Microsoft AI is powering digital transformation in India to fuel economic and social growth

Abhishek Baxi

Microsoft India

At its annual Media & Analyst Days event in India, Microsoft India shared details about its progress on its vision to democratize AI in the country to fuel economic and social growth.

“A tectonic shift is happening in AI. Nearly 85% of enterprises globally will use AI in some form or the other by 2020, and Indian firms are now fast catching up,” Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, said in his opening keynote.

  • Analytics: $200 billion global market by 2020
  • Data: 44 zettabytes annually by 2020
  • Cloud: Cloud shift will affect more than $1 trillion in IT spending by 2020

He pointed out that while 8% of GDP components in India are impacted by digital technologies today, this number is expected to go up to 60% by 2021.

At the event, Microsoft shared that over 700 business and government organizations have adopted its AI solutions to drive digital transformation with 60% of these customers being large manufacturing and financial services enterprises.

Amongst the top 500 organizations on Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE), 97% of the top banks, 75% of the top retailers, 81% of the top auto firms, 75% of the top pharma firms, and 67% of the top healthcare firms are Microsoft’s customers in India. In addition, Microsoft is working with new-age organizations that are leapfrogging and disrupting industries.

Out of the 9,500 Microsoft Partners in India, there 2,995 Cloud partners with 88 own IP-ready partners helping Indian organizations to inlock the full potential of AI, Cloud, and data.

Microsoft recently introduced the Intelligent Cloud Hub program in India with an aim to help build AI and cloud computing skills required for future jobs. The company aims to equip research and higher education institutions with AI infrastructure as well as build curriculum and faculty capability to skill students in AI and cloud technologies.

According to a LinkedIn survey, US, China, and India have the highest penetration of AI skills among the workforce, in that order.

Last year, Microsoft India announced an agreement with NITI Aayog to leverage the benefits of AI for the growth of the nation. The NITI Aayog, also National Institution for Transforming India, is a policy think tank of the Government of India.

As part of the agreement, Microsoft India will support NITI Aayog by combining the cloud, AI, research and its vertical expertise for new initiatives and solutions across several core areas to advance agriculture, healthcare, natural language computing, and a sustainable environment Microsoft will also accelerate the use of AI for the development and adoption of local language computing.

We believe AI will enable Indian businesses and more for India’s progress, especially in education, skilling, healthcare and agriculture. Microsoft also believes that it is imperative to build higher awareness and capabilities on security, privacy, trust and accountability. The power of AI is just beginning to be realized and can be a game-changer for India.

– Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India

In 2016, Microsoft created the global Artificial Intelligence and Research (AI & R) group with the goal to bring AI to every person, organization, and company.

The company now offers a broad framework for integrating AI with Azure, Azure Stack, Azure IoT Edge, and Azure Sphere. With 54 Azure regions globally, Microsoft has more cloud regions than both Amazon (AWS) and Google (Google Cloud) combined.