Nearly 70 per cent Indian firms likely to deploy AI before 2020: Intel report

The report also said that nearly 75% of the firms surveyed anticipate benefits in business process efficiency and employee productivity with the use of AI.

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As firms' appetite for the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) grows, a report on Thursday said 68.6 per cent Indian organisations might deploy it before 2020.

The Intel India commissioned report, undertaken by the International Data Corporation (IDC) that surveyed 194 Indian organisations across sectors, said 71 per cent are looking at increased process automation as a key benefit which could drive spike spends on this technology by 2020.

The report also said that nearly 75 per cent of the firms surveyed anticipate benefits in business process efficiency and employee productivity with the use of AI.

While 64 per cent of the respondents believe that this technology can empower them in revenue augmentation through better targeting of offers and improved sales processes, 76 per cent of the companies are or believe that they will face a shortage of skilled personnel to harness the power of AI.

"This research is a small step towards comprehending this knowledge, and enabling companies, such as ours, shape strategy and move ahead in the right direction," Prakash Mallya, Managing Director, Sales and Marketing Group, Intel India, said in a statement.

Intel currently powers 97 per cent of data centre servers running AI workloads worldwide and has been investing in the development of the ecosystem in India.

"Indian enterprises have been quick to adopt AI in the recent past, with nearly one in five organisations (22.2 per cent) across the four verticals surveyed implementing the technology in some way. This number is anticipated to soar considerably by mid-2019 with nearly seven in 10 firms (68.6 per cent) anticipated to deploy (it)," the company said.

Retail and BFSI organisations are leveraging AI to increase efficiency in their sales and marketing function, which has emerged as the second most popular use case.

Transforming customer experience to improve their loyalty ranks high on the list of benefits for retail and banking organisations with banks leading the innovation journey as far as transformation of customer experience.

Financial services organisations (63.9 per cent) are more focused on improving regulatory compliance and fraud reduction from AI implementation, while retail and automotive organisations are looking at improving consistency in the way decisions are made.

However, concerns around adoption of AI continue with high cost of solutions, acute shortage of skilled professionals, unclear return on investment, and cybersecurity emerging as the key hindrances. Regulatory compliance and lack of quality data are seen as other important challenges.

"As roadblocks in adoption and implementation of AI and fears around AI subside, we can expect a new set of opportunities that India can gain from - ranging from higher business efficiency and revenue augmentation to improved data insights and better customer experiences," Prakash added.

He said that together these developments will propel evolution of the larger AI ecosystem and its applications in our lives.