Established AI innovation labs, factory with clients to incubate new AI tech: Infosys

Rafee Tarafdar, Chief Technology Officer, Infosys

India's second-largest IT company Infosys has set up artificial intelligence (AI) innovation labs and AI factories with leading clients to incubate and scale the nascent technology, said a top executive. The labs focus on tracking, assessing, and developing proof of value for emerging AI technologies within the organisation, while the AI factory productises and scales these solutions across business lines.

The comments assume significance after a recent report by the research arm of the information technology giant brought to light that over 50 percent of AI use cases are now delivering measurable impact. The research also revealed that 19 percent of AI use cases deliver on all their business objectives, while another 32 percent show promise by partially meeting their objectives.

"In addition, as we use AI to re-engineer core business processes, the ways of working also have to undergo changes to realise the value," Rafee Tarafdar, Chief Technology Officer, Infosys, told Moneycontrol.

But for the above to function and deliver value, data readiness is a must, said Tarafdar, who has spent over 20 years at the Bengaluru-headquartered firm.

With a structured approach, the existing data architecture can be enhanced to support the organization-wide AI initiatives. “We see that a significant effort has to be spent in this space and at Infosys, we have a data readiness for AI framework that is helping our clients transition to the right architecture,” he added.

This is a step forward for Infosys, after Tarafdar told Moneycontrol on October 30, 2024, that clients are expecting AI capabilities to be a part of large deals. “Today, there is also a lot of pressure that our clients are having from their boards and CXOs to show some Gen AI capabilities and start making some difference,” Tarafdar said in the interview.

When it comes to sectors adopting the most AI use cases, the leading industries are services, followed by hi-tech, telecommunications, life sciences, financial services, and logistics. Currently, most of the top AI use cases are in the areas of software engineering, business & IT operations, fraud risk and compliance, cybersecurity, customer service, and finance, he further said.

Nonetheless, the report released by the services exporter on March 31 highlighted that only 16 percent of companies have implemented effective change management and employee training for AI. The executive further said that all AI investments must be constantly reviewed against the outcomes and effectiveness.

For this, Infosys has been implementing the proof of value approach. “The accuracy is constantly improving for Gen AI solutions, with better release of models and human feedback to refine them further.”

Agentic AI

At a time when India's leading IT firms are betting big on Agentic AI in 2025, Infosys is starting to see acceleration in the implementation of Agentic AI across its clientele, transforming business operations and driving new value creation.

Agentic AI represents a step forward from traditional AI, capable of independently making decisions, planning, and reasoning to accomplish user-defined tasks with minimal human intervention. Unlike conventional AI, which operates within predefined rules to process data, Agentic AI can autonomously take actions and make decisions, much like a robot that independently plans and executes tasks without human input.

“Agentic AI is currently being implemented in the areas of deep research for customer service, financial auditing, eKYC during customer onboarding, credit risk decisioning, investment banking research, migration & modernisation, software engineering lifecycle, IT operations and cybersecurity operations,” Tarafdar said.

Also, read: Infosys, HCLTech CEOs call for an overhaul in IT business models amid AI disruption