NewGen service solution
Change is the only constant, so goes an old adage. What if it happens at a hectic pace? Well, that could turn everything topsyturvy. The speed with which AI (artificial intelligence) is swarming every facet of life is beginning to nudge the business, especially, to hurriedly wake up and ponder quickly. ask Shiva Ramani, the indefatigable entrepreneur. he unhesitatingly acknowledges the tectonic shift that is happening around the world of commerce and business. The founder of San Jose-based iOPEX, which has quite a presence in Chennai, has sounded a caution, nay, warning, though. according to Ramani, knowledge is getting commoditised increasingly. If proof is required, aI is the answer. The advent of aI is a sure indication that knowledge has increasingly become democratised. aI, chatGBT and the like are all set to entirely reconfigure world business in a never-imaginable new way.
Using AI, one could now seek chat-GBT to generate anything under the sun. So much so that Ramani presages a situation where 80 per cent of the knowledge becomes commoditised. With the basic human knowledge made widely available, the business world is also caught in a serious predicament. What is a wiser pursuit to build business? Should it waste time and money in replicating the existing work of knowledge? Should you not want to use people to do higher order things by adding on to the commoditised knowledge? In 15-20 years, according to Ramani, there are going to be fewer factories. about 80 per cent will be commoditised knowledge. “I want every new graduate and everyone in the industry to actually engage on how to use co-pilots and drive higher added values,” he says. “Knowledge is widely available and interchangeable now. The previous Industrial revolution saw electricity and others commoditised. This time around, it is knowledge that is getting liberated. Now that aI has come in, try to take the basics and build value-added things”.
As a service solution provider, IOPEX Technologies is ideally positioned to take advantage of the unfolding shift in the aI-driven world environment. IOPEX, which has a huge presence in Chennai and workstations in Bengaluru and Gurgaon as well, is focussed on optimisation of ‘opex’ (operating expenses) for business. “The bulk of our focus is in the Opex areas,” he explains. “Essentially, a business operation covers areas such as finance, sales, customer service et al. For all these functions, we write aI functions and automation software”.
Nearly 75 per cent of revenue for IOPEX Technologies comes from the US, while Europe accounts for 15-20 per cent. It has a headcount of 3,000, with 90 per cent of them located in Chennai.
Will AI upset the applecart?
In the new scheme of things, where does IOPEX fit? at least Ramani is clear on the way forward. The success of IOPEX largely depends on its ability to convince prospective clients of the need for ushering in a change in the mindset. Time has indeed come for an outcome-based engagement – a far cry from what is happening at the moment where the focus of the engagement is, more often than not, on the number of people involved. Ipso facto, IOPEX expects its clients to share a percentage of their savings arising out of an integrated optimisation solution provided by it. “We are redefining the business construct with our customers,’’ he affirms. That is easier said than done, however. more than convincing prospective clients, it requires educating them on the positive implications of aI and automation in their businesses.
The arrival of aI in a big way is bound to upset the applecart on several fronts. One big churn could be in the IT outsourcing space. Since aI can easily automate routine tasks and handle service-oriented functions, the need for manual intervention in these roles could well-nigh diminish. No doubt aI adoption could fetch efficiency gain. Yet, it could potentially lead to workforce restructuring and job displacement. chatGPT – a free-to-use aI system – is quite good in natural language understanding and generation. That helps it to handle a diverse array of tasks in a conversational manner. This versatility positions chatGPT to revolutionise customer service, support and communication, thereby disrupting legacy services that rely heavily on traditional modes of interaction.
“Given all these, the Indian outsourcing scene is set for a significant change in the next 5-7 years. There could be a drop in headcount because there is going to be AI and co-pilots,” warns Ramani. much of the writing (60 per cent), according to him, is done by co-pilots. That is why he feels iOPEX has an advantage. For one, it has kept an unalloyed focus on aI and automation. For another, IOPEX has chosen to remain a private company. These give iOPEX an edge over other big service solution providers in the game.
In the aI-driven business world, a 100-person project could now turn out to be a 10-person project. That could cause quite a disruption in the entire outsourcing ecosystem. Since IOPEX is a private entity, it does not have the compulsions of big public entities. “They (big ones) can’t go out and say ‘we are cutting down employees’. Since mine is a private company, I can do that,” reasons ramani. Not surprisingly, he calls iOPEX the ‘merchant of disruption’.
ramani has come a long way. Prior to IOPEX, he was the principal founder-chairman, CSS corp (formerly SlashSupport) from October 1998 to may 2009. Un-reconcilable differences with PE (private equity) players sort of led him to disengage with ccS corp to go on a new path, resulting in the formation of iOPEX. The ccS experience has taught him to keep the ‘stock holding’ in iOPEX simple. Not surprisingly, it has only two investors – Shiva ramani and his brother Shiva Kumar. Strategic engagement with clients, as opposed to tactical ones, is the idea that is driving IOpex. ramani is on a mission to make iOpex a NewGen service solution organisation.
K.T. Jagannathan
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