India poised to be the office of the world, says Cognizant CEO Ravi Kumar

Cognizant CEO called AI a massive disruption that will create many new jobs.

India's services sector is getting more diversified, and the nation is poised to become the 'office of the world' over the next 25 years, Ravi Kumar S, the CEO of Cognizant has said.

In conversation with CNBC-TV18 as part of a panel discussion of the IBLA jury meet on October 7, Ravi Kumar said the last 3-4 decades have seen India move up from offering only IT services - once the foundation of India's IT industry - to now offer the entire spectrum. This rapid scale up will see more artificial intelligence driven startups in the years to come, he said.

Cognizant CEO called AI a massive disruption that will create many new jobs. "AI will be the biggest disruption we will see in the next 10-15 years. It will take away jobs of the past, and create significantly more jobs of the future," said Ravi Kumar. He highlighted that already, a third of India's 50 lakh IT professionals are working in Global Capability Centers (GCCs), with as many as 300-400 of these have come up in the last two years.

Ravi Kumar forecasts that the disruption caused by the integration of artificial intelligence into enterprise will see a swift 'S' curve, as the innovations made possible by AI get adopted by businesses. "With the interface being natural language, the diffusion (of AI) is going to be very fast. It'll be a leveller since you will not need skill to access technology," Ravi Kumar added.

"The access to jobs will be powered by skills as well as entrepreneurial ability, and not education."

This implies, that the foundational AI models in India will be very quickly commoditised, said Ravi Kumar, driven by the applications on the top of these model. Of India's 120,000 startups right now, only 35,000 are working in the tech space, with only 3,000 have deep tech capabilities. This, Ravi Kumar said, will see a sharp, hockey stick upmove in the years to come.

"In the jobs of the future, the gap between and within occupations will bridge, which also means entry barriers to jobs will go down," said Ravi Kumar.