Every company will be an AI company in future: Wipro COO Sanjeev Jain

Wpro India COO Interview: India is at the forefront of global AI adoption, with 70 per cent of its companies actively engaged in AI projects, far surpassing the global average. Amid this burgeoning adoption, Republic Business interviewed Sanjeev Jain, the newly appointed Chief Operating Officer of Wipro Limited, who shared his insights on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in the emerging tech industry. 

With a focus on AI adoption, Jain discussed Wipro’s initiatives to train its workforce for AI integration, the impact of AI on employability, and the potential for AI to transform, yet not replace, the human workforce. 

(Edited excerpts from the interview)

On training Wipro’s workforce for AI

Now more than ever, companies must prioritise talent development and learning initiatives to stay ahead of the curve. We have multiple highly personalised and contextualised AI training programs for employees, that are tailored according to skill sets and domain. 

Our approach goes beyond mere reskilling; it focuses on comprehensive people development. Employees’ learning and development is linked to career management, creating a seamless integration that benefits both employees and the organisation. By mapping career and learning pathways, Wipro ensures that employees have a clear vision of their growth trajectory within the company. We are implementing an AI-powered talent marketplace that will create personalised career paths for employees and match their skills to open projects.

We have so far trained over 225,000 employees on GenAI and more than 30,000 employees on more advanced levels of AI based on roles and personas. However, there are a few challenges when considering adoption at scale. 

On AI skills becoming new norm of employability 

The talent marketplace is undergoing a significant shift as the skills needed to succeed on the job evolve. Gen AI will enable new productivity gains for all jobs—IT, coding and engineering to marketing and HR—helping augment the role of humans and redefining the value proposition for each role. We also have robust governance to ensure responsible AI adherence for any AI use case/implementation. 

New AI-related jobs will be created rapidly in the future. We want to ensure that our employees are prepared, confident, and ahead of the curve when opportunities arise.

We are continuously evaluating our skill requirements and roles to improve productivity by leveraging AI/GenAI technologies. We are also in the process of identifying operations and non-technical roles where GenAI plays a vital role. We are repurposing roles and creating new roles (eg Prompt Engineer, AI Practitioner etc.) as per industry trends and market demands. Within Wipro, we have identified learning pathways for employees to elevate and adapt to these roles. 

On possibility of AI replacing human workforce

In the future, every company will be an AI company, and this will lead to a new batch of AI-related jobs/roles. AI will not replace humans completely but will work together to bring synergies and deliver as per business demands. This will lead to exponential business outcomes for organisations. 

AI will take over repetitive, transactional, high-volume tasks and will free up time for humans to focus more on strategic actions. This will allow the workforce to become more human-centric and enable them to realise career ambitions as well. 

As AI augments more of the job's basic tasks, future professionals will need to build deeper business and communications skills, such as listening, problem-solving, and specific domain expertise to leverage AI to solve complex business problems.  

Among the skills IT professionals will need in an AI-first future are: 

• Creativity and curiosity 
• Deep understanding of business and a consultative mindset 
• Emotional intelligence and a passion for user experience 
• Cross-disciplinary capabilities 
• Analytical skills 
• Emotional intelligence and ability to see the bigger picture.