EPAM see GCCs in India as early adopter of AI
EPAM Systems sees the adoption level of AI among the GCCs to be on par with those in the developed economies
EPAM Systems, the US-headquartered digital and product engineering services company, sees global capability centres (GCC) located in India to be early adopters of artificial intelligence (AI) platforms.
“The GCCs which are present in the country are showing the same activity levels on AI implementation compared to counterparts based in North America, Western Europe or Asia Pacific,” said EPAM CEO and President Balazs Fejes in an interaction with EnterpriseStory.
EPAM Systems, which has its largest development centre in India with around 12,000 employees, has also built expertise in AI, catering to the requirements of enterprises globally.
“We believe that GCCs are going to be an important customer base and will continue to focus on them going forward,” Fejes said.
India has emerged as the global hub for GCCs, with an estimated 1,800 units present in the country. The growth momentum in this segment is expected to continue in the near future as more companies from the developed economies plan to set up their GCCs in India to tap into the tech talent pool in the country.
On the broad changes in the technology sector led by AI, the CEO of EPAM remarked that there is certain hype around it, and there is substantial work to be done before it can see wide adoption.
“AI has tremendous capabilities, benefits, but in order to really take advantage of it, one needs to be a very good engineer,” Fejes said. He further elaborated that AI can help accelerate certain parts of a process, but developing an end-to-end solution suitable for enterprises will require deep expertise in software engineering.
He said the efficiency gains through AI are still not substantial enough, and there is still a lot of work to be done. However, he added that AI will create more opportunities as people are only going to build newer applications or services.
Bejes said all their enterprise clients are interested in AI, and each of them comes with their own objectives, be it to gain certain efficiencies or drive optimisation. Also, enterprises are yet to allocate separate budgets for AI deployments, though in certain cases, they are going ahead with AI deployment.
Towards this end, EPAM Systems is also transitioning to the world of AI as it sees this as the path towards further improving the effectiveness and efficiency of its engineers. The company is on the journey of setting up the frameworks to deliver the AI solutions, which include governance structure, architectural and foundational models, etc.
EPAM has also undertaken reskilling initiatives for its employees, and the India centre is high on this ranking. The CEO said India remains a strategic location for the company and plans to take this headcount to 20,000 in the near future.