With 15+ years of experience in large scale businesses, Deepak specializes in contributing to the development of environments, requirements analysis, designing technical architecture, and other areas.

The world's most extensive digital identity program, Aadhaar, and a thriving e-payment ecosystem in the country have set the stage right for a digital economy. And COVID just accelerated our journey towards this new normal of transactions. In 2020, we saw a 50 percent downtick in cash transactions, this means our normal definition of transaction is undergoing a change. Now, Customers don't have to visit a bank to open an account, it can be opened while you are watching your favorite shows, similarly payment for vegetables can be made just scanning a QR code. Customer can order groceries and staples through a portal with option of same day delivery.

What all this means in both BFSI and Retails/eTailers have to re-think their definition of customer experience and satisfaction.While the above brings lots of ease and advantage to the customer, we are witnessing down side of it too. Just like, how customer need not be there in-person, crime also happens the same way. Be it synthetic IDs, phishing, impersonation, tele-frauds ­ crime is also evolving and criminals are using intelligent means.

As India progresses in its economic journey and aims to become a $5 trillion economy by 2024, Banking and other financial organization will play a pivotal role in this journey given India's policy objective of financial inclusion. BFSI sector is gradually opening up to adapt innovative solution to transform banking system and with the Government initiatives like Jan Dhan Yojana, UPI, BharatNet mission which is driving internet adoption across India, adoption of AI is increasing.

Banks and financial institutions stand to benefit significantly from AI, whether to improve overall customer experience, take more informed decisions on credit underwriting, detect frauds and defaults early, improve collections or increase employee efficiency, AI has the potential to transform India's BFSI Sector.With the digital growth, one very crucial benefit every business has, is the availability of data that provides visibility into customer's psyche like never before. Any of the business does not leverage this intel, forget growth, survival will be at stake.

- For BFSI this could mean, being available during the key life decisions ­ Home loans for first home, Car loans for new parents, incentivize health insurance premiums for healthy lifestyle, Reduce auto premiums for safe drivers, mutual funds for the latest promotion.

- For Retail/eTail, this is about influencing the customer's zeroth moment of truth. Identifying the right customer persona through the purchase pattern and social media interactions can help not only getting the right product at the right time but also get the customer to come back. Cross-sell and Up-sell campaigns cost a fraction of what they used to in the digital world with an almost immediate feedback.

- For E-commerce: AI is transforming the e-commerce industry by predicting shopping patterns that enables personalized shopping experience, product recommendations, sales forecasting and inventory management.

- Auto insurance: Incorporating technology like AI-powered automated inspection can augment the manual claims validation process making it more convenient, error-free, and customer-friendly. Advanced systems can further help identify fraudulent claims, specifically padding fraud specific to the auto insurance sector.

- Health Insurance: Despite the regulations in place, health insurance frauds are evolving rampant--vertical coalition. Again, AI-powered intelligent systems can help identify growing fraud.

AI has been one of the critical drivers for sectors like agriculture, healthcare, education, retail, and manufacturing

Indian Marketers' Transition From Heuristic To Data-Driven Decision-Making
Understanding the changing consumer behavior has be-come tricky; therefore, many brands have adapted a 'data-driven' approach for operational decision-making, especially post the pandemic that has exposed industry's weaknesses in terms of anticipation and adaptability. The ones that have digitized show better ability to navigate and act in times of crisis. For data to improve decisions, marketers need to deploy a suitable processes to achieve the set results. Therefore, marketers need to evolve from data-driven to AI-driven workflows using relevant tools and solutions to leverage data value fully.

While heuristics can speed up the decision-making process, it can introduce errors and biased judgments. Hence, setting goals and objectives based on data, using customized tools, personalizing campaigns, analyzing data, and embracing marketing automation are ways to avoid cognitive biases in decision making.

Population-Scale AI Catapult Digital Transformation In India Across Sectors
According to the latest IAMAI-Kantar Cube report, the number of active internet users in India is likely to grow nearly 45 percent, i.e., 900 million, by 2025 compared to 622 million last year.

This hints towards the massive next stage of revolution in India's digital ecosystem. The country's vast youth population is the most significant catalyst for tech adoption, demanding the tech ecosystem to develop affordable, scalable, and profitable solutions. Hence, India can leverage its unique position in technology, data volume, data diversity, and talent to standardize AI across industries in the world.

AI has been one of the critical drivers for sectors like agriculture, healthcare, education, retail, and manufacturing. This is empowered by an uptick of robust applications, intelligent devices, and a surge in datacentric innovations. Moreover, with cloud technologies reaching new capacity levels to process millions of computers combined with millions of algorithms, more unique opportunities are being created to boost citizens' progress fueling India's ambition to become a trillion-dollar digital economy by the end of this decade. Major growth drivers of the market are adoption of industry 4.0, use of advanced technologies, such as cloud, IoT, big data and analytics, mobility, and social media. Innovations around Data Analytics and AI are the most critical factor in driving business strategy and growth to bring the impact in digital transformation journey.

The Government of India in its Budget of 2018­19 had prioritized building technology capabilities and initiated a national programme to direct the efforts of the Government in the area of artificial intelligence. NITI Aayog released India's National Strategy for Artificial Intelligence (NSAI) in June 2018 called 'AI for All', combines the economic potential of AI with social development and inclusive growth, and positions India as the `AI Garage of the World'.

With the vision to incorporate AI in youth, MeitY along with Industry participation has launched National AI Portal functions as a one-stop platform for all the AI-related advancements in India, along with sharing of important resources such as articles, as well as information on AI-based companies and educational firms in India.

India's Economic Development Vs. Other Developed Countries With Ai Solutions
India's demographic dividend, COVID-19 pandemic, demographic dividends, digital adoption pace, core tech competencies, and new geopolitical scenario work in favor as we move ahead in the 'New Normal' era. Furthermore, the Government's initiatives (Digital India, Make in India, and Self-Reliant India) and public-private partnership in developing the skill index contribute to the positive boom expected across sectors such as IT, telecom, manufacturing, logistics, transport, public safety, and others.

Together, the entire ecosystem can develop data-driven tech solutions, compelling business models, intellectual property, breakthrough research, and conducive policies realizing India's dream to become a trillion-dollar digital economy by 2025.