Jaspreet Bindra always wanted to be seen as a thought leader in his space — in an exclusive interview with us, he clarified his vision for what leadership is and has a differing idea about who a thought leader is in the area of digital transformation. Or what the entails looks like!
For instance, he explained to us in depth, “I have been working with AI for the last fifteen years at Microsoft and Mahindra group. I am on the board of findability.ai – a Boston based, softbank-invested enterprise AI company, and have worked closely with them over the last five years on their various AI implementations. I am about to complete my masters in AI and ethics from Cambridge University. I am an advisor to ThoughtWorks, a global tech and AI company. I lead a diverse community on GenerativeAI online as well! As founder-MD of Tech Whisperer Limited out of Cambridge, I advise and speak on AI across the world.”
Knowingly or unknowingly, Jaspreet has become the part of this hottest term floating around in the global tech market that has made his life also easier in such a busy timeline. As an expert, he informs us about the upcoming artificial intelligence trends to boost productivity and efficiency smoothly.
“Companies have realised that data is the most powerful asset that they own and they need people to mine, structure and engineer this data to gain insights using AI, machine learning, neural networks and other such techniques. So the data scientist role has become very important, not only for tech companies, but also for conventional companies which hold lots of data – like financial services, travel, consumer goods companies – transactional data, personal data of customers, employee data. They use data to gain insights in the right way – for this, they need data scientists.”
The managing director of The Tech Whisperer continued, “Now, in fact, it has gone beyond just data scientists or AI architects at junior roles. Universities have recently started offering the ethics issues around AI or tech or data science. I, personally, am doing my second master’s degree in AI and Ethics at Cambridge University in the UK! Ashoka University in India, where I teach, also offers a course in the ethics of AI. Not a full master’s degree yet, but certainly a course. Ethics has started coming into technology much like ethics came into medical sciences and, therefore, it is not only data science, but the responsibility and accountability, the governance which needs to surround it.”
What’s more to it? “I believe that we need more of it. India has the largest number of software engineers in the world, it has the third largest number of unicorns and amongst the largest number of start-ups. With AI being so powerful and having the ability to solve a large number of both the world’s and India’s problems – problems related to climate change, agriculture, environment, healthcare, education – we need more AI-based start-ups out of India. I would prefer that we be second or third, rather than fifth. If you look at the premier start-up accelerator in the world – Y Combinator – almost 85-90 percent of their start-ups in this batch are AI and generative AI-related. This is what most tech innovators want to work on because they see the power of it and how the world is racing to build new AI products and services. I hope India is able to receive a lot more funding for start-ups in the AI and related space.”
Following one AI prediction can help to yield customer engagement and adopt the use of AI models efficiently and effectively. That’s what Jaspreet Bindra is apprising us about in detail — “As an expert, I do believe that responsible AI is not only important, it is critical. AI is a very powerful new fundamental technology – as powerful as search, social networks, maybe more powerful like the mobile phone or internet.”
Additionally, “Humankind has had to work towards developing an ethical framework around it and work towards creating a framework to work responsibly with it. Thought institutions like the International Atomic Energy Agency! There have even been treaties like the non-proliferation treaty for it to be used in a beneficial manner, rather than a destructive manner. And, AI being at the same level of dual use power, also needs people to think about it in an ethical, responsible manner. Especially generative AI – it is moving so fast and is so much more powerful. It almost feels like it is being as intelligent as us humans. With all the big tech companies putting their energy and power behind it we need regulation, ethical AI and responsible AI even more.”
Jaspreet did not enter the ‘market’. There was no such thing as a digital transformation ‘market’ in a sense. Digital transformation has been a buzzword for about fifteen years. Every company across geographies and sectors has been keen to do this. In fact it is amongst the top – if not top – priority for CEOs across sectors to do digital transformation. The reasons are not far to see. Every eight- ten years some industry or the other collapses and a new one comes in its place – whether it be travel bookings, music, video, large parts of financial services and retail. The auto industry, for example, right now is going through so much transformation and disruption. And, so, digital transformation is something that companies need to constantly do to stay ahead of the game.
He also mentioned, “I entered here because I had this very unique experience of being in large Indian business houses like the Tata Group, in start-ups like Bazee.com (which became eBay) and a global BigTech company – Microsoft. Because I was in all three, it perhaps positioned me well to think about digital transformation, business models, technology, culture, customer experience, etc. And while I was doing it all the time in many roles, formally I was hired as the Sr, VP for digital transformation at the Mahindra Group – as the Group Digital Officer – it became a fulltime job. Then, when I wanted to leave corporate life, it was natural that I wanted to continue working in this area and advising clients and companies in India and elsewhere in their own transformation journeys.”
He also faced his fair share of challenges: “In a role that is not defined and unconventional—for a long time, I had to understand and define what the role would be and then ensured that everyone across the Mahindra Group also understood what this role was. In a conglomerate which has different businesses, whether it be financial services or automobile manufacture or travel and hospitality – very different businesses, each with their own separate needs and business imperatives and transformation needs. You had to evangelise this first – you had to work with CEOs to make them understand why the RoI of digital transformation was not 3 or 4 percent profit or a revenue uptick.
In many cases, the RoI for Digital transformation was survival. If companies did not transform they would not survive. Take Nokia, for example, or many other which went down, or blockbuster, which went down because of Netflix or book retailers which could not face the onslaught of Amazon. They did not transform and they could not survive. Getting that into the culture of the organisation and building the right teams – not only for myself, but also within the companies – was one of the initial challenges. But once everyone understood the importance, the job became much easier.”
