India’s biggest asset is its human talent, feels Raj Koneru, the CEO & founder of Kore.ai, a US-based provider of conversational and generative AI platform technology, with additional offices located in India, the UK, Japan, South Korea, and Europe. “That talent needs to be nurtured to become creators, not just consumers of technology. India should build AI applications for the world, not just for domestic use. Leveraging talent at that scale will be critical to long-term leadership in AI,” he told Sudhir Chowdhary at the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi. Excerpts:
How are organisations rewiring to capture value from AI?
If you take any enterprise and look back, they’ve changed their applications to take advantage of the internet, then the cloud, and then mobile. Now, all these applications – whether customer-facing like online or mobile banking, or employee-facing like CRM and ERP – are evolving into AI agents.
An AI agent is not tied to just one data source or one context. It can access multiple data sources and bring context from different places. It’s a new type of application, and it can also be autonomous. Autonomous applications didn’t really exist earlier, except in limited decision-support systems in small segments. Now, imagine decision support embedded in every application, everywhere.
This is the rethinking enterprises are going through – fundamentally rethinking how to operate as a business: how to create, market, sell, and support products or services. The entire lifecycle is being reimagined, and new AI-driven applications are gradually replacing traditional ones.
Don’t you think many companies are rushing into AI, but face risks without proper orchestration and governance? What will help scale adoption beyond pilots?
It comes down to picking the right use cases. Every organisation – whether a government service like railways or a private enterprise like a bank, telco, or retailer – operates across a lifecycle: creation, marketing, sales, and support.
Within that lifecycle, you need to choose use cases where value is highest. AI delivers value in three main ways – reducing cost, improving speed, and increasing revenue. If the right use cases are prioritised, organisations see strong ROI.
Today, AI tools are widely available across enterprises, so everyone is building something. That’s where mistakes happen – prioritisation is missing. Scaling happens when organisations focus on high-impact use cases rather than scattered experimentation.
Tell us about your AI strategy and what makes your approach different from other market players.
We’ve been working in AI for over 12 years. Even before large language models, we were using machine learning and building our own semantic models. We’ve seen the evolution of conversational AI from the beginning. Some of the world’s largest deployments run on our platform, so security and scalability are deeply embedded. We’ve supported a wide range of enterprise use cases globally.
Another important aspect is that our company was born in India. From the beginning, our IP, platform, and applications have been built in India and deployed globally across markets like the US and Europe. All our R&D is in India. We have about 850 people here, and that has been the case from the beginning. Our strategy is to provide a comprehensive platform and enterprise-ready applications for key use cases, so organisations can deploy AI with confidence and scale.
What are the opportunities you see in the Indian market?
We are already active here. Some large banks and major retailers in India are using our platform and have gone live. We are recognised as a leader by analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester, which strengthens our credibility. We have a dedicated India team and have primarily focused on the private sector so far. Over time, we also see strong potential in working more closely with the government sector.
Anthropic continues to haunt investors as IT stocks have slid rapidly in the last few days on rising fears of AI-led disruption. Why is this happening, are the fears realistic?
Yes and no. Tools like Claude can automate certain tasks traditionally handled by IT services or application vendors. But complex enterprise systems and large-scale services cannot be handled by simple tools alone.
Technology vendors are also developing their own AI capabilities and reimagining their offerings. So, while there may be impact in some segments, the software industry is vast. No single tool does everything. Overall, the ecosystem is evolving, with everyone trying to create value through AI.
There are also fears about job losses due to AI…
Every new technology requires adaptation. Earlier, people learned basic computing tools. Today, students are learning programming and AI skills much earlier. Jobs won’t disappear, but they will change. The nature of work will evolve, and people will need to learn new skills and use AI effectively in their roles. That’s how progress has always worked.