edited excerpts from the interview.

YourStory (YS): How is India creating a differentiation in the world of AI?

Sateesh Seetharamiah (SS): There are three critical areas in which India is creating a massive impact on the future of AI. One is skill building and creating a talent supply chain for AI.

Being one of the first companies to have recognised this need, we have quickly ramped up training to meet demand. We are actively engaging with colleges to help them understand the market need and build deployment-ready talent in this space.  

Another area of impact is the contribution to AI innovation. To be successful, AI must be able to synthesise and handle complexities and variations in data. India’s fertile technology and consumer diversity landscape make it an ideal ground to mature and grow AI models. India’s scale and complexity challenges require creative thinking for local consumption of AI deployments. The AI algorithms and models built to serve India can be easily spring boarded to a global platform. 

And finally, when we think of IT from India, we think of services. But a wave of platform companies from India is rising, and it will transform the IT landscape. At EdgeVerve, we have been at the forefront of shaping the intelligent automation narrative.

We have leveraged AI broadly and deeply to help our clients innovate on business models and drive game-changing efficiency with best-of-breed digital platforms. For instance, we helped a leading American telecom leverage AI to identify, extract, and manage data from over 700,000+ contracts leading to $21 million in savings. We have taken one step further to see how AI can be leveraged in all things digitisation and bring more structure to unstructured data.

YS: What kind of benefits is AI bringing to enterprises when they deploy these solutions?

SS: We believe that world-class digital platforms can drive cognitive operations and unlock the potential of value networks with the ultimate aim of amplifying human potential. For instance, we leverage AI to help:

• Digitise processes and documents
• Connect parties and customer journeys 
• Exchange data and information  
• Automate processes and systems, and
• Augment human decision making

This, in turn, helps companies unlock new business models, improve resilience, enhance customer experience, and increase productivity, predictability, and efficiency. 

For instance, we deployed a powerful combination of RPA+ML (robotic process application and machine learning) for a large telecom company based in the UK to drive cognitive operations, improving the quality and consistency of customer service.

Similarly, for a logistics leader, we amplified human potential by connecting digital and human workers to drive collaboration and efficiency. We also created a value network for a global sports merchandise giant, improving supply chain planning with real-time partner visibility.

We are also seeing Document AI solutions like our XtractEdge deliver an astronomical increase in underwriting capacity and a huge reduction in application processing time in commercial insurance. 

YS: In which functions within an enterprise do you find the strongest traction for the deployment of AI platforms?

SS: AI can deliver value to any function. I think the way to look at it is within your specific enterprise where it is needed the most. Where do you see the most friction? Where is digital transformation not moving forward? What are your business priorities–is it customer experience, employee experience, or cost? And based on that, figure out where AI would impact you most. For instance: 

• Can you use AI to speed up innovation and take relevant products and services to your customers? 
• Can AI give you a better understanding of your customers to amplify customer experience and improve customer service?
• Can AI process disparate data and generate insights to help you make better decisions in high-value impact areas and minimise risk?

The value of AI is universal, but its true potential can only be unlocked from an end-to-end connected enterprise perspective. 

YS: How do you see AI platforms evolving from the present level of automation functions?

SS: Today creating AI is a complex endeavor that needs a lot of skill sets to come together. And within AI development and deployment, there is potential for automation.

For instance, moving AI to production, deciding which algorithm to pick, fine-tuning parameters, etc., are potential use cases for automation within AI. As the space evolves, more and more areas of work in the AI lifecycle that are repetitive will be identified and automated, making the whole process more efficient and streamlined.

Also, some inherent challenges of AI need contextual data to overcome. For AI to be successful, it needs support from systems that generate and feed it contextual information.

For instance, we do this with AssistEdge Discover. This process discovery solution creates contextual process data specific to an enterprise that AI can consume to make more significant, better decisions regarding automation opportunities within the process.  

YS: What kind of impact has EdgeVerve seen from the deployment of its AI platforms?

SS: At EdgeVerve, we believe in the unlimited possibilities of a connected enterprise. Our digital platforms–AssistEdge, TradeEdge, and XtractEdge– have helped our clients capitalise on these possibilities.  

For instance, we helped global healthcare technology transform their finance processes and improve the collection by 21% while reducing 750,000 hours in effort. Our AssistEdge platform automated 100 complex processes and delivered $16 million in total benefits over three years with an RoI of 110%. 

Similarly, we helped an American multinational confectionery and food manufacturers trace their products 48X faster by creating a value network.

Our TradeEdge platform connected partners’ ERP/ WMS systems across the value chain with automated cloud-based data exchange and AI/ML-powered harmonisation to provide real-time product movement and storage visibility. 

We also helped a global insurance provider improve the ‘Submission to Quote’ ratio by 5% while reducing manual efforts by 40% . Our XtractEdge platform extracted data from all kinds of documents, even email attachments, and validated it across all Lines of business.