We are amid 15-20 year secular technology trend; will fundamentally change life and work: SAP’s Punit Renjen

Punit Renjen, Deputy Chairperson of the Supervisory Board, SAP and Thomas Saueressig, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE

The world is in the midst of a 15 to 20 year secular trend enabled by technology which will  fundamentally change the way we live and work, said Punit Renjen, Deputy Chairperson of the Supervisory Board, SAP.

“I've seen the reengineering wave, the Y2K, the internet mobile. What we're going through now with digitalisation, cloud and AI is nothing like what we have experienced,” Renjen said at a media roundtable in Bengaluru on December 19.

This comes a month after the company rolled out a series of generative AI tools aimed at empowering developers during SAP TechEd, organised in Bengaluru. These tools included SAP Build Code solutions, a vector engine on SAP HANA Cloud, and a generative AI hub on SAP Business Technology Platform.

During the roundtable SAP senior executives stressed on their bullishness towards India. “SAP is taking a center-stage position for how we embed AI actually, in our applications. The SAP labs in Bangalore is actually the driving force behind what we launched,” said Thomas Saueressig, a member of the Executive Board of SAP SE.

Earlier in November, Kulmeet Bawa, president and managing director, SAP Indian Subcontinent, also said that India will be the skill capital of the world and a young population offers the country a competitive edge at a time when global demand for skilled tech workforce rises.

In September, Moneycontrol reported that SAP, with its largest R&D center boasting over 15,000 employees, is aiming to double its AI talent base across various domains. The company is also in the process of opening new offices in Bengaluru. SAP Labs India has also opened its second office in Pune recently in October.

“In the new campus, that's our target. We are starting off with the first phase in Q1 of 2025, where we will be ready with a capacity of 3,000 to start off,” said Sindhu Gangadharan, senior vice president and managing director at SAP Labs India.