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upGrad Enterprise aims to build the world’s largest GenAI learning initiative to enable high-growth companies to embrace technology’s transformative business impact. Hosted by Srikanth Iyengar, CEO, upGrad Enterprise, the GenAIrous Podcast, will curate an exciting roster of global experts and guests, who are at the cutting-edge of Generative AI, and its varied applications in the world of business.
Welcome to the GenAIrous Podcast where we unravel the fascinating world of generative AI and its transformative impact on businesses globally. I'm your host, Srikanth Iyengar, CEO of upGgrad Enterprise. At upGrad Enterprise, we're building the world's largest Gen AI learning initiative, and we're empowering high growth companies to leverage cutting edge technology. Each week, join me and a roster of global experts as we explore innovations shaping the world of work as we know it. Are you ready? Let's get GenAIrous.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:Welcome to another episode of the GenAIrous Podcast. I'm delighted today to be joined by Nitin Seth. Nitin Seth is the CEO and cofounder of INCEDO a fast growing data, digital, and AI transformation company. I'll let him talk a lot more about INCEDO when he speaks. But, Nitin has had a very storied career across continents, across industries, and he's, worked in different capacities with some of the biggest companies in the world. So, Nitin thank you so much for joining us today.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Srikanth, what a pleasure to be talking to you.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:Pleasure's all mine, Nithin. And, you know, I did not mention the fact that you're also a bestselling author. You've just released your second book. But why don't we start there? Why don't we start with your first book where you talked about the trifecta? So why don't you tell us a bit about the hypothesis or the thesis that led to the first book, and then we can go from there?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Yeah. I guess I'm an author now. I'm still getting used to that identity. So my first book was, Winning in the Digital Age. And and, really, the the main thesis about that book was that, 1,000,000,000,000 of dollars are being spent on digital transformation every year. You know, something like 2.7, 2.8 trillion dollars every year, which is kind of equal to India's GDP. So it's a very large number, and that's great, you know. But what, what many don't talk about is that, 70 to 80% of that goes waste or doesn't achieve its, kind of stated impact. And, you know, why is that? Why do intelligent management teams, experienced, professionals, you know, end up making bad decisions or bad execution.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:So that was the inquiry in for my first book, winning in the digital age, in which, you know, we kind of ended up exploring some of the fundamentals of the digital age. I think from there, really emerged this notion of the trifecta of digital data and AI. You know, how, you know, that's the kind of biggest force, you know, which is impacting every aspect of human life and business today. And as I further progress on that journey, it became very clear that, you know, data is the fulcrum. You know, data is the anchor, you know, which is holding up this trifecta, you know, both the digital age, which is kind of now morphed into the AI age. And and that's really what led me to my second book, you know, Mastering The Data Paradox.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:Oh, fantastic, Nitin. So, yes, I've read the first book. The trifecta of data, digital, and AI is fascinating. Of course, I saw it at bookstores all over the world and airports. And for our listeners, I happen to have a signed copy. So thank you for that, Natin. But coming to the second book, clearly, you've drilled down a lot on data. Of course, data is critical. And especially in the age of generative AI, it's very, very critical as we all know. So any perspectives on where the second book starts from where the first sort of, let's say, ended?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Yes. So, yeah. The the continuation or, you know, the link is that, you know, why digital AI programs fail. You know, what drives success? What drives failure? You know, there are many factors, you know, but data came up as kind of, you know, the biggest thing. You know, the biggest success factor, also the biggest, reason for failure.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:Thank you for that. But, let me drill down a bit more into that. You write about data. You know, I was reading a statistic today that human beings produce more data per hour today than we probably did in 100 of years, maybe 500 years ago in that sense. It's all being captured, and clearly, we don't know what to do with it, and that's only gonna increase. But clearly, INCEDO is at the heart of this digital and data transformation. How do you see companies adapting to this, let's say, huge change that's coming their way?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:I think, I think companies and even within companies, the boards are extremely, extremely seized of generative AI and AI, and the possibilities for the business. So, you know, I've been in this industry for, you know, in some way for the last 25, 30 years, and lot of technology changes and shifts historically have been bottom up. This one is very top down. Okay? That this one, you know, the boards are setting a very clear set of expectations, you know, from the management team.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:There are there are essentially, 3 ways, broad ways in which companies are approaching this transformation. The first is around how do you impact the customer experience? How do you make it more seamless? How do you make it more personalized? In fact, I would say hyper personalized. You know, so one big bucket is customer experience eventually to impact revenues. The second is internal operations. And the internal operations is how do you generate the next level of efficiency. Now efficiency and automation as a driver of efficiency has been happening for the last 50 years, 100 years. But the generative AI, there is a very there's a very, you know, a different level of push to it.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:A lot of problems, you know, which have been very difficult to solve problems. Yeah? So, for example, NLP. Yeah? Natural language processing, you know, trying to understand text and and kind of, you know, do something with it. You know, it's been a it's been a quest or a pursuit for a long period of time. Yeah? But with generative AI, but with very limited success, you know, despite a lot of, you know, technology experimentation. You know, with generative AI, there's a very different level of, you know, progress on that. You know, but in the entire internal operations of the company, from customer service to back office operations, to software development, to even front office support activities like marketing communication. You know, there is there is a whole lot happening. Yeah?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:And then, there's a third bucket, you know, where I think, you know, there's a lot that's happened, you know, with data and AI over the last 10 years, but I think generative AI, we're still kind of getting there is new business models. Yeah? So, you know, for example, over the last 10, 15 years, you know, we have seen really an explosion of marketplace driven businesses or more, disintermediated business models. You know, like Uber or, Airbnb. You know, Uber is the largest, you know, kind of car company in the world without owning a single car, you know, and so on. In a lot of those business new business models that have emerged over the last 10, 15 years, I fully expect that, you know, with generative AI, there will be a next, generation of that. But, you know yeah. I think we're still catching up to that.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:You're right. Enterprise productivity or operational productivity is probably the near term focus for most companies. But like you rightly said, each technological innovation or inflection point creates a whole new wave of new things that come up. You know, you took the example of Uber. I remember reading this in, Mustafa Suleiman's recent book where he says that Uber would not have existed if there weren't smart smartphones. And smartphones wouldn't have existed without GPS, and GPS wouldn't have existed without satellites. And satellites would have been in the sky if we didn't have a rocket that took a man to the moon. You know? So clearly, each wave of technology builds on itself. So, as you said, generative AI will throw up in a whole new slew of opportunities.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:Right now, the focus being enterprise productivity, but revenue and innovation could be others naturally. But but, just, you know, an adjacent topic. Clearly, as these changes happen, people's jobs will change as we know. What they did earlier, they won't. And a lot of people will probably need to reconfigure their skills. How do you see companies dealing with that?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Very poorly at this point. Very poorly. I don't think, there is a general sense of concern. I don't see very, structured or mature initiatives around it. And I also feel, Srikanth, that it's, we don't fully understand that today. Now at least to my mind, it's for sure that every job is going to get impacted. Even even this podcast we are doing, even 12, 18 months down the line, we would do it differently. You know, it it just every thing. Every every activity, you know, would would get impacted. Yeah?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:And let me just also delve into what really is the shift that I see happening. Yes? And why is it not business as usual? You know, why it's kind of from a human perspective? From a job design perspective, it is it's, like, disruptive. It's not I it's really disruptive. Now if you look at what really distinguishes us as human beings, there are 2 key aspects. The first is about problem discovery. Yeah. That most times, problem solving is a very complex process. And being able to simplify and zone down on the on the problem itself is a very difficult thing. Because at that point, you don't have a lot of data. Yeah? So that's where intuition, wisdom, experiences, pattern recognition, whatever you say, really comes into play. Once you have data, machines will take over. Yeah. They are they are better. Right? But this is the part we are very good at.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Now the second aspect is, you know, which human beings have been very good at is the learning loop. Yeah? That we know that any process is not sequential. It's always a feedback loop. And human beings are very good at the learning loop because it's not again, it's not always, a very controlled loop. Yeah? Or a very defined loop. It can happen in different ways. These are really two things which differentiates human beings. Now with AI, not just sort of AI, but with AI, we already started to challenge the second one Because that's what AI is. That's the difference between analytics and AI. That AI, unlike analytics, is not a static model. It's dynamic, which is going to learn. And it's going to learn and it's going to evolve. Yeah? So, hey, one big bastion getting challenged.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Now with generative AI, what's really happening is that, you know, because it's built on data of the world. Yeah. With AI, the big challenge was that you needed data to get something out. Yeah. You needed specific data.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Yeah. And that's where, you know, we were we were really not able to apply AI in multiple situations because the data was not there. Now with generative AI, because it really is built on data of the world, you know, for the first time almost in human history, we've been able to bring it together in an intelligent way and get something out of it. You can get a first cut on almost any problem out there without any additional data. Yeah?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Now that's not the answer and that's really a mistake that sometimes people, I think, are making that LLMs are going to give the answer. No. But it gives the initial view, which is of maybe a 40 to 60 to 70 percent view. Now, that's tremendous. That's tremendous because it helps you narrow the problem. It helps you get some hypothesis, get some directions, which is invaluable. It's invaluable. Many problems, you know, which were difficult to solve. You you suddenly start to get a very, very interesting starting point. Yeah?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:So, you know, I just wanted to illustrate 2 big things. Yeah? Problem discovery and learning. Yeah? Which now with generative and AI and AI respectively, you know, we are having a breakthrough. Now this, Srikanth will impact every job. Yep. Yeah? So there is a lot of you know, today on GenAI, there is almost too much experimentation from a technology perspective. I call it the epidemic of the POCs. It really is an epidemic. Yes. There are 100, you know, 100 or maybe even, you know, thousands of POCs happening.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:So but in terms of how that will be consumed, finally, the consumption of it means a job is getting changed. On that, I definitely see moves in which it says, okay, 20, 25, 30 percent productivity improvement in 12, 18 months. I definitely see those kind of top down, almost diktats coming. Yeah? But I don't see enough in terms of, hey, how job is going to change? What does it mean in terms of skilling or reskilling? What does it mean in terms of the workforce? So so yeah. I think a lot lot to be done. And, you know, I guess for your company, Upgrad, that's great news, Srikanth because they're just, it's a complete complete, I think, blue ocean out there as far as this aspect of AI and generated AI is concerned.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:Absolutely, Nitin We are very excited, and we are glad to be collaborating with you as well in the market. So, you know, it opens up opportunities for all of us, and I think it is incumbent on all of us to work with our clients through this transition as they focus on new ways of adding value. And we can do our bid to be enablers. But let me switch gears a bit. We talked about, you know, the trifecta. We talked about the data deluge. We've talked about talent considerations, But there are also a number of ethical considerations. You know, we talked about the data of the world, you know, how companies use it. There are biases. There are privacy rules. And all of these are also speed bumps on the road that companies are grappling with. What do you see your clients doing in this aspect?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:See, most of my, clients are very aware. And I think some of them many of them are paranoid. So, so at least 2 you know, it depends on the, the the nature of, you know, how regulated the industry is and what is the level of personal information, you know, you're dealing with. So 2 of the sectors I work in, which is financial services and with it even within that, the banks and then health care. Absolutely paranoid. Absolutely paranoid. So much so that I feel it is throttling innovation. Yeah. Because, you know, it can take a long time to really get going even with the pilots. Right?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Because, you know, they are quite concerned about, because the moment you're talking about generative AI, then you're talking about getting some data inside the organization. Yeah. And then there is also a concern that the way these models work, that data will go outside the automation as well. So, to begin with, data security is a is a very, very significant concern that clients have. And on top of that, there is also a question of concern around bias.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:And and, you know, especially when you start getting to individual actions. So I would say that, generally, the larger companies are very, very aware. Now in terms of how companies are looking to deal with it, you know, clearly the role of, the CISO or the the Chief Information Security Officer has exploded in in importance. And the and the cyber security or the internal security functions are playing a very, very pivotal role. On privacy, there is a lot about standards. Right? How do you how do you drive standards. Right? And, you know, one of my kind of pitch, you know, key themes, you know, which I talk a lot about in Mastering The Data Paradox in my book, is that privacy is such an important topic. It actually can't be left to a enterprise. That, you know, when when an individual is signing up, you know, signing something, they don't fully understand it. It's too complex. It it's like it's like, you know, carbon emission standards, you know, for automobiles. You know, there is a minimum set of standards, you know, which any automobile, whether it's in Europe or India or the US, has to follow. The on top of that, there will be more stringent set of emission standards in different markets. But there have to be some minimum standards. And I think data privacy there's a urgent need for such global standards. Yeah?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:And as far as bias is concerned, you know, it it kind of gets down to data. It gets down to data that, you know, how do you keep on enriching, you know, the data? How do you keep on testing for it? And another concept that I would like to bring in at this stage of our conversation, Srikanth, is about contextualizing. Contextualizing AI models. Yeah. Again, I think a somewhat mistaken notion is that LLM is an answer in itself.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:So LLM or, you know, generative AI is super helpful. You know, we spoke about problem discovery, but it is very, you know to get LLM to give the final answer is a very complex and costly process. Yeah. So what you want to do is that you want to contextualize the LLM with more enterprise data or domain data, which is so think of it a model on top, you know, which is kind of like a more traditional, AI or analytical model. Right?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:And you combine the 2, and that's where I think you start to get to, you know, much higher quality answers. And in fact, you know, why only 2 layers? Think of it as 3 layers. That, you know, the bottom layer, you have the data of the world and you have the generated AI, you know, the foundational model. The second layer is enterprise data, and you have the more traditional AI models. And the top layer is individual data and which kind of drives hyper personalization. And I think the magic will start to happen, you know, when we are able to connect the 3 layers effectively. Yeah. And when and, you know, we know how to deal with each of the layers, but I think we haven't done enough in terms of connecting the 3 layers. And when that happens, I think not only will you address issues like buyers and stuff, like, you know you know, or the model predictiveness or the quality of signals. But but just the overall effectiveness and relevance of this, I think, will move to a very different level.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:Absolutely. We've talked a lot about the market, the 3 layers that you talked about, the individual data, the corporation's data, and the data of the world at large. And these are all, like you said, impacts that, you know, companies like INCEDO are helping your clients with. You've obviously worked with global leaders in their respective spaces, be it a McKinsey, be it a Flipkart, be it a Fidelity, and now, of course, INCEDO So how do you use or how are you using generative AI within INCEDO itself?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Yeah. So, see, within INCEDO we have built a series of platforms, you know, or which were about enabling the entire, data life cycle. You know, starting from problem discovery, you know, what problem to really zone down on and and kind of, you know, then going down to data quality, data, you know, data integration, data conversion, and then data security. And each of these, aspects or each of these platforms are getting completely, completely transformed by generative AI, Shrikant. So for example, problem discovery.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:At the simplest level, what we had done historically was that you know, this is kind of bringing science to the classic consultant process of KPI kind of assessment and, you know, you know, you you you know, as a consultant, you start with any new client or new situation. You say, okay, what are the most important KPIs? Let me analyze them, break them down, you know, where issues are happening, and that's what, you know, that's our diagnostic. That's really what we're gonna fix. Yeah?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:But it was always a little bit of a art science process. Yeah. You know, which experienced consultants would do. Now in the world of, you know, data and AI, you can do it very differently. Because let's say a a metric like churn for a telco, you know, eventually, you can have, like, literally 100 of 1000 or even millions of nodes in that gateway. Yeah. You can plug it into the data infrastructure, and you can build AI and update detection models. And at a massive scale, you know, you can start to narrow down what the issues are. So very cool. Super cool.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:You know, you talked about, you know, data security, and, you know, our experience is similar. And, you know, maybe just I'll talk about data quality, you know, which, you know, to me is a very, very critical issue when you think about enabling AI and, you know, it somehow gets down to data quality. And again, the problem is so multidimensional that, you know, increasingly we are using generative AI as a way of assessing quality and solving for quality issues. Yeah. So, you know, I can't stress enough, you know, that, you know, all of our, you know, our platforms and and and services, you know, that we're delivering to our clients and data is playing a huge role.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:And it's kind of changing almost by the month, Srikanth. You know, it's, because even, let's say, 2 months back, we were offering generative AI as almost like a separate capability service offering to our clients. Yeah? But today, I think even over the last couple of weeks, you know, where we have come to is that it's not a separate offering, you know. It is embedded as part of, you know, if we are doing software development for our client, or we are doing quality assurance, or we are doing customer service. Generative AI is not now separate, you know, but it is fully embedded as part of that offering. It's almost like Gen AI infused software development or Gen AI enabled customer service. And because of that, you know, we are going to deliver x percent higher productivity.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:No. Absolutely. And I think that follows the trend of many, many inventions or technologies that humans have brought where it goes from being a novelty to being an enabler across a range of services that you almost forget that it exists. You you've talked about how you're talking to a lot of clients. You've you've talked about how internally you're using it. But there are still a lot of companies out there and a lot of executives out there who are at the start of the journey. So what would your advice be to those companies and to those executives who are very, very early in their journey, who've been following the, to a large extent, the wait and watch mode in some shape or form for the last year to see how this pans out?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Yeah. I think, there are still there are still execs like that and companies like that, in some industries more than others. But I would say, generally generally, this is too big, Srikanth It's there are it's really the majority of execs that at least I work with, you know, across the 5 industries that we operate in. They're quite aware. They're quite aware that it's an important thing.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:That perhaps the struggle, Srikanth is to contextualize it for their industry and situation. Yeah? At at a broad level, you know, I'm I'm yet to come across, like, a high quality exec who doesn't understand this and who doesn't know that this is important. But they may not be able to connect the dots in terms of, you know, what it means. Yeah. What it means. And and I think, whether it is firms like yours are, you know, who are putting more at the human end, and like mine, who are working more at the business and technology end. I think I think what's very important is that instead of just, talking about the techno focusing on the technology alone, I think we have to really bring it to life that for different type of situations and what does it mean. Yeah?
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:And it's kind of like the first question that you, you know, that you asked me and we started a conversation with about the impact. I think we have to bring it to life. We have to bring it to life, you know. Because the more we talk about it as a technology, people get scared. You know, they feel it's kind of some kind of a black box.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:So I think that's a very, very important thing. You know, I don't think the issue here is, you know, ostrich kind of burrying, you know, head in the sand. Yeah. I don't feel that way. Yeah. It's too big. The public narrative is too strong. The awareness and pressure from the boards is too high. So you just can't afford, the ostrich and, you know, type of a situation. But but it is definitely the case that, they're not they don't they have they have not connected the dots.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:Amazing. Nitin. all the very best with the books, and I hope you use generative AI to write some of it. But, obviously, you know, one can't miss your inevitable style as well that sort of is a golden thread to all your books. So thanks for joining us today. Much appreciated.
Nitin Seth, co-founder & CEO - INCEDO:Thank you, Srikanth. Thank you so much.
Srikanth Iyengar, CEO - upGrad Enterpris:And that concludes another episode of the GenAIrous Podcast. We're very grateful to our guests for their time and their expertise. A big thank you to our producer, Shantha Shankar in Delhi, and our audio engineer, Nithin Shams in Berlin, for making the magic happen behind the scenes. Join us next time, and don't forget to subscribe to GenAIrous wherever you listen to your podcasts. See you next time.