The opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
You are reading Entrepreneur India, an international franchise of Entrepreneur Media.
According to a report by the Data Security Council of India (DSCI), as many as 97 percent of Indian organizations have invested in AI/ML technologies, while about 84 percent of surveyed organizations have invested in cloud technology. The relentless advancement of technology is fundamentally reshaping traditional business models across industries – from e-commerce platforms revolutionizing retail to the integration of artificial intelligence streamlining operations.
Technological innovations such as blockchain and cloud computing are also redefining supply chains and organizational structures, fostering unprecedented connectivity and scalability. As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, embracing its transformative potential has become imperative for businesses seeking to remain competitive in an increasingly dynamic global marketplace.
During a panel discussion on The Burgeoning Changemakers Fueling Your Digital Engine: How Technology is Transforming Enterprises? , at Bangalore Technology & Innovation Summit organized by Entrepreneur Media, moderated by Priya Kapoor, Features Editor, Entrepreneur India, companies in the tech space came together and shared their thoughts on these emerging technologies that are changing business.
Aditya Garg, founder and CEO, Centilytics said that technology has become a key enabler for scaling. “If you’re running a small retail business, you don’t need a lot of technology, or you couldn’t have technology because it’s not cost effective. When you have a POS that is built centrally by a company, it automatically becomes cost efficient, now that same retail store that can’t have technology can be scaled. I think technology has become the key factor behind anything that needs to scale, and outside of technology there is no scale,” he added.
Speaking on the same issue, Harish Ramarao, SVP, Product Engineering, ACKO Technologies, emphasized the need for data before embarking on a machine learning project for an organization.
He said: “We need to follow where customers are going and not just because there is technology. You need a lot of data before you can imagine a machine learning project. In the context of how technology is shaping traditional business, AI and ML will take the lead as we generate a lot of data in India,” he said.
Achieving efficiency
When it comes to discussing technology in enterprises, one question that often comes up is: will it replace people? According to Garg, technology will not replace people. Instead, it will make them more effective. “If you do something daily, technology will make it simple and easy for you instead of replacing people. Technology will force us to become experts in individual fields,” Garg added.
Ramarao agreed, “Technology brings efficiency by using fewer people to do the same kind of work, and not just fewer people, but with less system.”
Challenges
Garg said one of the biggest challenges is how to keep pace with change.
“Our ability to unlearn and relearn is one of the challenges of this new technology. The biggest challenge is how to keep up with the change to do the same things but in a different way. The second big challenge is the risk that technology brings such as security, cause, productivity, but in the end there are always two sides of the same coin. this generation will see the Iron Man movies become a reality,” he added.
Talking about incorporating a particular technology into the organization, Jagannathan K, Associate Vice President, Hitachi Systems India suggested that one should always analyze the need for the technology and identify which operations should move to the cloud and which can be done manually and need a personal touch .
“The right decision needs to be made and all the operations that need to move to the cloud where customers are experiencing issues need to be looked at. When it comes to internal operations, there should be research to identify departmental work that needs certain technology and can be moved to a cloud platform. We have been able to achieve a combination of this technology and the existing one,” Jaganathan said.
