India uniquely placed in global AI race, cites Cognizant chief officer
India has a “unique” position in AI enablement due to its deep technology foundation and large pool of people who understand digital systems and processes, according to Babak Hodjat, Chief AI Officer at Cognizant.
Hodjat told media that while AI tools are increasingly generating more and more codes, developers will still be needed to build modular systems and evaluate the quality of outputs produced by AI.“So this is not going to go to waste... A coder using AI is going to be well ahead of a non-coder using AI,” he said.
Artificial Intelligence is empowering more professionals across fields, even though core tech expertise remains valuable, Hodjat believes.The recent India AI Impact Summit, held in New Delhi, showed the extent to which the country is prioritising artificial intelligence.
“India has a unique position because they have a starting point that is ahead of everyone else. Because you have a tech-savvy population and you are building on solid grounds which is the technological foundation and that is what is going to drive AI enablement,” he said.
People who understand systems, processes and applications will play a key role in building AI systems and accelerating adoption across industries, he said adding “so I do think this is a unique position”.
Citing India’s deep knowledge base and rich culture of entrepreneurship, Hodjat termed it a strong start. Cognizant, he said, has repositioned itself as an ‘AI builder’ company, focusing on enabling enterprises to adopt artificial intelligence technologies.“We are an AI builder company now, which means, we are AI enabling the future of the enterprise which is our clients. We own the last mile, we understand their business often better than they do, so we are well-positioned to do that,” he said.
He added that the company is also embedding AI internally, including technologies such as multi-agent systems and context engineering, while tracking returns on investment before deploying solutions for clients.“We are enterprise ourselves, so it makes a lot of sense for us to adopt AI technology, multi-agent system, context engineering and use it in-house ourselves, meter it and ensure we are getting Return on Investment (RoI), and also passing on RoI to our clients,” he said.The company is also focusing on upskilling employees and building an ‘AI-first’ culture.
“And we have empowered all of our associates to make use of AI systems to augment their coding...and coding is just one of the areas where we are making use of AI right now,” the senior Cognizant executive said.The proportion of AI-generated code within the company has been increasing. “Last time we announced it was about 30 per cent of code and growing,” he observed.
On the future of IT services, Hodjat said software developers will continue to play a role even as AI writes more code.“Today we can’t survive without coders. Coders have to be on top of building programs and writing software, of course, augmented with AI,” he said.
